Conversation Piece

Luchino Visconti's award-winning classic Conversation Piece examines the solitary life of a retired American professor (Burt Lancaster, Sweet Smell of Success) who lives alone in a luxurious palazzo in Rome. When he is confronted by a vulgar Italian noblewoman (Silvana Mangano, Dune) and her bisexual boytoy lover Konrad (Helmut Berger, The Godfather Part III) - he is forced to rent them an apartment on the upper floor of his home. Before long his quiet routine is turned upside down and the introverted professor slowly succumbs to Konrad's charms, a relationship of desire and domination. Visconti's penultimate film, touching on ideas of class, sex, fascism, and an unsettling confrontation with mortality, is the culmination of his career as a master of Italian cinema.