Period drama directed by Luchino Visconti, starring Burt Lancaster and Helmut Berger. A professor living alone has filled his grand appartment in Rome with 18th-century paintings of family groups known as "conversation pieces". But when the Countess Brumonti lures the reclusive academic into accepting some tenants, he finds his privacy and self-composure increasingly disrupted by the sexually ambiguous presence of the countess's handsome young German lover.
Luchino Visconti, having suffered a major stroke that confined him to a wheelchair, concocted this story about an ageing, homosexual professor who lives surrounded by art and books. Cut off from the real world both physically and intellectually, he finds his ivory tower invaded when a countess and her jet-setting brood rent the apartment upstairs. All the usual Visconti themes - the collision of cultures, the clash between old and new, the imminence of death - are covered in his customary opulent fashion. The film reunited the director with Burt Lancaster, who starred in The Leopard.
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Professor | Burt Lancaster |
| Konrad Hubel | Helmut Berger |
| Lietta Brumonti | Claudia Marsani |
| Bianca Brumonti | Silvana Mangano |
| Stefano | Stefano Patrizi |
| Erminia | Elvira Cortese |
| Professor's wife | Claudia Cardinale |
| Professor's mother | Dominique Sanda |
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Director | Luchino Visconti |
