Vaghe Stelle Dell'orsa (aka Sandra) (1965)

A young bride (Claudia Cardinale) and her new husband (Michael Craig) return to the decaying mansion that was her ancestral home. Unexpectedly she finds her brother (Jean Sorel) there and they begin to rekindle their unconsummated incestuous relationship under her naive husband's nose. Directed by Luchino Visconti, this take on the Greek tragedy of Electra is a dark and unsettling film. The mythological story of Electra and her brother and their revenge on their mother has long fascinated playwrights from Euripides and Sophocles to Eugene O'Neill and Jean Paul Sartre and even in operas by Strauss and Mozart. Here, Visconti uses the tale to examine the rot of a decadent and dying aristocracy. In this version, the mother's (Marie Bell) crime is denouncing her husband to the Nazis resulting in his death in a concentration camp. This was Cardinale's third film with Visconti (she would go on to do one more) and her best work under him (though I love her in THE LEOPARD). She displays the complexities of a woman both torn and repulsed by her desires. The only downside and it's a minor one, I could have done without the sour underscore which uses the compositions of Cesar Franck. With Renzo Ricci and Fred Williams (who's actually a German actor despite the name).