In German novelist Thomas Mann's great sensualist work Death in Venice, in which a straight-identified artist becomes obsessed by a blond 14-year-old Polish boy, we are made a partner of his feelings by the eloquent if anguished description of the man's dilemma. It's as if these feelings were simultaneously an affliction and the key to both his salvation and doom.
"Tadzio was resting from his bath; he lay in the sand, wrapped in his white robe, which was drawn under his right shoulder, his head supported by his bare arm. And even when Aschenbach was not observing him, but was reading a few pages in his book, he hardly ever forgot that this boy was lying there and that it would cost him only a slight turn of the head to the right to behold the mystery. It seemed that he was sitting here just to keep watch over his repose �" busied with his own concerns, and yet constantly aware of this noble picture at his right, not so far in the distance. And he was stirred by a paternal affection, the profound leaning which those who have devoted their thoughts to the creation of beauty feel toward those who possess beauty itself."
The easiest way to appreciate and fully enjoy the incendiary cinema feast that is Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice is to think of his 1971 film adaptation of Mann's most fevered work as a tragic opera. Visconti (1906-76) is arguably the most controversial figure among the great Italian film directors of the mid-to-late 20th century, a group that pushed social, political and erotic boundaries, broke taboos and left an astonishing collective body of work that contemporary Italian filmmakers have yet to absorb, let alone transcend.
In the film the boy, Tadzio (then-16-year-old newcomer Bjorn Andresen) appears as the most prized offspring of a middle-aged Polish widow who is staying at a Venice hotel along with Tadzio and three younger daughters. For those wishing for the sensual sweepstakes of the main plot to kick in, Visconti has some intriguing ways to delay our gratification. In a flashback we see a much younger Aschenbach conducting a verbose debate about the origins of human ideals about truth and beauty with a Visconti-created supporting character.
Von Aschenbach: "I think that artists are rather like hunters aiming in the dark. They don't know what their target is, and they don't know if they've hit it. But you can't expect life to illuminate the target and steady your aim. The creation of beauty and purity is a spiritual act."
Alfred: "No, Gustav, no. Beauty belongs to the senses. Only to the senses. Wisdom. Truth. Human dignity. All finished! Now there is no reason why you cannot go to your grave with your music."
Death in Venice has a large European cast, but most viewers today will probably see it more as a "two-hander" between British-born international star Sir Dirk Bogarde (1921-99) and the Swedish-born Bjorn Andresen (born 1955). By the time he appeared in Venice, Bogarde had done other gay-themed films, such as Visconti's The Damned, The Servant, and Accident for Joseph Losey. Later Bogarde would discuss his screen career, from leading man to star of sexually themed features like The Night Porter, in a couple of memoirs.
Being the "most beautiful boy in the world" for Visconti launched teenager Andresen on his own sometimes rocky path to world film fame: becoming a temporary pop singing sensation in Japan while a film career of sorts continued in Sweden. The instant fame was, for Andresen, a truly double-edged sword, as he expressed in a 2003 chat with the UK Guardian .
"I was just 16, and [Visconti] and the team took me to a gay nightclub. Almost all the crew were gay. The waiters at the club made me feel very uncomfortable. They looked at me uncompromisingly, as if I was a nice meaty dish. I knew I couldn't react. It would have been social suicide. But it was the first of many such encounters.
"My career is one of the few that started at the absolute top and then worked its way down. That was lonely. I didn't choose Death in Venice, it chose me. I would rather have built my life than be put on this pedestal."
If the philosophical questions posed by Mann in the original 1913 novella are of greater importance to you than the platonic/spiritual ones raised by Tadzio, than you should probably stick to the book, available in a low-priced paperback edition. Arsenal Press has also published a full-length, handsome companion volume, Death in Venice by Canadian-born critic Will Aitken.
DVD features: widescreen, