Born Nov. 2, 1906, in Milan. Italian theater and film director. Screenwriter. Born into an aristocratic family.

Visconti began to work in films in 1936. Rejoined a group of antifascist young film critics and wrote for film periodicals of an antifascist tendency (Bianco i nero and others). Visconti’s first work as a director was the film Ossessione (1942), based on motifs from the novel The Postman Always Rings Twice by the American writer J. Cain. During World War II, Visconti took part in the resistance movement.

Visconti was one of the founders of neorealism. His most significant films are La Terra trema (1948), Bellissima (1951), Senso (1954), Rocco and His Brothers (1960), The Leopard (1962, based on the novel by G. T. di Lampedusa), and The Damned (1970).

Since 1945, Visconti has also worked as a theater director. He has staged productions of A. Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1950) and View from the Bridge (1958) and Chekhov’s Three Sisters (1952) and Uncle Vanya (1956), in addition to Verdi’s operas La Traviata and Il Trovatore. Several of Visconti’s motion pictures have received prizes at international film festivals. Visconti’s creative work is marked by a progressive tendency, a sociohistorical approach to his material, a profound inner link with the traditions of Italian and world literature, and the importance of the subject matter.