Re-Release of Visconti’s ‘Conversation Piece,’ With Burt Lancaster, Proves Worthy of Discussion

Over his 30-year career, the Italian director, Luchino Visconti, fashioned exquisite entertainments out of different cinematic and operatic molds, though as a movie maestro, he’s most often remembered for his period pictures — epics such as “Senso.” Two years before his death in 1976, the filmmaker made a curious contribution to the modern movie category known as the “bad neighbors” genre with “Conversation Piece,” which the Film Forum is reviving starting Friday.Set in a grand palazzo in 1970s Rome, the feature depicts how an aged professor becomes embroiled in the various rogueries of a wealthy family and their hangers-on. “Embroiled” is the key word here, or, to use a word derived from Italian, imbroglio. For as soon as the protagonist, referred to only as the “professor,” lets his derelict upstairs apartment to Marchesa Bianca Brumonti, he not only has to deal with a pushy and presumptuous renter, but gets involved in her duplicities and decadent retinue, which include her gigolo Konrad, her daughter Lietta, and her daughter’s boyfriend Stefano.Playing the professor, Hollywood legend Burt Lancaster brought his trademark tough-but-tender temperament to the role, and one of the film’s strengths lies in his portrayal of a lonely man besieged by regrets. Effective as it is as a snapshot of aging and mortality, the chamber piece also attempts to address changing social mores, youth culture, and political extremism, with Visconti trying to do something similar to what his peers were doing, such as Pasolini with “Teorema.”Like one of the professor’s frivolous 18th-century group portrait paintings, though, the film wallows in luxurious detailing and a genteel atmosphere despite a story involving prostitution, a tempestuous relationship, drugs, and backstabbing. It reveals little of the esteemed director’s dramatic vigor and perceptive sympathies for human passions, but much of his cultivation and old-fashioned elegance.Director Luchino Visconti on the set of ‘Conversation Piece,’ with star Burt Lancaster in the background. Via Kino LorberIndeed, the ornate sets, art direction, and clothing all betray a fussed-over attention that only occasionally extends to the screenplay and structure. Some critics have attributed the film’s etiolated tone to the director having suffered a stroke a couple of years earlier, thereby necessitating that all scenes take place in a controlled studio environment, with no exteriors or big sequences.The sets representing the two apartments are certainly splendid, with the professor’s study, where several key scenes take place, particularly impressive with its leather-bound books, elegant furnishings, sculptures, and paintings. The latter fill up the walls, evincing both the idea of horror vacui and the emptiness of the professor’s life beyond art and collecting.The professor’s preference for solitude is challenged, though, when he has an unexpected conversation with the marchesa’s lover, Konrad, about Mozart and painting. One could call it a seduction scene, with the younger man in a white tee and tight jeans, but the relationship that develops between the two never reaches a sexual phase. Even when Konrad sleeps in a secret room off the study after being beaten up by some thugs, or when the professor stumbles onto a mild threesome among him, Lietta, and Stefano, Mr. Visconti never fully commits to what his story is revolving around: that the sad professor is homosexual.While ridiculous, the ménage à trois scene gets even more absurd when the professor sits down as the three get dressed and they subsequently have a chat. Although the casual vibe seems at odds with the conservative man’s personality, the scene approaches a level of camp, and therefore a certain potency, when Lietta offers to marry him (”I’m not asking,” is his reply) and when he expresses the need for an “older child” to whom he can pass on his knowledge.Perhaps Mr. Visconti felt the same way and that’s why the script includes several literary, artistic, and historic references. But light instruction and a retiring protagonist hardly make for a dynamic picture.If Mr. Lancaster’s character feels too much like an onlooker, like a guest in his own home, at least the other roles justify his contemplation. As Konrad, German actor Helmut Berger perfectly balances guile and nonchalance, and with his golden hair, blue eyes, and shapely lips, it’s not difficult to see why everyone is attracted to him, including the director. And ingénue Claudia Marsani plays Lietta with an appealing youthful flippancy and wisdom.Yet it’s the great Italian actress Silvana Mangano who mesmerizes the most with her painted eyebrows, glaring hauteur, and lavish wardrobe as Bianca. When the professor confronts her about allowing her daughter to hang around with a hustler — implying, too, that Konrad fools around with the teen — the actress’s body language tellingly whips with angry denial and delusion. Helmut Berger and Silvana Mangano in ‘Conversation Piece.’ Via Kino LorberBesides the professor’s “big scene,” which occurs about three-quarters into the film, the only other scene to approach real drama occurs near the end, when the professor and the sordid “family” are in the study. The marchesa declares her intention to divorce her husband (who never appears) but not to marry Konrad.Soon the talk turns heated with mentions of class differences, capitalism, Marxism, and an attempted coup, hinting at Italy’s “Years of Lead.” But these issues stumble into the movie too late, shoehorned into its comfy Italian slipper style, to say nothing of a last-minute violent incident that fails to achieve the tragic heft aimed for by the director. Despite its flaws, “Conversation Piece” does provide interesting material to consider, not least of which is Mr. Lancaster’s dignified, hauntingly calibrated performance. It may not be “The Leopard,” Mr. Visconti’s 1963 masterpiece in which the actor also starred, yet it’s worthy of discussion all the same.

Re-Release of Visconti’s ‘Conversation Piece,’ With Burt Lancaster, Proves Worthy of Discussion

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