"Visconti's Senso"

The tragedy Senso – Luchino Visconti's first color film from 1954 – is both a love story and a political thriller: The plot is set in Venice, which is occupied by Austrian troops just before the outbreak of the Third Italian War of Independence in 1866. Countess Livia Serpieri feels trapped in her marriage of convenience to an older aristocrat and throws herself head over heels into an affair with the Austrian officer Franz Mahler. Soon, she is completely infatuated with the gambling womanizer. For him, she betrays her political ideals, her fellow countrymen, and her own family, while experiencing nothing but humiliation from Franz. Ultimately, love turns into rage... with a terrible outcome. As in Death in Venice, Visconti also employs late Romantic symphonic music in Senso to intensify the film's dramatic events. Here, it is Anton Bruckner's 7th Symphony – arranged by the famous Italian film music composer Nino Rota – that accompanies the emotional highs and lows of the two main characters.