Conversation Piece

Conversation Piece, originally Gruppo di famiglia in un interno, is a 1974 Franco-Italian drama that Luchino Visconti directed, co-wrote and produced. His second-to-last film, it was made in English and later dubbed into Italian for audiences at home. Burt Lancaster, Helmut Berger, Silvana Mangano and Romolo Valli lead the cast, while Claudia Cardinale and Dominique Sanda turn up in brief appearances. The film turns on the friction between an aging world and the new one displacing it, the nearness of death, existential disquiet and the growing sociopolitical rift separating generations. Visconti shot portions of it from a wheelchair and described the work as partly an allegory of the bourgeoisie's defencelessness against decadence and fascism. Its original title nods to the informal group portraits that flourished in Britain from the 1720s onward, and the picture took inspiration from Mario Praz's 1971 book Scene di conversazione. It received the David di Donatello award for Best Film.