70 years of the Beautiful
The premiere of Luchino Visconti's film "Bellissima (Beautiful)" took place on 28 December 1951 in Milan, at the "Manzoni" cinema.
The film "Bellissima (Beautiful)" became the third in the list of full-length feature films by Luchino Visconti. Moreover, his previous picture - "La terra trema (The Earth Trembles)" (1948) - failed at the box office, and this created the Visconti reputation as a "hopeless director" in the eyes of the heads of film companies. For three years, Visconti did not shoot anything, concentrating on work in the theater.
A friend and colleague of Visconti, Salvo D'Angelo, who was the producer of the film "La terra trema", decided to change the situation and return Visconti to the cinema. He offered Luchino a plot, which was shared with him by their mutual friend and colleague - Cesare Zavattini, a famous Italian writer and screenwriter. Cesare Zavattini, in turn, got the idea for the plot from a real story told to him by director Alessandro Blasetti. The story concerned a mother who, during the filming of the film "Prima comunione (The First Communion)" by any means tried to impose her young daughter on the director for the main role. This mother's main argument was that her daughter was "Bellissima".
The plot, proposed by D'Angelo, was extremely interested in Visconti. The fact is that he has long been eager to make a film with Anna Magnani. Firstly, he was impressed with her acting talent since the release of Roberto Rossellini's film "Roma città aperta (Rome, Open City)". And, secondly, there was a feeling of deep gratitude to this actress. During the Mussolinist regime in Italy, Luchino Visconti, a member of the Communist Party and a member of the Resistance, hid for some time from Nazi bloodhounds in Magnani's house. In addition, Visconti was convinced that Magnani, like no other actress, was suitable for the main role in the film according to the plot proposed to him.
Filming for "Bellissima (Beautiful)" lasted from June to October 1951. Upon the release of the picture on the screens of Italian cinemas, it did not gain much popularity with viewers. This is evidenced by the following figures. If the leader of the Italian film distribution in 1952, Julien Duvivier's film "The Little World of Don Camillo" grossed 1.5 billion lire, then the film "Bellissima (Beautiful)" earned only 160 million lire. Accordingly, there was no talk of any nomination for participation in prestigious international film festivals. Italian critics also reacted rather sluggishly to Visconti's film. But this is in Italy.
But in other countries, "Bellissima (Beautiful)" was received with much more enthusiasm. Especially in France, in Uruguay, in the USA. Some film critics have described the film as "the first honest self-portrait of cinema." But a special triumph fell, and, quite deservedly, to the lot of Anna Magnani.
In the 21st century, Italian film critics have already rethought their attitude to this Visconti film. For example, Gordiano Lupi, in his review of the film "Bellissima (Beautiful)" dated October 27, 2014, explains the negative assessments of the film by critics of the 50s by the fact that Luchino Visconti allegedly deviated from the principles of neorealism. According to Lupi, "A film that is not neorealism, but that is not even melodrama detached from reality, but a mix of the two, because in a realistic setting - photographed in glossy black and white - it tells an impossible story of broken dreams and lost illusions."
Many decades later, modern moviegoers all over the world have rated Luchino Visconti's "Bellissima (Beautiful)" movie much higher than the Italian moviegoers of the early 50s of the last century. 65% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated this film from 8 to 10. Taking into account this indicator and the above, the rating of Luchino Visconti's film "Bellissima (Beautiful)" according to FilmGourmand was 7.859, which allowed it to take 919th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
