Movie #49: Released in 1963, directed by Luchino Visconti, 186 minutes. New to me!
LetterBoxd score: 4 stars
Unsurprisingly, there is a ton to like about this movie. Let me count the ways.
- Burt Lancaster is great. This is crazy, given that he doesn’t speak Italian? (He was overdubbed!) And was only cast so the film could be financed? But he feels perfect for the role and embodies a certain kind of aristocratic gravitas.
- The movie is centered on the aristocracy, but lingers enough on the working class for you to recognize these people are sitting on the top of a pyramid of unacknowledged labor. It also has that scene where the priest talks about what the Nobles are like, as compared to regular folks. It’s not about the lives of regular people, but you are aware that regular people are the bulk of society and are focusing on a small corner of the world.
- That world is quite lavish and beautiful to look at, especially the final ballroom scene.
- There are some interesting ideas about the need to be flexible with your principles to maintain your position; the Prince’s decision to marry his heir into money rather than nobility, Tancredi’s fluid allegiances to different parties.
I feel more ambiguous about the movie as an elegy for a fading way of life. It does this elegy almost as well as you could ask for. As noted above, it does not ignore the existence of the working class. And I like the shot of them in church, dusted in white and standing stock still, as the camera pans over them like statues of a past era. And Lancaster is a good stand-in for an era, in the way he embodies a kind of wry worldly wisdom about how things stand.
And yet – it’s an elegy for the aristocracy. I struggle to get worked up about it.
If I want to be more charitable, I would emphasize two things. First, the movie isn’t really asking us to pick a side in the Aristocracy versus the regular folks divide. The movie doesn’t think the change that’s a-coming is going to make regular people better off. Sicily doesn’t want to improve, and as the Prince says, the middle class is just replacing the aristocracy. So we’re really just seeing a loss of something dignified. I get this on an intellectual level, but it doesn’t resonate that deeply with me.
But as a second defense, one could be a it more flexible and broad-minded in understanding what this movie is really about. Yes, on the surface, it’s mourning the passage of 19th century Sicilian Aristocracy. But beneath that, it’s about the end of youth and life and other good eras. You see this most clearly in the focus on the Prince’s mortality. He becomes jokes that getting told a daughter is in love is to age all in an instant. Later, his preoccupation with his own mortality becomes much more explicit, as he ponders paintings of dying scenes and dances one last dance with the next generation.
This is an interpretation I can certainly get behind. If I rewatch it, I’ll have this in mind and see if I feel more poignancy for the transitory nature of all life.
Why would someone think it’s one of the ten greatest movies ever made?
I think if you love beauty, you’ll like this.
Next: La Mepris (Contempt)