Film-Philosophy 14.

2 2010

Review: Alexander García Düttmann (2009)

Visconti: Insights into Flesh and Blood. Stanford:
Stanford University Press. 152 pp.

J. Douglas Macready
University of Dallas

For Alexander García Düttmann the films of Luchino Visconti are what
Theodor W. Adorno described as apparitions - ‘heavenly vision[s]… that rise
[…] above human beings and [are] carried beyond their intentions and the
world of things’ (Adorno, 2004, p. 107). From his first viewing of Il
gattopardo in the 1970s until his lecture in 2004 titled ‘That Crazy Visconti,’
Düttmann has been mesmerized by the eccentric Italian director. Taking an
obvious lead from Henry Bacon’s Visconti: Explorations of Beauty and
Decay (1998) which argued that Visconti’s use of melodramatic realism
‘evoked reality in its flesh and blood,’ Düttmann has produced a penetrating
study of Visconti that is both philosophically sophisticated and aesthetically
engaging. In Visconti: Insights into Flesh and Blood Düttmann brings a
distinctive philosophical rigor and aesthetic precision together with a passion
for cinema into an engaging encounter between the thought of Adorno and
the films of Visconti.
In the first, longest and perhaps most important chapter of the book,
Düttmann lays the foundations for a unique dialogue between philosophy
and film. He begins the chapter with an enigmatic statement extracted from
Adorno's introduction to Negative Dialectics which he argues is the central
thought expressed in the films of Visconti. The statement is translated as
‘The place of utopia is blocked off by possibility, never by immediate reality’
(1). The rest of the book is a sustained analysis of this statement as a means

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of understanding Visconti's films as migrations of things into images whose

meanings are brought to life as insights into flesh and blood (46). Taking his
lead from Adorno (who takes his from Kierkegaard) Düttmann reexamines
artistic intentionality as aesthetic seriousness in which the artist is committed
to an intentional creative act that makes things in ignorance of what they are.
Making of things in ignorance of what they are, pushes the work of art to its
ultimate boundary where intentionality is broken off and the work of art
becomes ‘meaningless sign,’ a ‘countersignature,’ that bears within it a
promise and calls for recognition (15). These ‘meaningless signs’ become
visions, or apparitions, in Visconti’s films where seeing and the seen are
inseparably bound up in an intense and promising experience.
In the second chapter, Düttmann deepens his analysis of Visconti’s
films by appropriating Stanley Cavell’s notion of the ‘cinematic circle’ (1979,
xiv) which is constituted through the reciprocity of element (sign) and
significance (signified) and constitutes the artistic utopia that ‘acquires its
reality by encountering resistance’ (58). However, element and significance
are not conflated in the cinematic circle, nor is a Hegelian Aufhebung
between inside and outside achieved. Instead, the sign and the signified
‘brush up against each other to generate an insight into flesh and blood’
which constitutes the reality, not the possibility of art (61). In Visconti’s films
the tension between element and significance occurs in his use of space that
allows for what Siegfried Kracauer called the ‘the redemption of physical
reality’ in which the external sign manifests the signification and the internal
signification manifests the external sign (69). Visconti’s cinematic circle
closes the gap between the possibility of the element and the reality of
significance so that the place of artistic utopia, the insight into flesh in blood,
is no longer impeded. In this way both the films of Visconti and the
philosophical texts of Adorno can be regarded as thoughts transitioning into
flesh and blood, the actuality of insight.
In the third chapter Düttmann focuses his attention on the obstructive
side of possibility as the reality of utopia, by exploring the persistent theme
of failed attempts at change in Visconti’s films. Whether it is a failed

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revolution in Il gattopardo, or the failure to restrain passions in Ossessione,

