Luchino Visconti Filmography

Born:: November 2, 1906 in Milan, Italy
Occupation:: Director, Screenwriter
Birth name:: Don Luchino Visconti di Modrone
Biography:: A director who heralded Italy's celebrated neorealist movement with his first film, Luchino Visconti was preoccupied with the moral disintegration of families. Ossessione (1942) was an Italian version of James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice about a woman who murders her husband. Bellissima...Read More

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The Innocent

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Laura Antonelli, Giancarlo Giannini, Jennifer O'Neill, Marc Porel, Massimo Girotti

Synopsis: Based on a novel by Gabriele d'Annunzio, The Innocent (L'Innocente) is set amongst the aristocracy of 19th-century Italy. Wealthy Tullio (Giancarlo Giannini) thinks nothing of squiring his mistress (Jennifer O'Neill) in full view of his friends and the public. But when Giannini's cast-off wife (Laura Antonelli Read More

5/18/76
Gruppo di Famiglia in un Interno

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Burt Lancaster, Silvana Mangano, Helmut Berger, Claudia Marsani, Stefano Patrizi

Synopsis: An introverted American professor (Burt Lancaster) has retired to an Italian house, but finds his life interrupted when a decadent family moves upstairs. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide Read More

12/10/74
Ludwig

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Helmut Berger, Romy Schneider, Trevor Howard, Silvana Mangano, Gert Fröbe

Synopsis: Luchino Visconti (Count don Luchino Visconti di Modrone) was a film director, true, but he was also a nobleman and a grand patron of traditional European culture: opera, art, music, crafts and literature. These interests enliven many of his films, but few have been so inspired as the four-hour Read More

3/7/73
Death in Venice

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Dirk Bogarde, Bjorn Andresen, Silvana Mangano, Marisa Berenson, Mark Burns

Synopsis: Based on a novel by Thomas Mann, Death in Venice stars Dirk Bogarde as a German composer who is terrified that he has lost all vestiges of humanity. While visiting Venice, Bogarde falls in love with a beautiful young boy (Bjorn Andresen). The relationship is ruined by Bogarde's obsession with the Read More

3/5/71
The Damned

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin, Helmut Griem, Helmut Berger, Charlotte Rampling

Synopsis: In 1969, The Damned (La caduta degli dei) was director Luchino Visconti's most controversial film to date. Set in the 1930s, the film zeroes in on a Krupp-like family of German munition manufacturers. The Essenbeck clan is headed by the Baron (Rene Kolldehoff), but daughter Sophie (Ingrid Thulin) Read More

10/14/69
Lo Straniero

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Marcello Mastroianni, Anna Karina, Bernard Blier, Georges Géret

Synopsis: The Stranger is a literal (but still very cinematic) adaptation of the novel by Albert Camus. Marcello Mastrioanni stars as Meursault, a man who feels utterly isolated from everyone and everything around him. This alienation results in sudden, inexplicable bursts of violence, culminating in Read More

10/14/67
Le Streghe

Crew: Director

Actors: Silvana Mangano, Annie Girardot, Francisco Rabal, Massimo Girotti, Elsa Albani

Synopsis: This Dino De Laurentiis production from 1965 is actually an anthology of five different directors' work, each telling their own stories about witches. The five stories are "The Witch Burned Alive," "Civic Sense," "The Earth As Seen From The Moon," "The Girl From Sicily," and "A Night Like Any Read More

2/22/67
La Strega Bruciata Viva

Crew: Director

Actors: Silvana Mangano

1967
Vaghe Stelle dell'Orsa

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Claudia Cardinale, Jean Sorel, Michael Craig, Marie Bell, Amalia Troiani, Renzo Ricci

Synopsis: American Andrew (Michael Craig) comes with his young wife Sandra (Claudia Cardinale) to her Italian estate, where she again finds herself a prisoner of the past: the memories of her dead father, hostility towards her mother, and her strange relationship with her brother Gianni (Jean Sorel). Read More

9/16/65
The Leopard

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale, Paolo Stoppa, Rina Morelli, Serge Reggiani

