Lost in a land between opulence and tragedy

Italian director Luchino Visconti, who is being feted by the UCLA Film & Television Archive with a three-week tribute, created sumptuous worlds for his tragically flawed characters to inhabit. Most of his films were literary adaptations infused with the glow of eras long past, epic in scale and scope, melodramatic and operatic in their vision, passions and violence.

His characters were caught between past and present: Burt Lancaster’s proud Sicilian prince desperately clinging to his aristocratic ways in a changing society in 1963’s “The Leopard” or the wealthy German industrial family that disintegrates with the rise of the Nazis in 1969’s “The Damned.”

Visconti, who died in 1976 at age 69, has had a lasting influence on filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and fellow countryman Bernardo Bertolucci. He discovered Austrian actor Helmut Berger, nurtured the careers of Alain Delon and Marcello Mastroianni, and gave the likes of Lancaster, Farley Granger and Dirk Bogarde some of their most complex, demanding roles.

Visconti lived a life of paradoxes. Born into one of Milan’s most prominent aristocratic families, he became a leftist and Marxist after working with French film director Jean Renoir in Paris in the 1930s -- but continued to live in luxury. He was a homosexual whose films often explored gay themes, but “a lot of biographers portray him as ambivalent or torn about his own sexuality,” says UCLA programmer David Pendleton.

Visconti’s protagonists were often caught in the same dilemmas that beset him. In 1971’s “Death in Venice,” based on the Thomas Mann novel, an aging composer (Bogarde) is obsessed with a beautiful young man. “It is about a man who suddenly experiences this strong homoerotic desire,” says Pendleton. “It feels to him like a bolt from above. Something that is attacking him from without and he doesn’t know quite how to deal with it.”

Visconti made small films and opulent melodramas, and the UCLA festival, which begins Friday with “The Leopard,” includes both. Visconti, who would move among theater, opera and films, made his directorial debut with 1943’s “Ossessione,” an atmospheric adaptation of James M. Cain’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” which screens Saturday.

Mussolini’s censors banned the film in Italy because its unflinching examination of desire, lust and murder wasn’t in sync with the fascist vision of Italy. And it wasn’t seen in America until the 1970s because Visconti didn’t acquire the rights to Cain’s novel.

With 1954’s “Senso,” screening Oct. 17, Visconti made the leap from small black-and-white films to the big-budget color period melodramas. “As he becomes more prominent, he is able to work with larger budgets and he’s able to do what he really loves doing -- working on a grand scale,” says Pendleton.

“He would go back and forth between working on these large-scale epics and working on smaller films like ‘Rocco and His Brothers,’ which is set in the present day. It is dealing with the working class and the sub-proletariat, but at the same time it is on a large scale and the emotions are very operatic.”

The festival also highlights the films Visconti made with his lover Berger: “The Damned,” “Conversation Piece” and “Ludwig.”

The two reportedly had a tempestuous relationship, each seeming to take advantage of the other. Visconti launched Berger’s career, but “In ‘Ludwig,’ he had Berger gain weight, and he aged him during the film, so by the end of the film he is no longer the pretty young thing he is at the beginning,” says Pendleton. “There is a certain sadomasochism at work in their relationship there.”

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Luchino Visconti

Where: James Bridges Theater, Melnitz Hall, UCLA

When: Various weekend nights and Wednesdays

Ends: Nov. 3

Price: $7 for general admission and $5 for students, seniors and UCLA Alumni Assn. members

Contact: (310) 206-8013 or go to www.cinema.ucla.edu

Schedule

Friday: “The Leopard,” 7:30 p.m.

Saturday: “Ossessione,” “Days of Glory,” 7:30 p.m.

Next Sunday: “La Terra Trema,” 7 p.m.

Oct. 15: “Bellissima,” “Anna Magnani,” 7:30 p.m.

Oct. 17: “Senso,” “White Nights,” 2 p.m.

Oct. 20: “Rocco and His Brothers,” 7:30 p.m

Oct. 23: “The Damned,”

7:30 p.m.

Oct. 24: “The Stranger,” “The Innocent,” 7 p.m.

Oct. 27: “Sandra,” “The Job,” 7:30 p.m.

Oct. 29: “Death in Venice,”

7:30 p.m.

Oct. 31: “Conversation Piece,” “The Witch Burnt Alive,”

2 p.m.

Nov. 3: “Ludwig,” 7:30 p.m (free admission)