[Vaghe Stelle dell'Ora] is a tragedy. Like Thebes, Volterra is a city dying, like human beings, of a mortal sickness; it is gradually crumbling away. Like Mycenae, it is perched high on a hill, surrounded by a cyclopean wall of stones, shaken by the winds of tragedy. Mycenae is very much to the point here, for it is not long after the return that the inevitable recognition scene takes place: Sandra … meets her brother Gianni … by the tomb of her father, and we realise suddenly that this is to be the story of Electra and Orestes, the House of Atreus….

[No] real catharsis is possible, and the drama is never truly resolved. Does the film then suffer from the lack of any decisive satisfying action? Has Visconti failed, as so many others have failed before him, in the attempt to create a modern tragedy? I think not. For...