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Conversation Piece

Conversation Piece (1974)

June. 23,1977
|
7.4
| Drama Romance

A retired professor of American origin lives a solitary life in a luxurious palazzo in Rome. He is confronted by a vulgar Italian marchesa and her lover, her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend, and forced to rent to them an apartment on the upper floor of his palazzo. From this point on his quiet routine is turned into chaos by his tenants' machinations, and everybody's life takes an unexpected but inevitable turn.

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Evengyny
1977/06/23

Thanks for the memories!

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AniInterview
1977/06/24

Sorry, this movie sucks

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Deanna
1977/06/25

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

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Francene Odetta
1977/06/26

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

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lasttimeisaw
1977/06/27

Visconti's penultimate feature, CONVERSATION PIECE is made after he suffered from a stroke in 1972, and would pass away in 1976 at the age of 69. The context might make plain that why this chamber piece is entirely set inside an old but palatial palazzo in Rome, where lives the retired professor (Lancaster) who is a conversation pieces collector, and a pall of nostalgia has been waywardly infused through his twilight year rumination over senescence, facing the imminent death and contending with hedonistic younger generations.The professor's solitary life is interrupted when he reluctantly agrees to rent out the apartment to Marquis Bianca Brumonti (Mangano), a middle-aged nouveau riche, soon he will get wind of the fact that Bianca has rented the place for her 12-year-junior kept-man Konrad (Berger), her teenage daughter Lietta (Marsani, Miss Teenage Italy 1973) and her pallidly handsome boyfriend Stefano (Patrizi), the latter two are quintessential rich kids wrapped in cotton wool, impressionable and capricious respectively. His young neighbors have no qualm about encroaching on his territory and breaching his equilibrium of tranquility and detachment, but the most egregious one is Bianca, a wanton intruder who takes Professor's courtesy for granted, her laissez-faire approach towards Lietta, her strained relationship with Konrad, her condescending ordering around Professor's diligent maid Erminia (Cortese), Visconti patently wears his heart on his sleeve that Bianca is an outrageous entity under the aegis of wealth, and Silvana Mangano never disappoints, she can be unapologetically ferocious, which pierces through her ageless make-up and hammers home to the point we cannot help but wondering why and how the professor must countenance such a prima donna!A more plausible reason is the Adonis-like Konrad (although Berger's exquisite look has begun to shown a smidgen trace of waning at this point), who is radical, cynical and self-destructively antagonistic towards the status quo which he has no power to change, and the professor harbors an almost reflexive and one-sided feeling of tendresse to him, Visconti cautiously skirts around the gay undertow, and instead foregrounds professor's reminiscence of his youth (where two legendary actresses Dominique Sanda and Claudia Cardinale appear uncredited in brief flashback as the professor's mother and his wife) and characterizes Konrad as an ideal force of beyond-the- pale dissolution, whose ultimate vengeance is harrowing but futile, soon to be forgotten.Over a decade has passed since THE LEOPARD (1963), Burt Lancaster returns to a similar niche in this elegiac think-piece and stays in top form with opulent compassion where his restrained self- pity, behind-the-time humility and an underlying disillusionment conflict to retain the vestigial of nobility. The professor's study is ornately-decorated in baroque majesty, in sheer contrast with Bianca's modern taste, in Visconti's eyes, the world has not progressed into a better world, CONVERSATION PIECE bemoans a bygone era of blue-blooded etiquette, it speaks volume, but frisson however, never materializes.

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haasxaar
1977/06/28

When the end credits rolled up all I could think of was Visconti trying to recreate the emotion and beauty of the last shot of his best film "The Leopard". You see Lancaster, sad and disconsolate - yet this time it didn't make me feel all that bothered.Lancaster plays here a very similar role; a sophisticated, old-fashioned and ageing Professor. He lives in great luxury in an exquisite villa in Rome. Everything seems perfect and serene until he is coaxed into renting an apartment to a decadent family.They behave terribly. They destroy a noble and humble abode into something crass and awfully tasteless. Yet, that is no surprise; the family comprises a sexually promiscuous daughter and her boyfriend, and a older woman who panders to a toy-boy played by Berger. They swear, play loud music, have no apparent sense of decency or morality. There is obviously a clash of belief systems here. Lancaster, an intellectual, well-educated and dour old man is confronted by the amoral youth of the 60s and 70s.I would normally love films like this. The 60s and 70s are periods that fascinate me greatly. I love Visconti as well, but somehow I get the feeling he was drying up creatively as I viewed this. The script is so heavy-handed sometimes, just the constant cliché that Berger plays is so drawn out and predictable - the angry Communist who just hates life and society, then the older gentleman with good manners who cannot comprehend the change around him and really does not want to understand it and finally the airy, vacuous daughter who seems completely bereft of depth or emotional sincerity. It all seems a little rushed and lacking in subtlety and the very theatrical performances from the mother and the daughter do not help whatsoever.Visconti was nearing the end of his life when he made this film, and in a way it shows - in two ways. Firstly, it seems that his zest was depleted, the screenplay and whole film are lacking in coherence and a clear structure, and secondly it appears that he was now a filmmaker in a period, a society, a culture that he did not like or comprehend. The decadence, the flamboyance and the hedonism of that time seemed to be overwhelming him; and in a sense like the framework of this film, he saw everything crumbling around him. For this alone, I could say at least watch it for the pretty pictures and a brief insight into the mind of a director who just felt lost and confused - with this film, society and with life itself.

