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Editorial Review Product Description
Luchino Visconti's adaptation of the Thomas Mann story Death in Venice is the very definition of sumptuous: the costumes and sets, the special geography of Venice, and the breathtaking cinematography combine to form a heady experience. At the centre of this gorgeousness is Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde in a meticulous performance), a controlled intellectual who unexpectedly finds himself obsessed by the vision of a 14-year-old boy while on a convalescent vacation in 1911. Visconti has turned Aschenbach into a composer, which accounts for the lush excerpts from Mahler on the soundtrack (Bogarde is meant to look like Mahler, too). Even if it tends to hit the nail on the head a little too forcefully, and even if Visconti can test one's patience with lingering looks at crowds at the beach and hotel dining rooms, Death in Venice creates a lushness rare in movies. --Robert Horton ... Read more Customer Reviews (80) 
And You Feel So Civilized
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.
The Slow Death of Death in Venice
Death in Venice seems to me to be one of the most pointless films ever made.Moreover, it's probably the moist pointless [sic]:there's hardly a scene where Dirk Bogarde is not dripping with perspiration!I actually had to stop the movie after only 15 minutes because I was bored.I took it up the next day and decided to continue on from where I had left off.No use falling asleep again, I reasoned.
Set in the early part of the nineteenth century, the action moves lackadaisically through a grand hotel and seaside resort, and follows a frail German writer who is summering there to fortify and regain his strength after a long illness.He's supposed to be upper-crust, but his evident bad manners and lack of grace typify the tone of a vulgarian:elbows on the table at dinner, a round surliness toward his inferiors, and throwing scraps of food on the beach are surely the very antithesis of good breeding.
After a protracted time of his acting rather prickly with whomever is trying to help him, he sits imperiously in the hotel's drawing room pretending to read a newspaper and casting his eyes over the assembled throng who are gathered to await the dinner gong.His gaze fall upon a young man with long blond hair and rests there, drinking in his fine feminine features.Over the course of several days, he follows this young man around (never mind that the composer is married and had a daughter who recently died and to whom he was devoted).The young man, aware of the older man's attentions, smiles flirtatiously whenever they see one another -- but neither one ever speaks; the young man (with a Mod haircut for God's sake) constrained by the era's rightness of doing things (par exemple, not speaking to a stranger unless one is properly introduced), and our hero ... well, merely constrained.
The film plods along like this for much too long, and the heaviness becomes rather irritating.There are numerous flashbacks to the composer's happy married life in Germany, and more flashbacks to scenes of angry philosophical arguments between our hero and another intense and philosophical musician (whose character and raison-d'etre are never properly explained).In one particular tete-a-tete, his friend (friend?!) blurts out some theosophical mumbo-jumbo, icing it with "!".Gustave (our boring Mr. Bogarde) tries ably to counter his friend's rant, but is overcome by the sheer scope of his friend's dynamic force and intensity.This is, quite possibly, a very well-executed scene, but it drags so!
The young man's hairstyle is straight out of the 1970s and is at odds, totally, with the period with which this movie purports to conspire.Come on!It's really very distracting when one is constantly reflecting on the Bay City Rollers (or other glam pop stars) cavorting frivolously at the beach!
At film's end, Mr. Bogart bemusedly agrees to a makeover in the barber's chair.We're asked to consider that this may have a salutary effect upon the object of the composer's keen eye.The hair dye applied by the (mischievous?) barber later starts dripping from the heat and humidity whilst Gustave is obsessively watching the boy posing preposterously at water's-edge.He dies in his deckchair (not a moment too soon for me), still delusional, but with a secret smile on his dye-streaked face.He had his hair and mustache dyed -- and then he died.Interesting.I wonder if the director, Luchino Visconti, noticed the coy symbolism.
I wonder also, in a broad sense, whether the millions of dollars used to make this boring movie might have been better spent on ways to help the poor and unfortunate within Italian society?
What a waste of time and money.
d. h. spider
April 2004
A Real "Arty" Movie
A few thoughts on "Death in Venice". This film reminded me of Tarkovsky's "The Sacrifice". In a way, although this might be harder to prove, it recalls remotely, Antonioni's "The Passenger". Moreover, I do not want to give anything away, although it is certainly not the type of film where you can do this. But toward the end of the film, there is a scene where Dirk Bogarde enters from the bottom of the frame on a Venetian street, and then the camera pulls back to reveal the burning pyres. And it is as if the villian has been unmasked, like in a horror movie or mystery/thriller. The curtain has been lifted, there are no more secrets, no more whispering. More later. Thank You
Not For Everyone
The real star of this highly touted film is the haunting music of Gustav Mahler.It reflects the emotional turmoil of the main character (Dirk Bogarde), a musician whose life has reached a standstill.Visually, the film is very beautiful to watch, but the tempo is lethargic, and the dialogue only occasionally connects the viewer to the characters.I found it difficult to care about what happens to these people, and I wanted to care.Was it the restrictions of the Victorian times in which it all took place?Dirk Bogarde's musician suggests early on that "life is not worth thinking about" --yet, he seems clouded with nothing but thought throughout the film.His fascination with the Garbo-esque youth is understandable, but the scenario takes us on endless journey that ultimately goes only ... sideways.
One of Film's Finest Masterpieces, if Not The Finest!
Probably the greatest film of all time! Certainly one of the most stunningly beautiful, owing partly to the almost otherworldly music by Mahler. Certainly not a particularly 'homosexual' film, this film addresses all things under the cosmos. Former World War II army major Dirk Bogarde probably gives the finest performance of ANY actor in ANY film since the beginning of the technology. This may well be my favorite film of all time, and I am a huge fan of many films, those of Welles, Hitchcock, Bergman.
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