Directed by Luchino Visconti. Written by Suso Cecchi D’Amico and Luchino Visconti
Senso is defined by its opulence. To start, the opening scene set at the opera in Venice is more extravagant than most movies’ climaxes: the drama of the ongoing performance as a backdrop, the gorgeous gowns and outfits donned by the cast, the lavish number of extras, and Visconti’s enamored direction giving time and space to it all. Grandeur in every way.
Despite that opulence, you’ll remember Senso for how it all comes to ruin. Alida Valli plays Countess Livia Serpieri, who’s watching the opera from a box she shares with her dusty husband and the top brass of the Austrian army occupying Venice. She’s in a precarious spot, since her cousin’s a leader of the Italian resistance, and war’s on the horizon. That spot becomes even more precarious when her cousin gets into it with an Austrian officer, forcing her to run interference. Soon, her acquaintance with the officer explodes into something much more forceful and calamitous.
A doomed romance of epic proportions, Luchino Visconti’s Senso is a true masterpiece of abundance. The grandeur and detail of its settings, the fabulousness of its costumes, many of which require four hands to remove and put on, the magnificence of its coloring, deep and rich. Some movies are defined by their excess, how they go over the top with their sense of humor, the ferocity of their action, or their poetic opacity. Senso, in how it awakens every sense with luxurious abundance, is of that winning excess. An almost impossible treasure trove of splendor.
Its story is equally grandiose to the point of bombastic. It’s a story of a foolish love, the kind that has lovers throw themselves at the other’s feet. A love that’s an all-consuming obsession, inspiring a ruinous devotion stripped of sense and sensibility. It’s what Edith Piaf sang about in “Hymne à l’amour” telling us she’d deny her friends and homeland for this love. It takes nothing less in settings such as this.
It demands a ferocious performance from Valli. With complete abandon, she takes a leap of faith and trusts Visconti her fireworks will be matched in intensity by everything else. Anything less, and Livia’s tragedy will feel halfhearted and fatigued. A role like Livia is like a great climactic opera solo – you have to belt it and the delivery has to reach all the way down past your gut.
Not everything is larger than life. Visconti is a master of the sensual, and he seduces you with the gentle, worshiping lift of a veil, with whispered lines, spoken as if only meant for lovers’ ears, and with the charged breathless space between circling lovebirds.
All this subtlety among the glittering splendor is what makes Senso an all-time great story of love’s terrible power. An ornate piece of art, a full-breasted drama in the true sense of the word, a tour de force that only builds in strength, sweeping you along on a soaring tale destined for flames.
Mikkel Frederiksen 