Death in Venice
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Movie Reviews of Death in Venice
Movie Review: ...simply beautiful...
Summary: 5 Stars
...and way ahead of its time...Dirk left us two solid gold treasures..."Victim" and "Death in Venice"...his finest works.Movie Review: Superb!
Summary: 5 Stars
A classic! Not only is the cinematography superb, the acting and the dramatisation of the Thomas Mann novel---wonderful.Movie Review: A Visual Poem
Summary: 4 Stars
Luchino Visconti`s Death In Venice (1971)
Alvy Singer: "You're not going to come back to New York?"
Annie Hall: "What's so great about New York? It's a dying city, you read Death in Venice."
(Woody Allen's ANNIE HALL, 1979)
Luchino Visconti's movie is not only a fine adaptation of Thomas Mann's celebrated novel, but it's one of those few films that succeeded in adding another dimension to the literature they stemmed from. Amongst those works I can cite Kubrick's 2001: Space Odyssey, Tarkovski's Solaris (though not necessarily one of the latter finest moments at all)... etc.
The movie opens to a scene centering a sailing boat; the noticeable dark framing of this initial shot gives the feel of a fairy tale emerging out of time and place. More than six minutes will elapse while the gorgeous Mahler's fifth symphony is solely playing, not a single sound from the "real" world. The music is suddenly and loudly interrupted by a horn sound, then a complete contrast with pure mundane noises and distant voices, but still no discerned dialogs... not after ten minutes.
Visconti smartly translated a novel from the written realm into an entity dominated by image and sound. The entire movie is remarkable for those types of scenes based on wordless elements.
It's true that Visconti's scenes and shots are not as complexly designed as Antonioni's, neither as playful and unorthodox as Fellini's; but just from this opening scene you realize you're in the presence of a film maker with something to "say".
The protagonist (Gustav von Aschenbach) is a music composer who just landed in Venice seeking a quiet and peaceful refuge. Instead, he found himself emerged in a tense and gloomy ambiance. Meanwhile, he gradually became obsessed with the stunning beauty of a young boy (Tadzio), the latter becoming more aware of this attention as the plot progresses.
Visconti's success in creating a crescendo tense atmosphere is remarkable for his almost complete absence of any "action". We don't know why the strange odors are spreading in the streets of the city, or why strange chemical solutions are being spilled on the walls, the secretive police attitude... etc
Nothing is actually happening on the screen, but -like Gustav- we're exposed to strange sceneries, murmurs, and tension.
Death in Venice is about the disintegration of an artist, his self-destructive obsession to the limit of narcissism, a futile longing for unreachable beauty.
The disturbing world around Gustav drives him back in memories to unsettled events from his near and distant past. But unlike Isaac Borg (from Bergman's Wild Strawberries) who was positively influenced by it, Gustav is succumbed into more darkness and isolation. Even when he ultimately knew why Venice is being disinfected, Gustav's dark path is already irreversible, and despite final desperate aesthetic measures sought in a beauty salon; his mind and his health are inevitably degrading.
Thomas Mann himself was influenced by Freud and Nietzsche, he wrote his novel in a period he was interested in dreams and death. It's not very surprising why Visconti would show interest in this novel, he was always openly gay, even bisexual. His choice of Mahler (Mahler is not mentioned in the novel) is based of the latter's deep interest in death also. Tadzio's beauty may be -partially- an object to sexual attraction, but most importantly it is a metaphor to a Utopian beauty, an absolute beauty free of any societal or material interpretation; it's the same concept of beauty discussed by Gustav and a fellow friend over a whole scene, a part that didn't exist in Mann's novel, indicating Visconti's own unsettled struggle about it.
Technically speaking, De Santis' camera is frequently mobile, spanning distantly at times and rarely with frank close-ups. Visconti smartly shifts between the past and the present; he uses very smooth transitions (used by Allen later in Another Woman): For example -in a scene that I really liked- Tadzio is amateurishly playing Beethoven's Fur Elise on the piano, Gustav walks in the background from the left of the screen attracted towards the source of the music, the camera zooms on Gustav and Tadzio is now completely out of the frame but we're clearly hearing his music, the camera zooms out revealing Gustav reaching a strange woman (instead of Tadzio) playing the same tune on a piano, a closer look shows a younger Gustav in a completely different milieu. This is how -and with a very clever subtle change in the vocal tone of both pianos- Visconti traveled in time.
The movie shows a unique use of soundtrack music, only present when no dialog or any voice is present, like a shift to another world. Visconti used Mahler's works, his fifth symphony is the film "book cover" (start and end), with the music beautifully and simultaneously climaxing with the drama at the end.
The ending shot certainly inspired Ozon's "Le Temps Qui Reste".
