Viscontis Senso

Brucknerfest Linz 2026. Film classics at Moviemento. Luchino Visconti's first color film Senso from 1954 with Anton Bruckner's 7th Symphony as film music.

The tragedy Senso - Luchino Visconti's first color film from 1954 - is both a love story and a political thriller: the action takes place in Venice, which is occupied by Austrian troops shortly before the outbreak of the Third Italian War of Independence in 1866. Contessa Livia Serpieri feels trapped in her marriage of convenience with an older aristocrat and plunges headlong into an affair with the Austrian officer Franz Mahler. She soon falls completely in love with the gambling womanizer. She betrays her political ideals, her countrymen and her own family for him, while Franz only humiliates her. Eventually, love turns to anger ... with terrible results. As in Death in Venice, Visconti also used late Romantic symphonic music in Senso to dramatically intensify the film's action. Here it is Anton Bruckner's 7th Symphony - arranged by the famous Italian film music composer Nino Rota - that accompanies the emotional highs and lows of the two main characters.