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Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
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Critic Consensus: No consensus yet.
All Critics (5) | Top Critics (3) | Fresh (5) | Rotten (0)
Visconti's approach is both classical and modern, etching tableaus of gone-to-seed opulence in high-contrast black and white while incorporating handheld camerawork, zooms and idiosyncratically framed shots.
A dessert cart for the cinema-minded.
With its hard edges and dark shadows, crashing zooms and feline rages, Visconti's tale is, in effect, a work of Gothic modernism, in which history replaces mythology and madness evokes the blocked-out light of therapy.
The power of the film comes not from its mystery but from its drama, from Cardinale's incredible screen presence and Visconti's vivid visual ideas.
The sexy Claudia Cardinale in the Electra role steals the film's acting honors.
"Sandra" promises greatness with the presence of luscious Claudia Cardinale and director Luchino Visconti, but this sluggish tale unfortunately fails to deliver. Cardinale plays a jet-set beauty who returns to the lavish family mansion with her new husband, only to find some dark secrets re-emerge during the reunion. There's not much more to say about the story, which should tell you something about its thin development -- mostly, the action is just a lot of indoor talking and implied tension. There's also a remarkably grating piano piece recurring in the score. And while I rarely complain about old films not being in color, this is one case where I will -- the black-and-white cinematography poorly serves the home's opulent decor.
Super Reviewer
With the party now over in Geneva, Sandra(Claudia Cardinale) is currently free to return to her home village in Italy with Andrew(Michael Craig), her American husband of a year, to put the family affairs in order. Frustratingly enough, they have to wait for her brother Gianni(Jean Sorel) to put in an apperance. Otherwise, he has been busy selling off the family heirlooms to support his lifestyle and writing of a book. On the other hand, he is happy to give Andrew a tour of the sights that includes an introduction to Dr. Pietro Formari(Fred Williams) who used to have a crush on Sandra while she stays behind to look through the family documents. "Sandra" is a beguilingly gothic tale consisting of all the necessary ingredients such as family, madness and sex. In introducing the movie, Gavin Smith remarked on the triangle at its heart while I would respectfully point out that the geometry is much more complex, with Sandra throwing off the orbits of the men around her with her ample charms. Politically, the movie is also about identity(Gianni and Sandra prominently wear Star of David's mostly to honor their father who died in Auschwitz) and how some of the characters have a problem adjusting to the new world order which is not necessarily due to provincialism as stated. This all happens in a country that is in ruins but what beautiful ruins.
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