Despite my usual attraction to more complex and experimental films, I liked Death in Venice. It's a horrible nightmare told in a visual and a musical poem of elegance and beauty. It's also a deep contemplation of youth, age, beauty, and death.
Death in Venice won Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, and Best Sound Track during the 1972 BAFTA.
The Warner Bros DVD (US format) provides a good-quality transfer, additional materials include a "behind-the-scenes featurette" and a still gallery. It would be nice if it had a commentary though.
Director: Luchino Visconti
Writer: Thomas Mann
Original Music: Gustav Mahler
Cinematography: Pasqualino De Santis
Genre: Drama
Year: 1971
Length: 130 min.
Language: Italian
Country: Italy
Movie Review: The Death of Western Civilization
Summary: 4 Stars
Freely adapted from Thomas Mann's novella, "Death in Venice" is a masterpiece of atmosphere and Romantic (if not romantic) longing. The 'plot,' so-called, is a series of mostly fleeting encounters between Gustav von Aschenbach, a widower and composer, and the obscure object of his affection/attention: Tadzio, a Polish adolescent with a Botticelli-like beauty. In flashbacks, we see Aschenbach as a passionate, engaged intellectual arguing for the 'spirituality' of Beauty as an abstract ideal. In the present, he is a broken, isolated man lingering like a mute ghost in a disintegrating city.
Aschenbach's homoerotic fixation on Tadzio is complex. Generally interpreted as unconsummated pedophilic desire, the relationship also be read as a dying man's single-minded pursuit of Beauty as an ideal (Bjorn Andresen's Apollonian distance as Tadzio seems to embody the younger Aschenbach's abstract vision of pure, remote Beauty). Tadzio is not so much an object of desire as an object d'art; the last dream of an old man trying vainly to reclaim the lost ideal of Youth. That's one interpretation among many.
Directed by Luchino Visconti, "Death in Venice" is a tone-poem; an often arrestingly beautiful meditation on youth, obsession, old age, and the decrepit state of Western Civilization. Venice is a dream city of beautiful surfaces and gorgeous architecture, but it is also a crumbling, sinking city that relies on the cannibalization of its past to stay afloat (if you'll pardon the pun). Tourists flock to Venice as to a beautiful ruin. One can't help but wonder if Mann was prophetic in his diagnosis of Western Europe as a decaying body obsessed with its beautiful youth, vainly attempting to keep up appearances. As Hans Urs von Balthasar once wrote, "We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it."
Though Visconti's deliberate pacing may try the viewer's patience, "Death in Venice" is more than worth the effort. The cinematography is often ravishing and Visconti makes masterful use of Gustav Mahler's lush, aching fifth Symphony. The tortured Romance of Mahler's music grants us access to the volcanic passions beneath Aschenbach's meticulously reserved surface -- Aschenbach even resembles Mahler.
Dirk Bogarde gives a careful, fully realized performance as the highly cultured but emotionally stunted Aschenbach. With very little dialogue, he is able to convey Aschenbach's bitterness, misanthropy, loneliness, obsession, and pathetic hope for reciprocated affection through a complex network of looks, expressions, gestures, and body language. (Two of cinema's most expressive, soulful eyes certainly help.) This is one of the loneliest films ever lensed, and Bogarde's performance beautifully empathizes with a man cut-off from the rest of humanity. Despite the leisurely pace, the film builds to a surprisingly emotional climax. The last scene is a tour-de-force; an aria of lost hope, passion, and tragedy.
Movie Review: And You Feel So Civilized
Summary: 4 Stars
Like the sand in the hourglass, there is no stopping the passage of time. This cinematic achievement is unmatched in its visual eloquence, but remains an emotionally unsatisfying experience. Long shots, slow pans, and silence, only punctuated by Mahler's symphonies, create emotional distance. On first appearance, Aschenbach is a man already in decline: His cultured facade doesn't mask an underlying vulgarity. Alienated from his artistic and spiritual impulses, he recognizes an idealized and pure beauty in the form of a pre-pubescent boy, which does nothing to create a more sympathetic character. His realization is much too late, just as the population in Venice is dying from pestilence, and a way of life is dying at the turn of the century. As we follow the boy, it is hard to tell if Tadzio's glances, poses, and posturing are real or just Aschenbach's fantasy. During the final scene, we view the sea and sun, the promising horizon formed in the initial scene, but now glittering and hazy. Aschenbach, appearing clown-like with his whitewash and greasepaint, silently observes Tadzio pointing at the sun, and he also reaches out, as if grasping for communion, and dies. Posited on the beach, there is a symbolic, unmanned camera, ready to frame Tadzio in a snapshot. Hauntingly, the final shots rest on Aschenbach's dripping and smudged death mask, before he is toted off the sands like garbage. There is a statement about art, beauty, sexuality, and spirituality, residing in this film, but to me it was quite dead.