The Innocent

Luchino Visconti’s last film, based on Gabriel D’Annunzio’s decadent 1892 novel. Set in the final decade of the 19th century, The Innocent focuses not on big history, but complex psychological relationships formed within a love triangle (and later quadrangle). In the convention of melodrama, Visconti ruthlessly exposes the cruelty of a Roman aristocrat cheating on his wife while meticulously reconstructing the material details of aristocratic life at the end of the 19th century. Some critics thought Visconti was inspired by the prose of Marcel Proust. The Innocent, sometimes referred to as the director’s “obituary”, was his final work – Visconti died before the film’s release.

Robert Birkholc