Movies

Luchino Visconti's Sandra is a dark, opulent melodrama — a modern reimagining of the myth of Electra and Orestes, set in the ancient Tuscan city of Volterra. The story follows Sandra (played by Claudia Cardinale), a young Italian woman who returns to her family's villa with her American husband to attend a ceremony honouring her father, a Jewish scientist who was killed in a Nazi concentration camp. Upon her return, an intense, incestuous bond is rekindled with her brother Gianni, and they both share the belief that their mother and stepfather were responsible for their father’s death. The film is a modernist gothic work in which familial decay, decadent anxiety and historical trauma (Nazism and anti-Semitism) intertwine within the lavish yet crumbling setting of an aristocratic villa. Visconti uses stylised cinematography and heightened emotional conflict to depict Sandra’s inner disintegration as her tense relationships and her obsession with the past clash with her inability to face reality.

We are screening the film, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1965, in memory of the recently deceased Italian cinema icon, Claudia Cardinale.