Death in Venice. (15.)
Directed by Luchino Visconti. 1971
Starring Dirk Bogarde, Björn Andrésen, Silvana Mangano, Marisa Berenson, Mark Burns, Romolo Valli. 130 mins. Out now on Blu-ray as part of the Criterion Collection.
He dies at the end, Dirk Bogarde. Sorry if that's a spoiler but given that the film is nearly half a century old and the novella by Thomas Mann it's based on is over a century old I assumed you'd know. And if you didn't, the title's a bit of a giveaway. You'd be put out if he didn't die. It'd be as ridiculous as a film called The Expendables where everybody survives. When death comes to him on his deckchair on the Lido beach it is preposterous, ridiculous and deeply poignant. You'll scoff a little scoff and shed a little tear; an appropriate conclusion for a film that is both artistic embarrassment and triumph.
The story is shaped like a kind of paedophile Brief Encounter. Composer Aschenbach (Bogarde) travels to Venice for a period of re-cooperation after being taken poorly when audiences don't like his latest symphony. There he becomes obsessed with a pretty young Polish boy Tadzio (Andrésen) who is staying in the same hotel with his family. Aschenbach looks at him, Tadzio looks backs, leads him on a bit, but nothing happens.
Now in the film, this infatuation is presented as an appreciation of aesthetics and the rarity of beauty. Mann's novella was inspired, we are told in the extras, by him finding Gustav Mahler sobbing on a bench because he'd just experienced a moment of pure beauty and he the composer was now forlorn because he knew that he would never experience its like again. (Talk about glass half full.) Aschenbach's feelings for Tadzio cause him to re-evaluate and soften his rather severe and arid approach to art, to loosen his perfectionism. Now, of course, Woody Allen pushed a similar line when he was going out with 17-year-old Mariel Hemingway in Manhattan, that hers was an innocence that cut through the shallowness of his metropolitan New York pretensions. Though we know they are both kidding themselves, in each film you go with the conceit.
Visconti's execution of it is frequently ludicrous. Take the music. Bogarde told the story of a screening of the film in Hollywood for some Warner Brother executives. The attendant Bros were unimpressed with the fruity offering they had witnessed but, in an attempt to salvage something positive, a Bro expressed his appreciation for the music and asked who the composer was. On being informed that it was Mahler, the Bro announced, "Hey, we should sign that guy!" Bogarde told the story as an example of Hollywood philistinism but I'd say it was more indicative of his snobbery because if you take anything from the film it's that Mahler's Adagio from the Fifth Symphony is one of the most exquisitely poignant pieces of music ever written. Of course you sign him up; this lad could even teach Hans Zimmer a thing or two, and this piece could make any bit of cinema seem magical. But Visconti just can't leave it alone. He starts with it, ends with it and returns to it frequently throughout the running time. You hear it so often that by the time it strikes up to mark Aschenbach's passing the music has become almost kitsch.
And I'm not sure if Bogarde ever really convinces as a German composer, if only because he's always barking at the locals in perfect English and looks aghast if they should fail to understand. He hates to be exposed to anything vulgar, which for him appears to be more or less everything, but especially anyone poor without a full complement of teeth who is laughing. Aschenbach never leaves his room in anything less than a three-piece suit, hat, fob watch and glasses - at times I fancied he looked like Cliff Richard playing a dandy Alf Garnett - and though Bogarde can be very affecting in the smaller moments he is almost buried beneath the costume, the moustache and the ageing make-up.
But, it is probably one of the most successful attempts at filming an internal narrative ever. It avoids the temptation to invent dialogue to express the characters' feelings and instead allows long scenes to play out without a word spoken, just music and his wandering camera doing all the work. The scene where Bogarde first sees the boy with his family sitting in the hotel is exemplary. It starts with Bogarde sitting huffily on his own, trying to remove himself from the activity around him, and then there is the first sight of him in his little sailor's costume, and then continually looking away and looking back, all until everybody else has gone in to dinner and right at the end Tadzio looks back at him.
Visconti described that film as an Opera and it is filled with that preciousness. It's all a bit too much, and here too much is just right. Death in Venice is deeply naff but it's a transcendent naffness.
Extras
Directed by Luchino Visconti. 1971
Starring Dirk Bogarde, Björn Andrésen, Silvana Mangano, Marisa Berenson, Mark Burns, Romolo Valli. 130 mins. Out now on Blu-ray as part of the Criterion Collection.
