Visconti's Risorgimento: Class Structure in Senso and The Leopard

Count Luchino Visconti di Madrone is universally considered to be one of the most brilliant and influential figures in Italian cinematic culture. His films are passionate and operatic, allowing his impulse to recreate history on film to bloom with vibrant intensity. Visconti’s historical preoccupation reappears consistently throughout his filmography. Visconti had an especially interesting historical relationship with the Risorgimento, seemingly fascinated by its deep cultural implications. The rigorously complex process of Italian unification stretched broadly from 1813 to 1918, lasting more than one hundred years. This tumultuous period of time saw great chaos and change for Italy; it represents an attempt for the country to define an Italian identity that was not based on arbitrarily drawn political boundaries or geography.

The complexity of the Risorgimento in Italy is such that it is difficult to comprehend from all perspectives. It marks a definite and permanent shift in Italian history, bringing the disparate, culturally diverse city-states of the South together with the Savoy-ruled North, marking the first time that Italy could be considered a wholly unified country. The immensity of this moment in Italian history, the process of the Risorgimento and the struggle to materialize a national identity, is incredibly evident in Italian art and culture. As cinema is a major expression of Italian culture, it is not surprising that many filmmakers, Visconti amongst them, choose to focus on this riotous period of history.

Visconti made two films which examined the Risorgimento, Senso, released in 1954, and The Leopard, released in 1963. Both of these films examine the social and political implications of the Risorgimento from an aristocratic perspective. This is hardly surprising, considering Visconti himself was deeply rooted with the traditional Italian nobility; Luchino Visconti di Modrone was born to the Grand Duke of Modrone in Milan, and carried the title of Count of Lonate Pozzolo. Although both Senso and The Leopard explore the Risorgimento from differing geographical and temporal perspectives (Senso takes place in and around Venice during 1866, and The Leopard is set in Sicily during 1860), both films are valuable as interesting representations of Visconti’s relationship with the Italy of the Risorgimento.

Visconti displays a similar perspective in both films in the relationship between social class and the events of the Risorgimento. History agrees that the process of Italian unification was largely conceived and executed by the upper middle class and the nobility; the Italian peasantry remained largely unaware and isolated from the political and social upheaval. This fact is illustrated by both Senso and The Leopard. Both films chronicle a society in flux, and as these massive changes start to materialize, the social and political prominence of the traditional Italian aristocracy begins to fade.

The Leopard is especially effective at tracing the inevitable downfall of the ruling class through the character of Fabrizio Corbero, Prince of Salina. The Prince stands in for the entire Italian ruling class; the audience watches him grapple with, and eventually accept, the overturning of the old order in favor of the new. As the Prince ages, so too does the Italian aristocracy; this process of decay eventually culminates in the final ballroom scene.

Here, Visconti shows the audience the new order, in the form of the young Angelica and Tancredi, who represent those who approach the changing balance of power by adapting to the circumstances. Tancredi, for example, capriciously changes his allegiance from the Garibaldini to the Italian army after determining it to be to his benefit. This new class is in stark contrast to the Prince and the traditional nobility which he represents. Tancredi and his brethren are those who have no real values, but strategically manipulate in order to retain power and influence; they are jackals and hyenas watching as the leopards and the lions of the traditional gentry fade.

As Angelica and the Prince dance together at the ball, Visconti simultaneously shows us the last waltz of the dying nobility. Opulence and pride remain, but underneath, the audience is still able to sense the underlying element of decay. Here, the Prince comes to the realization that he is the last of his kind, that he and aristocrats like him will soon be replaced by a rising middle class of shopkeepers and merchants; the functions of Italian society and politics will no longer be dictated by the once great nobility. According to The Leopard’s screenwriter Enrico Medioli, the ballroom scene is “a funeral march, a funereal moment. It’s the end of a society with all the vices and cruelties of such a society.” And it is indeed the end, as the Prince contemplates his own mortality, and thus the ephemerality of his class and his way of life. In the end, The Leopard can be interpreted as an exercise in lamentation for an entire social class whose way of life was lost in the pre-Risorgimento past.

Visconti’s dissection of the Risorgimento’s effects on the social order are also evident in Senso, a lush melodrama and one of Visconti’s most highly regarded cinematic efforts. The historical circumstance of social classes is an important element from the first scene, where the audience witnesses a partisan protest interrupt a performance of Verdi’s Il Travatore, in the legendary opera house La Fenice. As the camera pans around the theater, it is clear that the seats are organized here by class- occupying Austrian officers sit in the orchestra, while the highest and least expensive seats, belong to the middle class. And here, in the highest seats, is where the protest originates- pro-revolutionary pamphlets and carnations in the color of the Italian flag are thrown down to the orchestra. The interaction of different classes, and the role of class in the context of the Risorgimento, maintains a constant presence in Senso even from the opening scenes.

