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Count Don Luchino Visconti Di Morone was born on 2nd November 1906 in Milan. He was born into an aristocratic family, one of the seven children of the Duke of Modrone and had a highly privileged upbringing. During his youth he mixed with luminaries such as conductor Toscanini, composer Puccini and the novelist Gabriele D'Annunzio. Not surprisingly, he had an early interest in music and theater. He was introduced to Jean Renoir with whom he worked briefly as assistant on Une Partie de campagne (1936) by Coco Chanel, which turned his attention towards cinema. During this period, Visconti, previously a Fascist, switched to Communism. The Italian Communist Party commissioned him to produce a series of three films about fishermen, miners, and peasantry in Sicily but only La Terra Trema (1948) was made. This film, along with Rocco and His Brothers (1960), both portraying the plight of the working classes, were routinely censored by Italy's post war right-wing establishment. In Rocco and His Brothers, Visconti creates a beautiful picture that also happens to be horrible at the same time of Milan in the 1960s, when the "immigration" from the South was at its peak, and the social problems in Northern Italy exploded. The differe