We all, on some level, regret aging because we fear dying, but there’s something especially poignant about watching artists who celebrated vitality grapple with their mortality. It’s one thing to watch Bergman or Woody Allen settle into their later years, having seen them grapple with those subjects their entire careers. It’s quite another when an artist who once seemed to defy death’s grip can no longer avoid it.
Conversation Piece was Luchino Visconti’s penultimate film, released a little more than a year before his death. He was only 67, and had already suffered a stroke. Remarkable in its formal construction, you can nevertheless feel his regrets, his fears, his very life coming to the fore through his protagonist, a retired professor played by Burt Lancaster. So solitary is his existence that he isn’t even given a name. He’s content in his Italian apartment, taking...
Conversation Piece was Luchino Visconti’s penultimate film, released a little more than a year before his death. He was only 67, and had already suffered a stroke. Remarkable in its formal construction, you can nevertheless feel his regrets, his fears, his very life coming to the fore through his protagonist, a retired professor played by Burt Lancaster. So solitary is his existence that he isn’t even given a name. He’s content in his Italian apartment, taking...
- 7/30/2017
- by Scott Nye
- CriterionCast
While the future of home entertainment may be rapidly moving towards a digital streaming-led future, we can't be the only movie nerds who still love owning a physical copy of something. Sure, BluRay and DVD might be scratchable, easily lost and adorned by terrible box art, but there's something about the feeling of finding an undiscovered gem in the depths of a store, or getting a rarity in the post, that doesn't quite compare to clicking and watching something on Netflix.
As such, starting with this column, every month we're going to pick out five BluRays or DVDs new to the market that no self-respecting cinephile's shelves could do without. Some are shiny new versions of stone-cold classics, some are obscurities, some might even be brand new releases (although less often: those are covered pretty well elsewhere). Read on for more.
"Chinatown" (1974)
Why You Should Care: Simply put, it's one...
As such, starting with this column, every month we're going to pick out five BluRays or DVDs new to the market that no self-respecting cinephile's shelves could do without. Some are shiny new versions of stone-cold classics, some are obscurities, some might even be brand new releases (although less often: those are covered pretty well elsewhere). Read on for more.
"Chinatown" (1974)
Why You Should Care: Simply put, it's one...
- 4/4/2012
- by Drew Taylor
- The Playlist
Blu-ray Release Date: April 10, 2011
Price: Blu-ray $29.98
Studio: Raro Video
Burt Lancaster stars in Luchino Visconti's 1974 drama Conversation Piece.
Italian DVD label Raro Video releases the 1974 drama Conversation Piece, Luchino Visconti’s (Senso) penultimate film, one month after issuing the film on DVD in early March, 2012.
Entitled Gruppo di famiglia in un interno in its native Italian, the movie examines the solitary life of a retired American professor (Burt Lancaster, Sweet Smell of Success) who lives alone in a luxurious palazzo in Rome. When he is confronted by a vulgar Italian marchesa Silvana Mangano, Dune) and her companions – her lover (Helmut Berger, The Romantic Englishwoman), her daughter (Claudia Marsani, The Hired Gun), and jer daughter’s boyfriend (Stefano Patrizi, Lion of the Desert) – he is forced to rent them an apartment on the upper floor of his home. Before long, the introverted professor’s routine is turned upside down and...
Price: Blu-ray $29.98
Studio: Raro Video
Burt Lancaster stars in Luchino Visconti's 1974 drama Conversation Piece.
Italian DVD label Raro Video releases the 1974 drama Conversation Piece, Luchino Visconti’s (Senso) penultimate film, one month after issuing the film on DVD in early March, 2012.
Entitled Gruppo di famiglia in un interno in its native Italian, the movie examines the solitary life of a retired American professor (Burt Lancaster, Sweet Smell of Success) who lives alone in a luxurious palazzo in Rome. When he is confronted by a vulgar Italian marchesa Silvana Mangano, Dune) and her companions – her lover (Helmut Berger, The Romantic Englishwoman), her daughter (Claudia Marsani, The Hired Gun), and jer daughter’s boyfriend (Stefano Patrizi, Lion of the Desert) – he is forced to rent them an apartment on the upper floor of his home. Before long, the introverted professor’s routine is turned upside down and...
- 3/23/2012
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
• Marco Bellocchio hits out at withdrawal of producers
• 'New air of censorship' blamed for lack of cash
One of Italy's most successful and critically acclaimed film directors has hit out at a creeping climate of censorship in the country after he was refused funding for a dark satire about Silvio Berlusconi.
Marco Bellocchio, whose recent film Vincere has received rave reviews in the Us, said that he was abandoning his next project, Italia Mia (My Italy), after 10 potential backers had run scared.
Describing the film as a study of power in today's Italy, Bellocchio told the daily Corriere della Sera his protagonist would be a young girl caught up in "well-known circumstances that have ended up in all the newspapers", climaxing at a "huge party at a luxurious island villa, maybe in Sardinia or Sicily, where shocking things happen".
In a week in which Silvio Berlusconi – famous for throwing wild...
• 'New air of censorship' blamed for lack of cash
One of Italy's most successful and critically acclaimed film directors has hit out at a creeping climate of censorship in the country after he was refused funding for a dark satire about Silvio Berlusconi.
Marco Bellocchio, whose recent film Vincere has received rave reviews in the Us, said that he was abandoning his next project, Italia Mia (My Italy), after 10 potential backers had run scared.
Describing the film as a study of power in today's Italy, Bellocchio told the daily Corriere della Sera his protagonist would be a young girl caught up in "well-known circumstances that have ended up in all the newspapers", climaxing at a "huge party at a luxurious island villa, maybe in Sardinia or Sicily, where shocking things happen".
In a week in which Silvio Berlusconi – famous for throwing wild...
- 1/17/2011
- by Tom Kington
- The Guardian - Film News
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