The Innocent
(L’innocente)

Screening on Film

Directed by Luchino Visconti.
With Giancarlo Giannini, Laura Antonelli, Jennifer O’Neill.
Italy/France, 1976, 35mm, color, 129 min.
Italian with English subtitles.

For an adaptation of the decadent author Gabriele D’Annunzio, L’innocente is directed with immense poise and restraint. With exquisite cinematography from Pasqualino De Santis, Visconti’s final film shows no diminishment in quality despite the director’s declining health. The ethics and power games of romantic entanglements take center stage in this society drama, building to a denouement that is nothing less than Visconti’s final, raging farewell to cinema.