Conversation Piece

the movie i always wanted to own - i saw it 18 years ago for the first time - and wowit's a very interesting theme - solitude, aging, death, family interaction - and there's a included doc about itit has a play feeling - the carathers are trapped in a building , 2 views of the same space , they are in conflict , extremes that attract and repel , connections and separationi added it to my library that has lots of antonioni an author that is obcessed w. the same themesa must see in my opinion

Excellent movie, I seen it before in a theatre. However, the Amazon disk has very BAD quality: sound is unclear and color are very artificial. I bought it as a gift and then watch it with my friends. It was embarrassing.

The DVD had a little damage.After one hour it started crakeling with low noise then it was OK.If was not for Burt I would have returned it.

Luchino Visconti's film, Conversation Piece, challenges the viewer to reconsider what ultimately is important in life. It is a well done, very moving film.

Nudity was not needed.

Not my favorite.

Could not play

Excellent

What an odd creation this film is, quite unlike anything I've seen. About an ageing aesthete of kind temperament, widowed but gay, who takes in some tenants on the floor above, vulgar jet-setters who sow chaos wherever they go - and finds himself drawn in by his attraction to the Helmut Berger character and possibly a bit to the daughter's boyfriend as well. Burt Lancaster accesses moments of disarming tenderness and everyone gives performances of more than one note - perhaps this ambiguity gives it more interest than the superficially similar Chinese Roulette of Fassbinder. It feels more balanced, more poised. Silvana Mangano gives a rip-roaring performance as a rather brash, vulgar matriarch with more money than sense, very pushy, with amazing eye makeup. The setting is very claustrophobic, full of sculptures and painting of Conversation Pieces, i.e. genre paintings of groups. These have a sensuality, as do the sculptures, that cannot really compete in the end with the lure of the real. Berger is poised between being irritating and mesmerising. It is a film to return to, certainly, with a marvellous sophistication in the way it adduces elements of political activism but held at arm's length, so that you are never quite sure about the truth of these positions or what any of it amounts to. It peels back layers but ends up gloriously inconclusive.

For being made by Visconti, this movie is relatively short (under 2 hours). And it is in english (instead of italian). Set in the 70's, Burt Lancaster (also seen in The Leopard) plays a professor who describes himself as slightly 'hysteric' and very sensitive to people, noices and 'formalities'. He lives in a large old house in Rome alone with a servant and surrounded by books, paintings and expensive objects of art. His tranquil existence is smashed to pieces as a super rich, eccentric and egocentric woman (Silvana Mangano) with her lover and her spoiled child (and a young man who I'm not clear if he's the lover of the daughter or the son of Silvana...? I have to watch again...) demands (for some reason) to rent the upper floor for their visits to Rome. The professor gives in, partly because he is offered a sought after painting as payment for the first months rent.Conversation Piece is very entertaining and fun, but it also has a dark existential streak dealing with why we need other persons. The professor is somehow trying to shut out the world and replace the messy social relations with more manageable things like paintings and books.The transfer of this DVD (Arrow films) is not excellent, but it's certainly good enough: I watched it on a projector and it was fine. I suspect and hope that Criterion, Bfi or MoC will release a version of Conversation Piece sometime in the future, and with extra material, which this DVD lack entirely (not even the year of release (1974) is stated). But, considering the ok transfer and the low price this DVD can easily be recommended.

"Conversation Piece" is one of my favourites among the very best of the world cinema.For me it's much better than usually higher regarded "Innocent" made at the end of Visconti's career.It is a very moody film about culture,it's decline,solitude,old age and cultural gap between different generations.The price of the DVD is realy acceptable,but except the movie itself and the scene access there is nothing more in it.Even the subtitles are absent.Recommended anyway.

Sumptuous production and brilliant acting. A classic film let down by some adult content.

A reminder if one was ever needed of what a craftsman Lancaster was and how a action man can distill stillness to a degree where inaction becomes.........ACTION.A film that reminds us what would happen to the people like he played in the "Leopard " in the 20th. Century.