7.1 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Tullio Hermil is a chauvinist aristocrat who flaunts his mistress to his wife, but when he believes she has been unfaithful he becomes enamored of her again.
Starring: Giancarlo Giannini, Laura Antonelli, Jennifer O'Neill, Rina Morelli, Massimo GirottiForeign | 100% |
Romance | 9% |
Drama | 2% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Italian: LPCM Mono (48kHz, 16-bit)
English
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
According to sometimes questionable online translation resources, Italians might refer to the phenomenon the French call a ménage à trois as a sesso a tres, and in that regard it’s perhaps salient if also slightly comical to realize that the French word ménage can be typically translated as “housework”, while the Italian sesso is a bit more overt, meaning “sex”. However you define it in whatever language you choose, there’s a threesome of sorts at the heart of Luchino Visconti’s last film, L’Innocente, and, while not taking up a bunch of actual screen time other than some recurrent allusions, there’s actually a fourth player in this tale of an unhappy marriage between a 19th century aristocrat named Tullio Hermil (Giancarlo Giannini) and his wife Giuliana (Laura Antonelli). Tullio is a product of his era, and is unabashedly chauvinistic, even priggish, and isn’t especially shy about hiding what turns out to be an affair with a countess named Teresa Raffo (Jennifer O’Neill, looking lovely but really badly dubbed into Italian). Visconti, an auteur whose very name hints at his own noble ancestry (he was indeed a Count), revisits some themes and aspects of his previous work here in The Innocent, with an incisive portrait of an indolent “ruling class” whose personal lives seem to be culled from some overwrought soap opera. Visconti also doesn’t shirk from a number of other issues, including a certain undeniable hypocrisy that accrues around affairs, especially when contrasting reactions to either a husband or a wife dallying, and he also mixes in a bit of religious subtext here when Giuliana, who does indeed stray from her marital vows, finds herself pregnant by her lover, and the supposedly atheistic Tullio urges her (a devout Catholic) to abort the baby.
L'Innocente is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Film Movement Classics, an imprint of Film Movement, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Once again, Film Movement's booklet contains only a generic "new digital restoration" descriptor without any other information. From a damage standpoint, this looks considerably better than a DVD release from what was called Koch Lorber back in the "olden" days, though even that wasn't that littered with age related wear and tear. Color temperature is also more consistent, though that said, there are still some variances at play. When things look warm, as in screenshot 4, colors, especially primaries, really reverberate quite strongly. There are sudden shifts to a cooler look, though, at times for just a moment in scenes that otherwise look at least relatively better. In these moments there can be a slightly bluish undertone to things as well as a slightly grittier and less well detailed appearance (see screenshot 8). The film's production design is amazing, and some of the fine detail on fabrics in both costumes and things like upholstery or even wallpaper resolve very well. My score is 4.25.
L'Innocente features an LPCM 2.0 Mono track in the original Italian (with optional English subtitles). While there's not a whale of a lot to complain about with regard to the actual track, other than a slightly narrow, thin quality to some of the dialogue, this film is perhaps hampered more than even other Italian films due to the longstanding Italian tradition of post looping everything. It's of course most noticeable with O'Neill, who was more than obviously speaking English during her takes, and who is dubbed just ridiculously badly hear, not just in terms of a voice that doesn't seem to suit her (which admittedly may be biased based on what her real voice sounds like), but also in terms of just almost comically bad sync issues, sometimes where either the dialogue will continue after her lip movements have stopped, or just as regularly, vice versa. Even the post looping of the actors presumably speaking Italian in the film seems haphazard at times. It's a shame, at least for those who, like frankly I do, tend to listen to films as much as watch them.
Like any "normal" nineteenth century male aristocrat, Tullio considers himself seemingly genetically consigned to being "in control", and part of L'Innocente's visceral impact is watching how quickly that illusion shatters once Tullio discovers there are several things he can't control, including the women in his life and his own emotions. This is another Visconti effort that is at least somewhat like The Leopard not just in its depiction of a historical milieu, but in the perhaps misleading distance that seems to exist between characters' facades and their inner worlds. Technical merits are generally solid, and L'Innocente comes Highly recommended.
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