Film Forum

(1974, Luchino Visconti) Into the quiet life of retired professor Burt Lancaster steps vulgar aristocrat Silvana Mangano, her daughter and boyfriend, and effete gigolo Helmut Berger. Visconti’s penultimate film. 35mm print courtesy Luce Cinecittà. Approx. 121 min.

Reviews

“Visconti pictures have often had an undercurrent of silliness, and in this one the silliness is very close to the surface; however, there’s grandeur in the director’s follies and in his allowing his sexual and political obsessions to be displayed so openly… It’s an idiosyncratic film, it’s cuckoo – an old man’s film (partly directed from a wheelchair) – but it’s very likeable.”
– Pauline Kael