A beautifully-shot historical piece that takes a full operatic look at a doomed romance. Visually it's wonderful to look at, so it's something of a shame that so many of the main cast, including the leading man, weren't actually Italian and had to be dubbed. The poor lip synching on display does slightly detract, even if, like me, you're spending at least some of the runtime reading the subtitles and so not focusing on the mismatched mouths.
Despite all this, it emerges as a fine dramatic film with much drama and a compelling narrative. Included in the 1988 critical work "John Kobal Presents the Top 100 Movies" (as also discussed in the 1927 version of Napoleon, q.v.) it benefited from poor maths being used to work out the final ranking.
Compiling the poll results from 81 critics, a study of the scoring involved shows that many films were scored incorrectly when the book was compiled, with less than a quarter actually in the right order. Three films - Earth, The Far Country and A Matter of Life and Death - while fine pictures, shouldn't have actually appeared in the Top 100 at all. Senso's 63rd placing isn't actually too far off its actual joint 65th ranking, if the scores were to be added correctly, and it's a fine addition to a striking collection of films.
Despite all this, it emerges as a fine dramatic film with much drama and a compelling narrative. Included in the 1988 critical work "John Kobal Presents the Top 100 Movies" (as also discussed in the 1927 version of Napoleon, q.v.) it benefited from poor maths being used to work out the final ranking.
Compiling the poll results from 81 critics, a study of the scoring involved shows that many films were scored incorrectly when the book was compiled, with less than a quarter actually in the right order. Three films - Earth, The Far Country and A Matter of Life and Death - while fine pictures, shouldn't have actually appeared in the Top 100 at all. Senso's 63rd placing isn't actually too far off its actual joint 65th ranking, if the scores were to be added correctly, and it's a fine addition to a striking collection of films.