However inferior it may be to La Terra Trema it can only strengthen Visconti's position as one of the major directors of the contemporary cinema.

Not usually seen as one of the cinema's great romantics, Visconti with "Senso" made a film that both celebrated and mocked the very idea of romantic love, and the film remains resolutely itself after all these years.

Senso is lush, broadly emotional and beautifully photographed.

Visconti claims that in Senso he wanted to show the “melodrama” (read: the opera) of life. If this was his intention, his film is a complete success.