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Ben Parker
1977/06/29

(spoilers)I don't know why they changed Visconti's italian title for US/UK release - because the entire film only works in reference to that title. What the hell does "conversation piece" have to do with this movie? The "Family Group" title is a cue to the subtext - of the inter-relationships between these characters. That is where the story lies, not in the "plot," the events.SubtextIt only really works on the subtextual level - i noticed this when i saw it a second time. I did it by accident - i watched all but ten minutes one night, then decided to start again instead of trying to pick up the ending, and all of a sudden i noticed the subtle changes in the relationships between the characters, i noticed character motivations i hadn't noticed the first time.These five people are not a family: there is a biological mother and daughter, the daughter's fiance and the mother's casual sex partner - and Burt Lancaster, the retired professor whose apartment they insist on renting. Visconti is saying something about the family, the upper-class family in particualar - what it has become. And it is a modern de facto family - with Lancaster at its head contrasting this state of affairs with the old-world family. The film is about the great difference between young and old, like Death in Venice - and how much had changed in that generation gap - especially true back then - think about the difference between the 50's and the 70's! This is why Lancaster is such an important choice - he is an icon of classic Hollywood, of that golden age in the 40's and 50's, inserted in a modern world, yet totally isolated from it, as if he'd rather not know that the world has gone on outside his apartment since the 50's.So while the dialogue at times does not seem to ring true, it gains a deeper resonance the second time through, when you're more aware of character motivations and less concerned with "what will happen next."PerformanceI won't hear anyone say Visconti can't direct actors: some of the finest performances i've ever seen can be found in his debut film Ossessione. But i'll admit that several European actors sound like they've just done a crash course in speaking English before filming began, which understandably mars the film's genuineness. Second time through, i reevaluated: indeed the performances aren't as subtle as in Death in Venice or Ossessione. Burt Lancaster is magnificent, naturally - the problem is limited to the italian actors, and it seems to be a product of their struggling with speaking, or perhaps just mouthing the english words. Don't get me wrong - the performances are still disappointing, especially for a Visconti film, particularly the two women and the dark haired young man. But i can't help thinking that these actors gave much better performances on the set than the (or the American/Italian actors who have dubbed their voices, perhaps - the maid certainly can't speak english) dialogue track indicates.Watch Helmut Berger (Konrad Huebel), for instance, playing a number of emotional scenes. If you turn the sound down or try to ignore the sound of the speech - his performance is actually quite wonderful - on the set, when they filmed it, he gave a great performance - but by the time they recorded the sound, the actors were not able to recapture the emotion of the moment. So the poor quality of the voice acting, and the hammy performances from the women in particular are a shame, because the music and composition are gorgeous.To say it is a Visconti film is to say that it is exquisite to look at: beautifully composed, with rich tones.The real subject of the mournfulness that underlies Gruppo di famiglia seems to be that Visconti was nearing the end of his life. The aging professor who can't understand the younger generation and understands only his art and music, is a personal expression from Visconti. This aspect of the character takes on a particular relevance when you consider that Visconti died two years later. Lancaster lived thirty more years! Visconti still made another film after this, but this is a definite swan song, a goodbye message from him. The last scene from Lancaster is touching and brilliant. One of the best things Visconti has ever done.

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mifunesamurai
1977/06/30

Professor Lancaster leads a reclusive life in his art deco apartment, surrounded by classical paintings, books and memories. Along come new loud tenants who rent his upstairs apartment and force themselves onto the Professor who then questions his existence as a mixture of the old and new culture clash in intellectual wars and morals. Another interesting piece from Visconti's preoccupied topics of fallen aristocrats and the morality of life.

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