Death in Venice (film)

Death in Venice (in Italian Morte a Venezia) is a 1971 film directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Dirk Bogarde and Björn Andrésen. The film is based on the novella Death in Venice by Thomas Mann.

Outline of the film

The protagonist, Gustav von Aschenbach, travels to Venice for health reasons. There, he becomes obsessed with the stunning beauty of an adolescent Polish boy named Tadzio who is staying with his family at the same hotel on the Lido as Aschenbach.

While the character Aschenbach in the novella is an author, Visconti changed his profession to that of a composer. "Playing the role" of Aschenbach's music in the film is the music of Gustav Mahler, in particular the Adagietto from his Fifth Symphony, which both opens and closes the film, and sections from his Third Symphony. Mahler could be seen as an appropriate composer to use because of his concern with death, which he transposed to his music. Apart from this change, the film is relatively faithful to the book, but with added scenes where Aschenbach and a musician friend debate the degraded aesthetics of his music - again, this has direct parallels in the life and works of Mahler, especially when Aschenbach is played an extract of his own work which, in reality, is an extract form the final movement from Mahler's Fourth Symphony.

While Aschenbach attempts to find peace and quiet, the rest of the city is being gripped by a cholera epidemic, and the city authorities do not inform the holiday-makers of the problem for fear that they will all leave: "Oh, it is merely the Sirocco", offers one bank clerk as an explanation. As Aschenbach and the other guests make day-trips out into the city centre it eventually dawns on them that something is seriously wrong. Aschenbach decides to leave, but in a moment of impulse decides to stay. However, he himself is dying. Rejuvenated by the presence of Tadzio - though they never actually converse - he visits the barbers who, in his words, "returns to you merely what has been lost", dying his grey hair black and whitening his face and reddening his lips to try and make him look younger. As he leaves the barber's shop the barber exclaims: "And now Sir is ready to fall in love with whomever he pleases". But the result replays the sickly "mutton dressed as lamb" old man Aschenbach had encountered on the boat approaching Venice at the beginning of the film. Aschenbach still continues to gaze at Tadzio from afar, the latter more aware that he is being gazed at. The climax comes with Aschenbach witnessing Tadzio being beaten up on the beach by an older boy, and at that very moment - heightened by the crescendo in Mahler's Adaggietto - he has a heart attack and dies. While Tadzio and the boy make up, they don't even notice Aschenbach dying, and they continue to walk along the beach while the other guests alert the hotel staff of what has happened. They then carry Aschenbach's body away.

Behind the scenes

In his autobiography, A Postillion Struck by Lightning, Bogarde recounts how the film crew created the deathly white skin which his character displays in the final scenes of the film, just as he dies. Bogarde recalls that the make-up department had tried various face paints and creams, none of which had been satisfactory, as they smeared. When a suitable cream was found and the scenes were being shot, Bogarde recalls that his face began to burn terribly. The tube of cream was found and written on the side was "Do not let this come into contact with the skin": the director had ignored this and had been testing it out, as small patches, on various members of the film crew, before finally having it applied to Bogarde's face.

In another volume of his memoirs, An Orderly Man, Dirk Bogarde relates that, after the finished film was screened for them by Visconti in Los Angeles, the Warner Bros. executives wanted to write off the project, fearing it would be banned in the United States for obscenity because of its subject matter. They eventually relented when a gala premiere of Death in Venice was organized in London, with Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Anne in attendance, to gather funds for the sinking city.

Critical reception

Film historian Lawrence J. Quirk wrote, in his study, The Great Romantic Films (1974), "Some shots of Björn Andrésen, the Tadzio of the film, could be extracted from the frame and hung on the walls of the Louvre or the Vatican in Rome. For this is not a pretty youngster who is supposed to represent an object of perverted lust; that was neither novelist Mann's nor director-screen writer Visconti's intention. Rather, this is a symbol of a beauty allied to those which inspired Michelangelo's David and Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, and which moved Dante to seek ultimate aesthetic catharsis in the distant figure of Beatrice."

Production credits

• Director: Luchino Visconti
• Cinematographer: Pasqualino De Santis
• Screenplay: Robert Gordon Edwards
• Art Director: Ferdinando Scarfiotti
• Costume Designer: Piero Tosi
• Production Designer: Ferdinando Scarfiotti
• Sound Track: Vittorio Trentino, Giuseppe Muratori
• Producer (associate executive producer): Mario Gallo
• Producer (executive producer), Luchino Visconti

Full cast list

• Dirk Bogarde (Gustav von Aschenbach)
• Mark Burns (Alfred)
• Marisa Berenson (Frau von Aschenbach)
• Björn Andrésen (Tadzio)
• Silvana Mangano (Tadzio's mother)
• Romolo Valli (Hotel manager)
• Nora Ricci (Governess)
• Franco Fabrizi (Barber)
• Sergio Garfagnoli (Jaschu, Polish youth)
• Luigi Battaglia (Scapegrace)
• Masha Predit (Russian tourist)
• Marcello Bonini Olas (Nobleman at hotel party)
• Nicoletta Elmi (Little girl at table)
• Marco Tulli (Man who faints at station)
• Leslie French (Travel Agent)
• Antonio Appicella (Vagrant)
• Ciro Cristofoletti (Hotel clerk)
• Dominique Darel (English tourist)
• Eva Axén (Tadzio's oldest sister)
• Bruno Boschetti (Train station employee)
• Mirella Pamphili (Hotel guest)

Awards

• 1972 BAFTA Awards

Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Sound Track

• 1972, Nastro d'Argento

Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design.

Award nominations

• 1972 Academy Award

Best Costume Design

• 1972 BAFTA Awards

Best Actor, Best Direction, Best Film

• 1971 Cannes Film Festival

Golden Palm (Best Film)

See also

• List of books portraying paedophilia or sexual abuse of minors
• List of films portraying paedophilia or sexual abuse of minors

References

• Henry Bacon, Visconti: Explorations of beauty and decay. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
• Dirk Bogarde, Postillion Struck by Lightning, London, Orion Books, (New edition) 2006.
• Lawrence J. Quirk, The Great Romantic Films, New York, Citadel Press, 1983.