L'Innocente

I felt there was something missing. In order to pull off slow and draggy scenes with grace, a film needs to have a significant amount of substance that can carry the story. L'innocente felt too much of a costume drama which, though sophisticated in it's mise--en-scène, lacked the additional qualities of an entertaining but artistically viable melodrama.

I fell asleep after 40 min

Bored with these social critiques of the bourgeoisie. Even the cinematography was too bland to keep me interested.

It may be an extremely personal adaptation of material -Visconti's hands pensively turn the pages of the book in the opening credits- yet the feeling is detached and cold. The result is that you can easily mistake this for another recitative costume melodrama. Here lies a question, probably.

There's a lot of quality and know-how here, and characters are intelligently and sensitively designed, but on the whole it screams costume melodrama so much that caring became a chore. Visconti's aristocracy-set movies are a bit of a hit-and-miss for me. This is much better than The Damned, but probably not as good as The Leopard.

Giannini como aristocrata depois de toda aquela Wertmuller? Difícil, mas é passável.

A self centered mean aristocrat ruins just about everyone's life.

Quintessential Visconti. Which is to say, beautiful costumes and set design, with a bunch of overblown boring melodrama about old aristocrats. Here these elements are taken to the degree of near self-parody.

Very enjoyable melodrama. For me, this is definitely better than THE LEOPARD (1963) and probably better than DEATH IN VENICE (1971).