Death in Venice - Luchino Visconti 1971

Main Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Romolo Valli, Marisa Berenson, Carole André, Björn Andrésen, Silvana Mangano, Franco Fabrizi, Leslie French Based on Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice, Morte a Venezia follows the journey of the composer Gustav von Aschenbach, who leaves Germany for a vacation at the Lido in Venice. “In the luxury hotel at which he is staying, he meets Tadzio, a beautiful and enigmatic Polish boy, the oldest of four children, who troubles his senses and stirs his imagination. A living symbol of the classic measure that Aschenbach has pursued in his own work and has not been able to achieve, Tadzio soon becomes an obsession. [...] In the meantime, a cholera epidemic takes a grip, and the city’s humid calli, disinfected to avoid contagion, are filled with a pungent and sinister odour, which in combination with the sirocco produces an enervating climate. In this stale atmosphere [...] Aschenbach’s spirit and body begin to waste away. [...] Moving in the suspense of a fantastic realism that hinges on the smoothness of the camera movements and the cutting of the sequences, Visconti [...] sets Aschenbach’s drama against the backdrop of the cosmopolitan society of the early 20th century that had its damp mooring in a dying Venice, and at the same time encapsulates the crisis of an entire culture.”