Visconti

Through an analysis of the works of Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti, Garcia Duttmann explores the insight that it is never the real but always the possible that blocks the path to change. Something needs to be changed—be it through the revolutionary overthrow of social conditions, the liberating force of passion, the contemplation and creation of works of art, or the exploration of an unresolved past. Luchino Visconti's films are models for the failure of such attempts. They show that this failure arises whenever people cling to possibilities that stand opposed to the reality of their lives. Does Adorno not write: "The place of utopia is blocked off by possibility, never by immediate reality"? Visconti: Insights into Flesh and Blood draws on aesthetics, film theory, and practical philosophy to propose an original interpretation of the melodramas of a great European director. In the encounter with Visconti's art, we come to see that something has changed already.