Luchino Visconti's 1954 film Senso is the next film for our discussion group: splendid technicolor and high melodrama with so many floating veils, sweeping skirts, white uniforms with white capes, La Fenice and Venice by night, the beautiful veneto countryside. Do we feel sorry for the Countess who betrays her family, and the cause of Venetian independence from Austria, for a man who turns out to be a loathsome snake? She has her revenge in the end when she rats him out as a deserter and gets him shot.
Visconti uses Anton Bruckner's Seventh Symphony as its score, but maybe the best part of the film is the opening sequence, set during a performance of Il Trovatore in La Fenice. We get to hear the duet between Manrico and Leonora, and then"Di quella pira" as the film uses the opera to present its themes of doomed passion and patriotic fervor.
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