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| Lust or Love? |
Originally filmed by Luchino Visconti in 1954
Senso 45 has been remade as
Black Angel (2002) by the infamous director of European erotica Tinto Brass, best known for
Caligula (1979) a film he later disowned and a film I remember seeing in a sleazy cinema in the back streets of London’s Soho shortly after its minimal released! Brass remade
Senso 45 after reading Carmillo Boito’s novella and found himself unsatisfied with Visconti’s version.
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| The Hammersmith Palais was never like this. |
The film stars Anna Galiena (The Hairdressers Husband 1990) as Livia the wife of a high ranking Fascist official trapped in an unhappy marriage and Gabriel Garko the Italian former fashion model as a German SS Officer. In this version the story is set against a background of political treachery towards the very end of World War 2. The plot concerns the aristocratic Livia on her way back to Venice to indulge in a dangerous self destructive relationship with a SS Lieutenant Helmut Schultz with whom she is having an affair unknown to her husband.
Filmed in black and white as well as colour the art-deco sets are a joy to look at and with Ennio Morricone score enforces the decadence of the era. A movie more about vanity and lust than love which went on to win Italian cinema’s Silver Ribbon award for best costume design.
