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Conversation Piece (1974) More at IMDbPro »Gruppo di famiglia in un interno (original title)

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5 items from 2012

10 April 2012 1:17 PM, PDT | GreenCine | See recent GreenCine news »

Reviewer: Jeffrey M Anderson

Ratings (out of five): ****

In 1974, Luchino Visconti was nearly seventy and had worked as a filmmaker for thirty years. He was in ill health and his most glorious films were behind him. When it came time to make Conversation Piece, which would become his second-to-last film, he needed something fairly simple to shoot, like something that took place in one building.

Having hit upon an idea, he called up some of his favorite actors, including Burt Lancaster, who had starred in Visconti's opulent masterpiece The Leopard (1963). The presence of Lancaster in a much smaller-scale Visconti production can only draw unfavorable comparisons. And, no, Conversation Piece is not nearly as impressive, ambitious, or powerful as The Leopard. But that doesn't make it a bad film. »

- weezy

10 April 2012 7:00 AM, PDT | FilmSchoolRejects.com | See recent FilmSchoolRejects news »

Welcome back to This Week In DVD! This is actually the third anniversary of my stewardship of the column, and I want to thank all of you for stopping by each and every Tuesday to check out the week’s best and worst DVD releases. I’ve discovered countless fantastic films over the last three years, and I hope some of you can claim the same. Or even just one of you. This week’s releases include an utterly terrible biopic (with great makeup!) of Margaret Thatcher, Werner Herzog’s best documentary from 2011, a bland alien invasion flick set in Moscow, a powerful boys-in-prison drama from Norway and more! As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. Conversation Piece Burt Lancaster plays a retired American living in Rome whose quiet life is interrupted by a quartet of rude and rambunctious neighbors. They talk their way into renting his upstairs apartment »

- Rob Hunter

8 April 2012 8:20 PM, PDT | Twitch | See recent Twitch news »

Luchino Visconti's penultimate film, Conversation Piece, is an action packed condensation of his career in a mere two hours. The film follows a wealthy American ex-pat played by Visconti favorite Burt Lancaster (The Leopard), as his life is time and again interrupted by a family who insinuate themselves into his life. The continuing shenanigans of this set of upper crust vulgarians turn The Professor's quiet existence into a constant undulating barrage of intrigue, mystery, and wake him up from his own insulated life.There is an interesting comparison to be drawn between Visconti's masterpiece, The Leopard, and this later work. In The Leopard, Lancaster plays an Italian nobleman who is attempting to shield his family from an increasingly hostile political situation by sheltering them in his »

4 April 2012 11:05 AM, PDT | The Playlist | See recent The Playlist news »

While the future of home entertainment may be rapidly moving towards a digital streaming-led future, we can't be the only movie nerds who still love owning a physical copy of something. Sure, BluRay and DVD might be scratchable, easily lost and adorned by terrible box art, but there's something about the feeling of finding an undiscovered gem in the depths of a store, or getting a rarity in the post, that doesn't quite compare to clicking and watching something on Netflix. 

As such, starting with this column, every month we're going to pick out five BluRays or DVDs new to the market that no self-respecting cinephile's shelves could do without. Some are shiny new versions of stone-cold classics, some are obscurities, some might even be brand new releases (although less often: those are covered pretty well elsewhere). Read on for more.

"Chinatown" (1974)

Why You Should Care: Simply put, it's one »

- Drew Taylor

23 March 2012 3:13 PM, PDT | Disc Dish | See recent Disc Dish news »

Blu-ray Release Date: April 10, 2011

Price: Blu-ray $29.98

Studio: Raro Video

Burt Lancaster stars in Luchino Visconti's 1974 drama Conversation Piece.

Italian DVD label Raro Video releases the 1974 drama Conversation Piece, Luchino Visconti’s (Senso) penultimate film, one month after issuing the film on DVD in early March, 2012.

Entitled Gruppo di famiglia in un interno in its native Italian, the movie 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 marchesa Silvana Mangano, Dune) and her companions – her lover (Helmut Berger, The Romantic Englishwoman), her daughter (Claudia Marsani, The Hired Gun), and jer daughter’s boyfriend (Stefano Patrizi, Lion of the Desert) – he is forced to rent them an apartment on the upper floor of his home. Before long, the introverted professor’s routine is turned upside down and »

- Laurence

5 items from 2012