Main Cast: Laura Antonelli, Giancarlo Giannini, Jennifer O'Neill, Marc Porel, Massimo Girotti
Release Year: 1976
Country: IT/FR
Run Time: 125 minutes
Plot
Based on a novel by Gabriele d'Annunzio, The Innocent (L'Innocente) is set amongst the aristocracy of 19th-century Italy. Wealthy Tullio (Giancarlo Giannini) thinks nothing of squiring his mistress (Jennifer O'Neill) in full view of his friends and the public. But when Giannini's cast-off wife (Laura Antonelli) begins an affair with a young novelist (based, it is said, on author d'Annunzio), it is too much for the philandering aristocrat. Outside of Erich von Stroheim, few directors were as masterful at combining lavishness with depravity as Luchino Visconti. The Innocent turned out to be Visconti's last film; he died in 1976, shortly before the picture's premiere. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Luchino Visconti's last film is haunting and sad, the final work from a major filmmaker who saw a way of life vanishing with his passing. Set in Italy in the early 1900s, The Innocent tells the story of Tullio Hermil (Giancarlo Giannini), a domineering, sexually rapacious patriarch who is married to Giuliana (Laura Antonelli), whom he mistreats on a daily basis. His mistress Teresa Raffo (Jennifer O'Neill) manipulates Tullio to her own ends, in a tragic tale of a dying aristocracy. When Tullio's wife, in desperation, turns to the arms of another for love and solace, she becomes pregnant, and Tullio is devastated. Now, he is a cuckold in the eyes of the world, when in fact, his own sexual jealousy and misogyny have brought about this sad state of affairs. Visconti's merciless mise-en-scène dissects his characters as if they were insects under a microscope; as he grew older as a director, Visconti's seemingly natural antipathy to human weakness became almost his signature style. The film is operatic, grand, and yet deeply intimate and personal, making it simultaneously one of Visconti's most accomplished and most disheartening films. ~ Wheeler Winston Dixon, All Movie Guide
Rina Morelli - Mother; Siria Betti; Marie Dubois - The Princess; Margherita Horowitz; Claude Mann - The Prince; Roberta Paladini - Miss Elviretta; Vittorio Zarfati; Didier Haudepin - Federico Hermil; Philippe Hersent; Marina Pierro; Alessandra Vazzoler
