Word: viscontis
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...third annual New York Film Festival held at Lincoln Center two years ago, came close to becoming important event in the international film world. Like the festivals at Cannes or Venice, it provided a survey of the most recent masterpieces established directors, such as Godard, Kurosawa, Visconti, Ray, and Dreyer. In addition, the New York showing introduced much fresh talent. Three brilliant Eastern European directors, Jan Kadar and Milos Forman from Czechoslovakia and Jerzy Skolimowski from Poland, had their American debut at the Festival...
...most eagerly awaited film, Luchine Visconti's Sandra, arrived fresh from a victory at Venice. The audience's hopes were raised even higher during the beautiful opening sequence, where Visconti mounts his camera on the back of a speeding Ferrari and then zooms the lens into a nearby glade to capture a flock of wheeling birds...
...such overpowering imagination does not continue throughout the film. A modern adaptation of Electra, Sandra concerns the Italian wife of an American diplomat, who has committed incest with her brother. Visconti has strangely tacked a happy ending onto the tragedy, as Sandra overcomes her illicit feelings and returns to her husband. After the long emotional buildup, one feels robbed of the catharsis. Perhaps Visconti was attempting to pour new life into an old form by providing a different kind of shock at the resolution...
Claudia Cardinale as Sandra performs an exquisite tragic role until she turns from self-destruction to reform. Visconti then takes her off-camera quickly, and she reappears only briefly at the end of the film. The film has jumped its tracks and no actress would have been capable of staying aboard...
...guys, there are carabinieri and mafiosi. Instead of Hollywood moviemakers there are Italian moviemakers who scuttle about the landscape manufacturing folklore. Most of them produce ludicrously crude goat operas, but once in a while somebody really gets Sicily on acetate. Pietro Germi did it once (Divorce-Italian Style); Luchino Visconti did it twice (La Terra Trema, The Leopard); and now Alberto Lattuada serves up ten or a dozen small but gloriously garlicky slices of Sicilian village life...