ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the role and function of the library in Conversation Piece, its oscillation between private and public space and its cocoon-like properties. The discussion focuses on the work of Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space and Leau et les reves. Although the library is ostensibly a private space for the Professor in Conversation Piece, it also serves as the setting for many of the film's dialogue scenes. In De Giusti's essay on Visconti's last films, he argues that Conversation Piece 'tells of the paralyzing drama of someone who cannot distance himself from the world but neither can he communicate with it'. Visconti's last four films, Death in Venice (1971), Ludwig, Conversation Piece, and The Innocent, together constitute the director's long goodbye. Visconti alternates between wide shots and medium close-ups of characters, with a minimal amount of horizontal panning; it is almost as if camera movement is hindered by the clutter of the room.