"The Innocent," despite a dated story, is a serious and masterfully made film, especially notable for its elegant mise en scène and visual sumptuousness….

Although it cannot be said to represent Visconti's final testament, the film does reflect a mastery of the medium acquired over the course of a long and distinguished career. (p. R18)

The film's initial sequence of credits reveals an old but sensitive hand (Visconti's own) carefully turning the pages of a first edition of Gabriele D'Annunzio's L'Innocente, the 1892 novel from which the movie was adapted. This apparent reverence for the text would seem to suggest a faithful rendering of the novel, but this is not the case. All that has been rendered are the bare bones.

D'Annunzio's work is a rather tedious and highly introspective first-person narrative that, in its verbal indulgences and intellectual snobbishness, represents the Italian author at his worst. Visconti's...