He dies at the end, Dirk Bogarde. Sorry if that's a spoiler but given that the film is nearly half a century old and the novella by Thomas Mann it's based on is over a century old I assumed you'd know. And if you didn't, the title's a bit of a giveaway. You'd be put out if he didn't die. It'd be as ridiculous as a film called The Expendables where everybody survives. When death comes to him on his deckchair on the Lido beach it is preposterous, ridiculous and deeply poignant. You'll scoff a little scoff and shed a little tear; an appropriate conclusion for a film that is both artistic embarrassment and triumph.
The story is shaped like a kind of paedophile Brief Encounter. Composer Aschenbach (Bogarde) travels to Venice for a period of re-cooperation after being taken poorly when audiences don't like his latest symphony. There he becomes obsessed with a pretty young Polish boy Tadzio (Andrésen) who is staying in the same hotel with his family. Aschenbach looks at him, Tadzio looks backs, leads him on a bit, but nothing happens.
Now in the film, this infatuation is presented as an appreciation of aesthetics and the rarity of beauty. Mann's novella was inspired, we are told in the extras, by him finding Gustav Mahler sobbing on a bench because he'd just experienced a moment of pure beauty and he the composer was now forlorn because he knew that he would never experience its like again. (Talk about glass half full.) Aschenbach's feelings for Tadzio cause him to re-evaluate and soften his rather severe and arid approach to art, to loosen his perfectionism. Now, of course, Woody Allen pushed a similar line when he was going out with 17-year-old Mariel Hemingway in Manhattan, that hers was an innocence that cut through the shallowness of his metropolitan New York pretensions. Though we know they are both kidding themselves, in each film you go with the conceit.
Visconti's execution of it is frequently ludicrous. Take the music. Bogarde told the story of a screening of the film in Hollywood for some Warner Brother executives. The attendant Bros were unimpressed with the fruity offering they had witnessed but, in an attempt to salvage something positive, a Bro expressed his appreciation for the music and asked who the composer was. On being informed that it was Mahler, the Bro announced, "Hey, we should sign that guy!" Bogarde told the story as an example of Hollywood philistinism but I'd say it was more indicative of his snobbery because if you take anything from the film it's that Mahler's Adagio from the Fifth Symphony is one of the most exquisitely poignant pieces of music ever written. Of course you sign him up; this lad could even teach Hans Zimmer a thing or two, and this piece could make any bit of cinema seem magical. But Visconti just can't leave it alone. He starts with it, ends with it and returns to it frequently throughout the running time. You hear it so often that by the time it strikes up to mark Aschenbach's passing the music has become almost kitsch.
And I'm not sure if Bogarde ever really convinces as a German composer, if only because he's always barking at the locals in perfect English and looks aghast if they should fail to understand. He hates to be exposed to anything vulgar, which for him appears to be more or less everything, but especially anyone poor without a full complement of teeth who is laughing. Aschenbach never leaves his room in anything less than a three-piece suit, hat, fob watch and glasses - at times I fancied he looked like Cliff Richard playing a dandy Alf Garnett - and though Bogarde can be very affecting in the smaller moments he is almost buried beneath the costume, the moustache and the ageing make-up.
But, it is probably one of the most successful attempts at filming an internal narrative ever. It avoids the temptation to invent dialogue to express the characters' feelings and instead allows long scenes to play out without a word spoken, just music and his wandering camera doing all the work. The scene where Bogarde first sees the boy with his family sitting in the hotel is exemplary. It starts with Bogarde sitting huffily on his own, trying to remove himself from the activity around him, and then there is the first sight of him in his little sailor's costume, and then continually looking away and looking back, all until everybody else has gone in to dinner and right at the end Tadzio looks back at him.
Visconti described that film as an Opera and it is filled with that preciousness. It's all a bit too much, and here too much is just right. Death in Venice is deeply naff but it's a transcendent naffness.
Extras
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Luchino Visconti: Life as in a Novel, a 2008 documentary about the director, featuring Visconti; actors Burt Lancaster, Silvana Mangano, and Marcello Mastroianni; filmmakers Francesco Rosi and Franco Zeffirelli; and others
- Alla ricerca di Tadzio, a 1970 short film by Visconti about his efforts to cast the role of Tadzio
- New program featuring literature and cinema scholar Stefano Albertini
- Interview from 2006 with costume designer Piero Tosi
- Excerpt from a 1990 program about the music in Visconti’s films, featuring Bogarde and actor Marisa Berenson
- Interview with Visconti from 1971
- Visconti’s Venice, a short 1970 behind-the-scenes documentary featuring Visconti and Bogarde
- Trailer
- PLUS: An essay by critic Dennis Lim
