Italian Film Studies - Essay Example

Being accustomed to the life of privilege, the Prince realizes this will change as soon as Sicily becomes a part of the United Kingdom of Italy (Tomasi 43). He later realizes that some things have to change for his aristocratic life to remain the same. He finally accepts the emergence and rise of the middle class; which he initially objected to. His strong hate for the rising middle class is clear in his objection to the relationship between his nephew and Angelica Sedara. Angelica is the daughter of one of the wealthy bourgeois families of Sicily.

Later as the unification becomes a definite event, he changes his opinion regarding the relationship. He does this in contrary to the wishes of his daughter, Concetta; she is also in love with Tancredi. Don Fabrizio sees the marriage of the two as a way to restore wealth and status to his family. In addition to accepting this marriage, he also arranges the marriage of his daughter Concetta to the father of Angelica (Tomasi 68). Later in the movie, we see Fabrizio refusing to take a political seat as a Senator in the newly formed Italian government.

He sees himself as a man caught in the crossfire between the old and the new. The ball, the penultimate scene of the movie, depicts the lavishness of Sicilian society, and it introduces Angelica to the same. In the end, we see the lonely figure of the Prince strolling in the darkness. Luchino Visconti together with the Giuseppe Tomasi all related to the movie’s thematic illustration of the change in the Italian society. Both were born in Italian and Sicilian aristocrat families, and they identified with the changes that resulted from the unification of the Italian states (Landy 152).

The movie captures the ascension of the Italian middle class and the decent of the Italian aristocracy. Visconti aptly captures the uprooting of the Italian aristocracy due to the resurgence movement in the country. Luchino Visconti is famous for