He was one of the fathers of cinematic neorealism, but later moved towards luxurious, sweeping epics dealing with themes of beauty, decadence, death, and European history, especially the decay of the nobility and the bourgeoisie.

Critic Jonathan Jones wrote that “no one did as much to shape Italian cinema as Luchino Visconti.”[1] Born into a Milanese noble family with close ties to the artistic world, Visconti began his career in France as an assistant director to Jean Renoir.

His 1943 directorial debut, Ossessione, was condemned by the Fascist regime for its unvarnished depictions of working-class characters, but is today renowned as a pioneering work of Italian cinema, generally regarded as the first neorealist film.

Visconti’s best-known films include Senso (1954) and The Leopard[2] (1963), which are historical melodramas adapted from Italian literary classics, the gritty drama Rocco and His Brothers (1960), and his "German Trilogy" – The Damned (1969), Death in Venice (1971) and Ludwig (1973).

He was also an accomplished director of operas and stage plays, both in Italy and abroad, and held a close association with La Scala in his hometown of Milan.

[3] Visconti received several notable accolades, including both the Palme d'Or (for The Leopard) and the Golden Lion (for 1965’s Sandra), the latter out of five total nominations.

[7] After his parents separated in the early 1920s, his mother moved with her younger children, including him, to her own house in Milan, as well as to her summer residence, Villa Erba in Cernobbio on Lake Como.

The father, as chamberlain of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, also owned a villa in Rome that Luchino later inherited and lived in for decades.

[citation needed] Visconti found literature by reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time, later a lifelong film project that he never realized.

While he had, in his early years, been impressed by such aesthetic aspects of the solemn parades of the National Fascist Party as marching in columns in boots and uniform, he had now come to hate the Mussolini regime.

[10] After the German occupation of Rome in April 1944, Visconti was arrested and detained by the anti-partisan Pietro Koch and sentenced to execution by firing squad.

He began his film-making career as a set dresser on Jean Renoir's Partie de campagne (1936) through the intercession of their common friend Coco Chanel.

[11] After a short tour of the United States, where he visited Hollywood, he returned to Italy to be Renoir's assistant again, this time for Tosca (1941), a production that was interrupted and later completed by German director Karl Koch.

Thanks to his unique blend of aristocratic and upper-class origins, communist political convictions and brilliant social analysis, he created masterpieces of film history in The Leopard (1963), The Damned (1969), Death in Venice (1971) and Ludwig (1972).

The film opened to widespread critical acclaim, but also faced controversy from rating boards for its sexual content, including depictions of homosexuality, pedophilia, rape, and incest.

During the years 1946 to 1960, he directed many performances of the Rina Morelli-Paolo Stoppa Company with actor Vittorio Gassman as well as many celebrated productions of operas.

In the aftermath of World War II he became one of the founding fathers of the Italian neorealistic film movement that focused on challenging economic and conditions, and how it affected the psyche of the underclass.

[22] Visconti was hostile to the Protests of 1968 and didn't even try to follow the movement and adopt the airs of youth, like Alberto Moravia or Pier Paolo Pasolini did (although the latter was certainly not sympathetic towards the protestors).

Disgusted, he looked at the young people in their enthusiasm, outbursts of anger, parties and tumults, their abstract speeches, their juggling with Mao, Marx, and Che Guevara.

In addition to the Visconti family, the Italian President Giovanni Leone and the actors Burt Lancaster,[28] Claudia Cardinale, Laura Antonelli, Vittorio Gassman and Helmut Berger were present.