Synopsis: Arguably Luchino Visconti's best film and certainly the most personal of his historical epics, The Leopard chronicles the fortunes of Prince Fabrizio Salina and his family during the unification of Italy in the 1860s. Based on the acclaimed novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, published Read More

3/28/63
Boccaccio '70

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Sophia Loren, Luigi Giuliani, Anita Ekberg, Peppino De Filippo, Romy Schneider, Romolo Valli, Tomas Milian

Synopsis: Released in the US by 20th Century-Fox, Boccaccio '70 is a compendium of short subjects directed by three of Italy's top filmmakers. Each story is written in the style of the famed Italian essayist Boccaccio, albeit told in contemporary terms. First up is "The Raffle", written by Cesare Zavattini Read More

2/23/62
Rocco and His Brothers

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Alain Delon, Renato Salvatori, Annie Girardot, Katina Paxinou, Roger Hanin

Synopsis: Luchino Visconti's operatic masterpiece tells the story of the Parondis, a poor family from a village in southern Italy who come to Milan seeking a better life. Following the death of her husband, proud Rosaria (Katina Paxinou) picks up stakes and moves to the city with four of her sons: Simone (Renato Salvatori Read More

10/6/60
Le Notti Bianche

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Marcello Mastroianni, Maria Schell, Jean Marais, Clara Calamai, Alberto Carloni, Elena Fancora, Anna Filippini, Ferdinando Gera, Giorgio Listuzzi, Leonida Montest, Corrado Pani, Marcella Rovena, Dick Sanders, Renato Terra, Maria Zanoli

Synopsis: Shy young Marcelo Mastroianni ambles across a bridge one evening, where he meets a strange but alluring girl (Maria Schell) who is awaiting her lover. This chance acquaintance is the first strand in a complex web entrapping Mastroianni in a dreamlike world of flashbacks, flashforwards and false Read More

9/15/57
Of Life and Love

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This Italian drama is a four episode anthology based on the stories of Pirandello. The episodes were compiled from two Italian episodic films from the mid 1950s. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

1957
Senso

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Alida Valli, Farley Granger, Massimo Girotti, Heinz Moog, Rina Morelli

Synopsis: Italian director Luchino Visconti dishes up his usual blend of elegance and decadence in Senso. The international cast includes French film star Alida Valli as a Italian countess married to a Venetian nobleman, and English leading man Farley Granger as an Austrian military officer. The two are Read More

12/30/54
Siamo Donne

Crew: Director

10/22/53
Bellissima

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Anna Magnani, Walter Chiari, Tina Apicella, Gastone Renzelli, Arturo Bragaglia

Synopsis: This early Luchno Visconti drama stars Anna Magnani as an overbearing stage mother. Magnani's daughter (Tina Apicella) has zero talent, but Magnani raises such a ruckus at the studio after the girl's abortive screen test that the producers eventually find work for the girl. By this point, Magnani Read More

12/27/51
Appunti Su un Fatto Di Cronaca

Crew: Director

1951
La Terra Trema

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: Luchino Visconti's pseudo-documentary look at the exploitation of Sicilian fishermen was based on Giovanni Verga's 1881 novel I Malavoglia. The townspeople of Aci Trezza, Sicily, portrayed themselves, speaking in their native dialects and fretting about economic hardship for over 160 minutes of Read More

9/2/48
Giorni Di Gloria

Crew: Director

10/18/45
Ossessione

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Clara Calamai, Massimo Girotti, Juan de Landa, Dhia Cristani, Elia Marcuzzo, Vittorio Duse

Synopsis: Often considered one of the first examples of Italian neorealism, Luchino Visconti's first film was this adaptation of James M. Cain's steamy novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, which would also be made twice in the U.S., first in 1946 with Lana Turner and John Garfield and then in 1981 with Jack Nicholson Read More

5/17/43
La Tosca

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Imperio Argentina, Michel Simon, Rossano Brazzi, Massimo Girotti

Synopsis: This troubled film version of the Puccini opera was begun by Jean Renoir while lecturing in Italy at the invitation of dictator Benito Mussolini. After only a few scenes had been shot, Italy entered WW II and Renoir had to flee, leaving his assistant Carl Koch to complete the film. The familiar Read More

1940