Senso

Italian director Luchino Visconti dishes up his usual blend of elegance and decadence in Senso. The international cast includes French film star Alida Valli as a Italian countess married to a Venetian nobleman, and English leading man Farley Granger as an Austrian military officer. The two are swept up in the Austrian empire's evacuation of Italy in 1866. Valli and Granger fall in love, but Valli ultimately realizes that the officer is interested only in her wealth and prestige, whereupon she gives him over to a firing squad. Visconti had wanted Ingrid Bergman and Marlon Brando for his leads, but when Bergman's husband Roberto Rossellini would not permit her to appear in the film, Brando also bowed out. Originally running 166 minutes, Senso was released in a radically cut version in the US in 1968, titled Summer Hurricane; yet another recut version popped up in England as The Wanton Contessa.