Death In Venice

Luchino Visconti's striking adaptation of Thomas Mann's DEATH IN VENICE follows the sickly composer, Gustav von Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde). As the film begins, Aschenbach is arriving by steam boat in Venice from Munich. He is deeply distracted, nervous, uncomfortable, and conflicted. Nonetheless, he settles into a breathtaking seaside resort, where he fixates on Tadzio (Bjorn Andresen), an angelic blond Polish boy who is there with his family. While flashbacks to happy times spent with his wife and small daughter fill in some of the blanks of Aschenbach's personal past, others recall Aschenbach's harsh and competitive friend, Alfred (Mark Burns), who criticised Aschenbach's music for being overly perfected and thus lacking in beauty and passion. Through these flashbacks, it becomes evident that Aschenbach feels defeated in both his personal and his professional lives. The film uses very little dialogue, relying largely on the characters's facial expressions to communicate the tortured mentality of the protagonist, the curious vanity of young Tadzio, and the precocious airs of the bourgeois women who parade the Venetian beaches in taffeta, bonnets, and parasols. As Aschenbach's infatuation with Tadzio grows beyond his control, he learns that, "Venice is gripped by pestilence," and the city is being sequestered to prevent the spread of a cholera outbreak. With concentrated, languid pacing, a colour scheme consisting of bold blacks and stark whites that are a constant reminder of the inevitable, and some hauntingly surreal scenes, DEATH IN VENICE captures the poignancy of Mann's novel with a sharp, sinister, and unwavering accuracy.