Senso displays the same aristocratic perspective as The Leopard; its protagonist is the beautiful Italian nationalist Countess Livia Serpieri, caught in a passionate and ultimately tragic love affair with occupying Austrian officer Franz Mahler. As in The Leopard, Visconti is able to clearly demonstrate the involvement of the aristocracy in the revolutionary efforts of the Risorgimento. Livia’s cousin, partisan leader Roberto Ussoni, uses the money of his social status to finance the revolutionary efforts of the nationalists. This money is given to Livia to hold for safe-keeping. However, Livia eventually gives this money to Franz after he asks for money to bribe a doctor to be declared unfit for combat. This exemplifies another aspect of class demonstrated in Senso; Mahler is shown to manipulate Livia, using fabricated love and dishonest passion to benefit from the Countess’s  access to money and her high social standing.

Senso’s examination of the status of the aristocracy during the Risorgimento is one that is echoed in The Leopard more than ten years later. When Livia discovers that Franz has been using her money to rent a lavish apartment and pay for food and a prostitute, there is a passionate confrontation between the two, where Mahler drunkenly reveals both his manipulation and his disdain for her weaknesses. One of the most significant elements in his speech occurs when he is castigating Livia for her betrayal of country and principle. “An entire world will vanish,” Franz says, as he is surrounded by luxury and decadence, “the one that you and I belong to.” Here, there is a distinct repetition of The Leopard’s lament at the passing of aristocracy into oblivion, a decline of the old way of life which culminates in the death of the gentry and the genesis of a new order, all powered by the drastic changes associated with the Risorgimento.

The declining state of the Italian nobility, which Visconti portrays so eloquently in Senso and The Leopard, is accentuated by the meticulous art direction and set design of both films. Both make use of dignified, historical, and grandiose sets: La Teatro Fenice and La Villa Godi Malinverni in The Leopard, for example. The historical, ancient beauty of these sets suggests a kind of sensuous luxury, creating a haunting parallelism to the characters which inhabit them. Countess Livia and the Prince of Salina inhabit the sets like ghosts; they are representations of the last fading vestige of the influence of the gentry.

 The lushness of the sets reveal invaluable information about those characters that inhabit them. Visconti occupies the film with sumptuous fabrics and costumes, rich furnishings, and luxurious artwork, all meticulously chosen to draw the audience’s attention to the dying splendor a social class which is soon to disappear. Cumulatively, in both Senso and The Leopard, the sets and props generate a detailed sense of time and place, bestowing a historical gravity upon the world which these characters inhabit. More importantly, though, their lushness and luxury draws our attention to the wealth of the ruling class. But underneath all of the grandeur, there is a distinct sense of decay: the fabrics are too rich, the sets too majestic. We see the theatricality of the lives of the aristocracy; beauty is pervasive in this lifestyle, but there is also an underlying implication of deterioration in the rich colors and textures of the velvet and ever present gilding. The viewer can intuit an imminent decay, in both the décor itself and the class which embraces it.

Visconti’s continual return to the Risorgimento as subject matter, as well as his preoccupation with the tumultuous nature of social classes during this time, can be attributed to his noble birth. Born Luchino Visconti di Madrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo, Visconti was surrounded by the historical weight of the aristocracy. Visconti spent his life immersed in the luxury presented in both Senso and The Leopard; in itself, this lends a certain element of authenticity to the films. It can be assumed that he identified personally on some level with characters like the Prince of Salina and the Countess Livia, for there is a subtle sense of compassion imbued within his portrayal. Subsequently, the audience is persuaded to sympathize with the characters as we witness a way of life fading into the past.

The Leopard and Senso demonstrate Visconti’s ability to smoothly and impactfully superimpose the personal onto the historical. The filmmaker is able to take emotional subjective narratives, such as that of Countess Livia, rife with passion and betrayal, and set them against a backdrop of universal historical significance, such as the Risorgimento. Visconti uses Senso and The Leopard to interweave complex tales of manipulation, betrayal and love with a higher sense of the history of the Risorgimento, embedding the political and the historical with a cutting sense of personal emotion. This fusing of the personal and the historical makes Senso and The Leopard, as well as a majority of Visconti’s other filmography, incredibly impactful.

Visconti enables the viewer to relate to the characters and their tragedies on an emotional level while simultaneously recognizing the larger implications of history. As he deals with the thematic elements of changing social class in the midst of the chaos of the Risorgimento, he is able to create beautiful and emotionally devastating films which underline the significance of the past.