Sandra (Vaghe stelle dell'orsa) Sandra (Cardinale) returns to the family estate in Volterra with new husband Andrew (Michael Craig) in tow, to participate in the dedication of a memorial garden to her Jewish father. Her cruelly sensual brother Gianni (Jean Sorel) exploits the occasion to unveil a manuscript for an autobiographical novel that alludes to disquieting family 'truths' that threaten to splinter Sandra's fragile sense of self.
Visconti's third on-screen collaboration with Claudia Cardinale garnered the top prize, the Leone d'Oro (Golden Lion), at the Venice Film Festival, despite predictable denunciations from Italian clerics (given the film's reworking of the Elektra complex), for what they perceived as the film's "ambiguous and weak characters and its morbidity".
Imported print
"The almost Gothic excesses of the story are grounded in the terrifying magnificence of Cardinale's performance (no actress suffers more elegantly)." UCLA Film & Television Archive
