S and I both had the day off because a rehearsal was cancelled, so we watched the Visconti movie Senso about an Italian countess who falls in love with an Austrian officer and con artist. The film, which is set in Venice, during the Third War Italian Independence of 1866, is one I've seen before and have loved—the sumptuous Technicolor, the subtle sexuality and psychological detail. The apotheosis of the movie comes when the Austrian officer, named Franz Mahler, admits to the countess that he betrayed her for money—which he used to bribe a doctor in exchange for a medical exemption from fighting.
Mahler admits that he's a functionally a male prostitute that cons aristocratic women out of their money. To paraphrase, Mahler says to the Countess, what's the point in spending, giving money to a revolution that's already basically been decided? What's the point in participating in a history that is taking its own course? What's the point in dying for honor? For empire or country? Wasn't it worth spending it on me? for a few hours of love?
In response, the countess, Serpieri, as she's called in the film, devastated, betrayed, goes to the Austrian authorities in Verona and shows them her letters with Mahler—and the officer, her lover, is immediately arrested and executed by firing squad and the movie ends.
I don't want to live in the world that's coming into existence. Mahler admits as part of his confession to the Countess, the world of nations and Garibaldi and blind patriotism. And neither do you. We belong in the old aristocratic world. Of romance and honor, taste, pleasure, naturalness, truth (or at least the rituals of truth). It's going away.
Mahler is a coward, but he's honest. He doesn't really want to live to see the end of the world of his youth. The modern world that's coming to be, that's taking over everything like a blob, has no interest to him.
I guess I sympathized with this character even though he's basically disgusting—a user, a charlatan.