The Innocent (L'Innocente)

CIFF is delighted to premiere the 4K restoration of Visconti's final masterpiece.

In the late 1890s, Tullio Hermil is a wealthy Roman aristocrat. He has a possessive aristocratic mistress, Teresa Raffo, and neglects his wife, Giuliana. His interest in his wife is rekindled when he sees Giuliana's happiness after she has begun a love affair with a novelist, Filippo d'Arborio.

Tullio (Giancarlo Giannini), is an atheistic, freethinking aristocrat. He demands the right to flaunt his mistress and live by his own rules. Yet, when his wife Giuliana (Laura Antonelli) asserts her own autonomy and has an affair, his fragile emotional control shatters.

The Innocent can be seen as a warning on male entitlement and deconstruction of the self-professed progressive men. Visconti — a Marxist and a queer director — analyses here the ideological roots of the Italian bourgeoisie, which he held responsible for the rise of fascism. Rather than taking the 1892 source material (written by proto-fascist Gabriele D'Annunzio) at face value, he actively critiques Tullio's "Superman" posturing, revealing it to be thinly veiled emotional abuse and chauvinism. "The Innocent is the story of the disintegration not only of a family, but also of a certain society and a certain Italy," Visconti declared.

Laura Antonelli is magnificent in the role of a woman trapped by marriage and its contradictions, by a passion that becomes little more than a fantasised memory.

This screening is supported by Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Dublino.