or the failure to overcome social stratification in Il lavoro, Visconti calls into
question the distinction between possibility and reality. Visconti suspends
this distinction in his films by oscillating between emptiness and fullness
which remain in tension throughout his films where emptiness overcomes
whatever tries to fill it and fullness overcomes forces that try to empty it. In
this way element and significance, possibility and reality do not diverge but
rather form a chain of meanings that remain open. To make this suspension
in Visconti clearer, Düttmann suggests distinguishing between two types of
circling within the cinematic circle: (1) the circling of possibility that spirals
toward meanings in ascending and descending patterns blocking off utopia,
and (2) the circling of reality that does not presuppose meaning and in which
element and significance do not diverge and the real is displayed in the mode
of ‘as if’ (102). The second circle is the circle of aesthetic seriousness where
the work of art is made in ignorance and therefore constitutes and insight
into flesh in blood, the sole resource for authentic change and
transformation.
In the fourth and final chapter, Düttmann explores Visconti’s penchant
for the ‘immediately real’ in his films. Visconti was well known for using real
Cartier jewelry, authentic French perfume and wine in his films. But as
Düttmann points out, Visconti’s obsession with the authentic and real had a
dramaturgical function. He knew that reality must impose itself on an
audience in order to convey a sense of the real and there was no other way to
accomplish this except through objects that remained unseen. Visconti filled
handbags and cupboards on his sets with real objects instead of leaving them
empty. As Düttmann notes, a spectator cannot help but be aware of the
objects imposing themselves on him or her and stimulating an emotive seeing
that leads to absorption in the film. Each object in Visconti’s stage
production becomes a sign of immediate reality. Through this appearance of
immediate reality Visconti’s films become what Adorno called apparitions in
which the nonexistent appears ‘as if’ it existed. The apparition has a
transformative effect on the spectator that calls for re-cognition, an

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affirmation that change has occurred, not as a possibility or an actuality, but

rather a unity of the two, a can-is. Düttmann, borrowing a term from
Derrida, refers to this recognition as a countersignature which confirms that
the work of art is an immediate reality. Düttmann concludes with a reference
to Visconti’s own countersignature in his final film, L’innocente which opens
with a visible hand, possibly Visconti’s, turning the pages of the book on
which the film is based. The hand of Visconti is a visible sign of an invisible
signified, a meaningless sign that is significant in its insignificance. Visconti’s
hand, or rather Visconti himself becomes an insight into flesh and blood in
his final film.
The fourth chapter is followed by an ‘envoi’ which typically concludes
a poem instead of a book on film and philosophy. Düttmann offers a single
paragraph vignette from the life of Visconti that describes his ‘daily routine’
that may serve as insights into the flesh and blood of Visconti. This is
followed by an ‘Afterword’ that traces Düttmann’s fascination with Visconti
from his first screening of Il gattopardo on Spanish television in the 1970s to
his Berlin lecture in 2004 titled ‘That Crazy Visconti.’ He ends with a
reflection on a painting by Sarah Schumann that serves as the cover art for
the book and depicts Visconti sitting on a couch with Maria Callas. A
countersigning hand lies in Visconti’s lap and contemplative expression on
his face indicates that he is completely absorbed in the face of Callas.
Visconti: Insights in to Flesh and Blood can be read as a philosophical
meditation on the films of Visconti that moves the reader from the page to
the screen. It is a short work of dense philosophical prose that requires a
patient and thoughtful reading. While a familiarity with Visconti’s films is
useful but not necessary, a lack of familiarity with the philosophical thought
of Adorno or Derrida will leave the reader grappling for clarification. Much
of Düttmann’s difficult concepts and terms can be clarified with reference to
his previous work on Adorno, Heidegger and Derrida in Between Cultures:
Tensions in the Struggle for Recognition (2000), The Gift of Language:
Memory and Promise in Adorno, Benjamin, Heidegger and Rosenweig
(2000), or The Memory of Thought: An Essay on Heidegger and Adorno

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(2003). However, Düttmann’s frequent use of examples from Visconti’s films

to illustrate his philosophical claims is a welcome counterbalance to this his
often impenetrable prose. Indeed, Düttmann’s intense appreciation for
Visconti along with the care he takes to flesh out Visconti’s characters in
existential detail is sufficient to awaken an appetite for Visconti’s films. A
short, but helpful filmography of Visconti’s Italian films and their English
releases is included at the end of the book to satisfy this appetite.
Overall the book offers a significant contribution to the study of the
cinema of Luchino Visconti and pushes the discussion of his films in a new
direction that appreciates the director’s attention to detail as philosophically
significant instead of simply a penchant for decadence. The book also avoids
the biographical preoccupations with Visconti’s aristocratic upbringing, his
Marxism and his sexuality. Düttmann has instead offered readers an insight
into the flesh and blood of Visconti.

Bibliography

Adorno, Theodor W. (2004) Aesthetic Theory. Translated by Robert Hullot-

Kentor. London: Continuum.

Bacon, Henry (1998) Visconti: Explorations of Beauty & Decay. New York:
Cambridge University Press.

Cavell, Stanley (1979) The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of

Film. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Düttmann,Alexander García (2009) Visconti: Insights into Flesh and Blood.

Translated by Robert Savage. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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