Luchino Visconti often dealt with the disintegration of family in his films; The Damed, The Leopard, Conversation Piece.. The stories were tragedies and only in Bellissima (1951) the family sticked together in the end. Sandra (Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa...) is also a film about this, but specifically about an aristocratic family full of betrayal, decay and immorality.Incest is a leading theme in Sandra; we are given clues about it throughout the film, but not a definite proof. The affair of the siblings remains in the shadows and there's something odd in the relationships between the children and the parents. Visconti first approaches this controversial theme calmly, showing it as a small thing - we are not told much about it. But then he increases it to enormous dimensions.Luchino Visconti sets this story to a dying city around a aristocratic class that is dying out. Great tragedies, misfortunes and decay lead this class to extinction. Already in Senso Visconti achieved an aesthetic revolution, but he continues this in Sandra with a political and ethic revolution. Sandra is not the easiest film by Visconti and many people in the theater seemed to neglect it. In the beginning I found it a little unreachable and absurd but it grew up to be a beautiful allegorical description of the decay of an aristocratic family.

This movie is definitely the worst movie Luchino Visconti has ever made. All actors and especially Claudia Cardinale are ridiculous. The choice of black and white could be interesting ,but why to choose so much contrasted black and white photography ? Claudia Cardinale's face has never been so ugly lighted.Visconti's whose masterpieces like "Senso" are so marvelous was completely wrong with this pseudo freudian movie which is, nowadays, very old-fashioned.Even the musical score on the sound track is bad.It's really awful to hear the lines of dialog between Claudia Cardinale and Michael Craig covered by such loud and inappropriate piano concerto.

As they say, the characters in this movie are based on the Greek mythology, namely, the killed father (Agamemnon), his wife (Clytemnestra), her new husband (Aegisthus), the daughter, Sandra (Electra), the son, Gianni (Olestes) and ex-boyfriend of the daughter, Pietro (now he is a doctor but he comes form a tenant farmer family like in the original), and the Trojan War is replaced with the Second World War ... the story line is difficultly categorized into a direct adaptation like Mourning Becomes Electra (an O'Neill's play, made into a movie by Dudley Nichols 1947), however, it follows the traditions of the Greek tragedies : the past and the blood dominate and determine every destiny of the characters.Here, Andrew (the outsider) is an interesting character. Innocently, (without receiving an oracle!), he analyzes 'the curse' of the dead father rationally, objectively and very ordinarily in vain and opens Pandora's box with his 'good' foolhardiness. Besides, he judges Gianni according to 'his' ethics as a total stranger and raises his fist against his brother-in-law. And still he is never involved in the mythology and should walk away forever. Is he an incarnation of our prosaic civilization of today? The establishment that he is an American (who has a camera!) could be an irony in Visconti's own way?By the way, recently I watched Desperate Housewives, season 2, Episode 9, "That's Good, That's Bad", and suddenly I remembered the scene in which Gianni takes out the pills and threatens Sandra : George who took the pills menaces Bree ... (so I'm writing this comment now, but I know it's an exaggerated analogy, anyway....) Jean Sorel is heavenly beautiful. The scene in the water tower takes my breath away. César Franck's music suits the aestheticism of the director, too.If you are an amateur of Visconti's works, you might know this one doesn't end just as in the original script. Do you think Sandra flies across the ocean to join Andrew or she buries herself in her destined blood there eternally? Including Mourning Becomes Electra, it could be interesting to refer to also : 1. Les Enfants terribles / Jean-Pierre Melville (1950) 2. Höhenfeuer /Fredi M. Murer (1985) 3. Jeux d'artifices / Virginie Thévenet (1987) 4. La Banyera / Jesús Garay (1989 / fantastic!)

This movie made very little sense to me. First of all, the subtitles (I'm not a fluent Italian) were written in white text over a frequently white background. The actors were very good, especially Claudia Cardinale as Sandra. The storyline itself, however, was a bit odd.First of all, Sandra and Gianni had some strange preoccupation with being nearly naked. That didn't bother me, though. What bothered me was the fact that the storyline started at one point and never progressed. At the end of the movie, I knew little more than I did at the beginning. For example, what exactly happened with Sandra's parents and Giraldini and Pietro? Nothing was explained.However, the movie was strangely captivating. I wanted to get up screaming 'WHAT'S GOING ON???' (and at some point, I probably did) but I never fund myself trying to escape the room. I kept wanting to know what was going on... I never did.Although this comment may seem confusing, I would still recommend this movie. It's good for anyone who wants to know what Italian cinema is all about. Nearly all old Italian movies I've seen are the same.They don't end. They just stop. 'Sandra' follows this standard.