"Crazy Love—A Double Bill Not for the Faint of Heart: On the face, Senso’s operatic melodrama and the pornographic explicitness of In the Realm of the Senses make for an odd coupling, but both serve up powerfully extreme and provocative portrayals of love run amok. Exquisitely photographed and scored, both are tales of unbridled passion and lust told against backdrops of political and social turmoil. Both end with women gone mad, consumed by obsessive love that destroys their men, who both die at their lovers’ hands. Luchino Visconti and Nagisa Oshima are filmmakers of deeply different sensibilities and concerns, of course, and the meaning and import of their stories are utterly divergent. Senso is an opulent, chilling tragedy of individuals bound in their lives and times. In the Realm of the Senses is transcendental; in death, love is forever."

"For me this is Anna Magnani’s best performance. She’s unbelievable in it. Just seeing this woman put herself in this situation and work the way she has to work—though we never doubt why—creates an unbelievable amount of empathy. There’s empathy in that world, and also poetry. That long shot where she’s walking on the outskirts of Rome and there are those lights behind her and she’s owning the fact that she does what she does—it’s not portraying her as this pathetic, sad woman who is forced to do this because life is so hard. It’s still celebrating her life. She’s not living in her own tragedy. There’s a connection that Pasolini always had to his characters that was inspiring, and he was never going to judge people with a normal ideological or moral compass."