Death in Venice (1971)
Gustav von Aschenbach, played by queer actor Dirk Bogarde, gets a makeover in queer filmmaker Luchino Visconti’s controversial 1971 film DEATH IN VENICE.
Today’s post was written/selected by Eve O’Dea. Click here to read the full essay on her website!
DEATH IN VENICE
1971. ITALY/FRANCE.
Director: Luchino Visconti
Screenplay: Luchino Visconti & Nicola Badalucco
Based on: “Death in Venice” (1912) by Thomas Mann
Starring: Dirk Bogarde, Björn Andrésen, Mark Burns, Romolo Valli, Nora Ricci, Marisa Berenson, Carole André & Silvana Mangano
Luchino Visconti’s DEATH IN VENICE, adapted from Thomas Mann’s controversial 1912 novella, follows the German composer Aschenbach during his travels to Italy after a professional and philosophical crisis. Upon his arrival, he encounters and becomes infatuated with a 14-year old boy named Tadzio whose beauty inspires an almost religious devotion. Aschenbach thinks about the boy constantly, and even begins following him throughout the cobble-stoned streets of the antique city. He soon falls into a state of near-delirium, abandoning his rational principles in favour of chaotic passion, embodying the struggle between the Nietzschean concepts of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Meanwhile, a mysterious plague from the East looms underneath the idyllic surface, turning the tourist-reliant Venice into an uncannily beautiful ghost town.
While a queer story in that Aschenbach’s desire results in him questioning his sexuality, such a categorization reinforces dangerous stereotypes about gay men as predators. The novella is more interested in considering the nature of beauty, the effects of solitude on the mind, as well as society’s obsession with aging and the futility of holding onto one’s youth (hence the makeover).
Though a visually stunning, well-acted film, Visconti makes a number of directorial choices which deviate from Mann’s characterization of both Aschenbach and Tadzio. While Mann describes the young Tadzio as oblivious to Aschenbach’s desire, Visconti has Swedish actor Bjorn Andresen engage with Bogarde and the camera with alarming regularity and a sense of total self-awareness, casting Tadzio as complicit in what ought to be a one-sided delusion. In the following decades, Andersen reflected on how his appearance in this film, as well as the promotional cycle which positioned him as “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World” contributed to a life of abuse and addiction.
You can find DEATH IN VENICE for rent/purchase through AppleTV and Amazon, it’s also available through Criterion on DVD and Blu-ray.
