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.”