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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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4.3 out of 5 stars (18 customer reviews)
28 of 28 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
She's not that innocent., April 26 2009
By Westley - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: L Innocente (DVD)
"L'Innocente" was the final film from Italian director, Luchino Visconti, and stands up to his greatest achievements. Laura Antonelli, one of the most alluring stars of 70s Italian cinema, stars as Giuliana Hermil, a beautiful aristocrat who is ignored by her philandering husband, Tullio (Giancarlo Giannini). Everywhere Giuliana goes, she is confronted by the most recent of her husband's conquests, the sensual Teresa Raffo (Jennifer O'Neill). After being embarrassed once too often, Giuliana decides to turn the tables and make her husband jealous. However, she underestimates the power of her plan as well as her husband's passion for her, which results in mounting tragedies.Adapted from the 1892 novel by Gabriele d'Annunzio, the script for "The Innocent" is extremely good, with Giuliana's revenge beautifully plotted. At times, it's difficult to tell her intentions, but that doesn't really distract from the story. The cast is also one of the most stunning looking in history - Antonelli, O'Neill, and Giannini are joined by doe-eyed Didier Haudepin as Giannini's younger brother (he starred 12 years earlier in the notorious French film, "This Special Friendship"). Their physical beauty rivals the sumptuous Italian villas and scenery with which Visconti populates the film.
I'm not sure why it took until 2009 for this near-masterpiece to be released on DVD, but fortunately they did a nice job. The film looks gorgeous. The subtitles are a bit verbose which makes them go by very quickly (I sometimes had to pause to read all of them), but we do get every delicious word of the screenplay. The extras are limited to an interview on Italian cinema with Suso Cecchi d'Amico, a long-time Visconti collaborator who co-wrote "L'Innocente."
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tragic, haunting, brilliant...., May 28 2009
By Grigory's Girl "Grigory's Girl" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: L Innocente (DVD)
This is the final film of Italy's grandest, most operatic filmmaker (and still underrated) Luchino Visconti. For years, this film was really hard to find. It was only available in lousy, faded VHS copies, some of them pan and scan, others in the wrong aspect ratio. Now Koch Lorber has put it out in a wonderful, luxurious transfer, and in its orignal 2.35:1 aspect ratio.This film is so rich visually that you could just watch it once without the sound, and marvel at the cinematography (by longtime Visconti colloberator Pasqualino de Santis) or at the production design, which is drop dead gorgeous. The music score is incredibly haunting and sad, much like Visconti's superlative use of music in his film of Death in Venice. The performances are also striking. Giancarlo Giannini, known to most film buffs from his hilarious performances in Lina Wertmueller's classic films, gives a fine dramatic performance here, completely believable, and there was no time while watching this film did I think of his comic performances. He's an excellent dramatic actor. Jennifer O'Neil, who is best known for Summer of '42, is excellent as the beautiful but vile mistress of Gianni. Laura Antonelli, who plays Giannini's wife, gives the deepest performance of the woman who is scorned by Giannini, but exacts a revenge on him that is heartbreaking and tragic.
The film is beautifully paced, very leisurely, and visually intoxicating. Visconti was incapacitated by a stroke while making this film, but you wouldn't know it from watching it. Even though he was ill, Luchino never lost his touch, and his artistry/genius shines through every frame here, from the opening credits sequence (which features Visconti's own hand turning pages of the book L'Innocente) to the final, haunting still shot of O'Neil. It's a great final film (even though an artist never intends any work to be their "final" one), and a masterpiece from arguably the most complex of the Italian greats.
18 of 24 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
An over-looked near classic, Jan 4 2000
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Innocent, the (VHS Tape)
Strangely, few people seem to have watched this movie, the last in Visconti's stellar career. True, it comes only in a poorly dubbed version and the video transfer leaves much to be desired--there's much screen stretching and nauseau-inducing panning and scanning. That said, the movie itself is quite good. There's not much to say about the plot, as it is skimpy and, on the surface, rather trite. What it's best for is the lavish period detail and for Visconti's patented dramatic touches--few will forget the protagonist's torment as he looks down upon his wife's illegitimate child, or the final shot, in which a horrified woman flees the scene of an unexpected suicide as dawn breaks. Laura Antonelli, evidently a former adult film star, is superb as the spurned wife who's indiscretion sets the story in motion, and she is almost matched by, of all people, Jennifer O'Neill, who proves here that her big screen career in hack pictures was a tragic misuse of talent. While not nearly as gripping as "The Damned", this is a fine film in its own right, one that deserves a revival--and a decent screen transfer.
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