Independent Films, Film Profiles

Death in Venice (film)
by Luchino Visconti

Death in Venice (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.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 from 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 Adagietto - 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.