The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: Death in Venice (1971)

Death in Venice (1971) **

Directed by: Luchino Visconti.

Written by: Luchino Visconti & Nicola Badalucco based on the novel by Thomas Mann.

Starring: Dirk Bogarde (Gustav von Aschenbach), Mark Burns (Alfred), Romolo Valli (Hotel manager), Marisa Berenson (Frau von Aschenbach), Björn Andrésen (Tadzio), Silvana Mangano (Tadzio's mother).

On my honeymoon, we spent a few days in Venice, and I absolutely fell in love with the city. It is so unlike every other city I’ve been to, such a unique and beautiful city, that you can’t help but love it. Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice makes the city look its best. This is an absolutely gorgeous film from beginning to end. But to me, it is a hollow film. The main thrust of the story offers little other than the beauty of Venice for a viewer to hold onto, and the flashbacks and ludicrous and overwrought. I love Visconti – films like Ossessione, Rocco and His Brothers and The Leopard rank among my favorites of all time, but despite its lofty reputation, I found Death in Venice to be a dull experience.

The film stars the great Dirk Bogarde as Gustav von Aschenbach, a thinly veiled Gustav Mahler, whose music plays throughout the film. The film was based on the novel by Thomas Mann, whose central figure was a writer, but Visconti decided to change it, for reasons I’m not sure of. No matter, the profession of the main character is the least of the films problems. Gustav has been working hard, but has suffered a medical setback, and is told he needs a long period of total relaxation. He leaves Berlin and travels to Venice by himself, where he is to stay in the best room, at the fanciest hotel. It isn’t long before Gustav becomes obsessed with a beautiful teenage boy named Tadzio (Bjorn Andresen), who is in the hotel visiting with his family from Poland. Gustav doesn’t talk to Tadzio, but admires him from afar. For his part, Tadzio always seems to be posing – for Gustav and the camera. He never simply goes about his business – ever time, the camera comes near him, he stops and stares into longing – which is usually followed by a shot of Bogarde in some kind of blissful state that Tadzio, that beautiful boy, has deemed him worthy to be looked at. This makes up the heart of the Venice section of the film – well these types of scenes, alongside Gustav’s paranoia, which turns out to be justified, about sickness running through Venice. The scenes in Venice are all wonderful to look at – Visconti has captured the city at its most breathtakingly beautiful – so after about an hour of the film, I contented myself with looking at a city I love that has been photographed with the type of love and care it deserves.

A bigger problem with the film however are the flashbacks to Gustav working in Berlin. Essentially, these scenes boil down to Gustav debating with Alfred (Mark Burns), the meaning of art and beauty. These flashbacks become more melodramatic, and eventually devolve into Alfred screaming and laughing at Gustav for his apparent phoniness. These scenes don’t work at all – particularly the last of these scenes, where Gustav’s latest creation is booed by the audience, which gives Alfred a perverse glee.

The real problem I had with Death in Venice is that it doesn’t really seem to know what it is saying about Gustav’s attraction of Tadzio. Clearly, there is some homosexual lust on Gustav’s part, but it is more than that. Gustav is obsessed with beauty, and there is no other word to describe Tadzio than beautiful. When I first saw him, in the type of sailor outfit I didn’t know they made for boys over the age of 1, I thought he was a prepubescent girl. I know that Visconti is filming Tadzio not as a real character – which would be a distraction – but as an object of beauty, like Michelangelo’s statute of David for example. This very easily could have worked, but I think Visconti tries way too hard to press this idea upon us. Watching Andresen pose for the camera reminded me of the ridiculous faces Ben Stiller makes in Zoolander. Everyone in the film is trying too hard – with the exception of Bogarde. Bogarde was an incredible actor, capable of delivering more with subtle body language than most actors did with entire speeches, but here he is perhaps too subtle – too still. Visconti undercuts the subtly of Bogarde’s performance, by making the movie too thuddingly obvious.

There are things to admire about the film of course – the lush cinematography, the lovingly crafted costumes and art direction, Mahler’s beautiful, romantic music on the soundtrack. But all of that is background noise. It’s the heart of the movie that is missing. I think of all the films I have watched so far in this series, Death in Venice is my biggest disappointment.

DVD Views: Le Notti Bianche

Le Notti Bianche (1957) ****
Directed By: Luchino Visconti.
Written By: Suso Cecchi D’Amico based on the story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
Starring: Marcello Mastroianni (Mario), Maria Schell (Natalia), Jean Marais (Lodger), Clara Calamai (Prostitute).

Luchino Visconti’s Le Notti Bianche is a romantic fantasy about two lonely, isolated people who share but a few nights together before being ripped apart again. Mario (Marcello Mastroianni) is lonely because he just moved to the city to take a new job, and he knows no one. Natalia (Maria Schell) is lonely because her lover left her, but promised to return in a year, so she has cloistered herself away for the entire time just awaiting his return. She stands a lonely vigil on the bridge over the canal in the city, hoping every night that her lover will return. This is how Mario meets her. She is being harassed by a couple of young punks on a motorcycle that he chases away. He walks her back to her place, and they talk. He is drawn to her innocence and beauty, her sweet naiveté. She doesn’t really see him at all, at least not at first. That is how deep her love, her obsession, with her lover goes.

He returns the next night, and she finally opens up and tells her story to him. Her lover was a Lodger who lived with her and her grandmother for a short while. They fell in love, but he had to go. Where? He doesn’t say, or at least Natalia never feels the need to tell us. She doesn’t even tell us his name. Although the Lodger only appears in a few scenes in the movie, his presence hangs over every scene. Natalia knows he is back in town, and that is why she waits on the bridge every night. It was their spot. She has written a letter to him, and asks Mario to deliver it. He agrees, but when she leaves, he tears the letter up. He wants her for himself.

On the third night, she finally lets her guard down. He allows him to take her to a club, and in an extended sequence, they dance to rock music – badly. This scene has as much in the way of character development as any of the scenes with dialogue. Her timidness comes through when she cannot quite dance the way everyone else does, and nervously laughes. Mario goes for the grand romantic gesture, and ends up in the middle of one of those circles surrounding by cheering patrons, even though he doesn’t really know how to dance. It doesn’t matter. For a few brief moments it looks like they may be happy together. They go into the street, and it’s snowing, and they are laughing and happy. But when they come back to the bridge, the Lodger is there. What will Natalia decide? What do you think?

The story in the movie is as simple as that, yet it doesn’t begin to describe the simple power of the emotions in the film, nor Visconti’s complete control over the film. Eschewing his previous tendency towards realism, Visconti shot the entire film on a soundstage, and the movie is deliberately artificial in terms on its look. It is a marvel of production design this city. On one side of the bridge, Mario’s, everything is full of life and light – gas stations, bars, people always milling around the street. Yet in this crowd of people, Mario is still alone. His only friend is a dog he meets on the street. The other side of the canal, Natalia’s, is the opposite. There are never any lights on, no people walking around. It is dark and depressing, as if only Natalia and her grandmother, and at one point the Lodger, ever lived there. They meet on the bridge that connects the two sides, and the film is about him gradually luring her over to his side. To get her to fall in love with him.


By the end of the film, everything has come full circle for Mario. Once again bitter and alone, he is now also heartbroken. Perhaps at some point in his life, he will be able to gain some perspective on the relationship, but at the end of the movie it is just too early. There is no joy in him as he walks down that street alone again, and once again finds the same dog he did at the beginning of the film. He is alone. And it hurts.