The prolific, ever-provocative Joseph Losey, blacklisted from Hollywood and living in England, delivered a coolly modernist shock to the system of that nation's cinema with this mesmerizing dissection of class, sexuality, and power. A dissolute scion of the upper crust finds the seemingly perfect manservant to oversee his new London townhouse. But not all is as it seems, as traditional social hierarchies are gradually, disturbingly destabilized. Lustrously...

Based on the novella by Thomas Mann, this late masterpiece from Luchino Visconti is a meditation on the nature of art, the allure of beauty, and the inescapability of death. Setting Mann's story of queer desire and bodily decay against the music of Gustav Mahler, it is one of cinema2s most exalted literary adaptations.