Such a sad and strange film. Both characters felt like anachronisms. One from the 19th century, one from the 21st. As always Dostoyevsky and Visconti prove prescient - but I never fully invested in these characters emotionally.
That said, I feel a need to revisit this film. I was expecting something very different from the narrative, and was not expecting its shifts from Neo-realism into something more proto-Lynch.
The performances and staging/production design are built on a dream logic that is different from Bergman's, as it bleeds so cleanly into waking life.
But I suppose real life can be like that too, when you're infatuated.