Fascism behind the door

A reading of Conversation Piece, from Luchino Visconti

Abstract

50 years ago, in December of 1974, Conversation Piece was released. The penultimate movie from the Italian director Luchino Visconti, the “red count”, who put together in one character the antifascist militant and the disconcerting refined aristocrat. Apart from the interpretation exercise on the plot and characters of the movie, this article seeks to analyze the feature film in a contemporary perspective, since it’s a work that interacts with different historical periods, in particular when denouncing the fascist resurgence in 1970’s Italy, taking it into account as a reference to discuss the current revival of the far right. Therefore, despite the story having the black and red terrorism that shook Italy in the 70’s and 80’s as a background, the movie approaches themes that find echo in the current political scenario: the violence, the fear, the generational conflicts, the need for action and engagement, the balance between politics and ethics, and the lost commitments. Themes that traverse generations, and that are lived both privately and publicly by the characters in the movie. In this context, this essay does a reading that appropriates, to a large extent, quotes from Visconti himself – in particular the interview given to Maria Antonietta Macciocchi, an Italian writer and journalist who was in contact with Visconti during the antifascist struggle in the 1930-40’s, which was propagated in Brazil by the defunct newspaper Opinião in 1976.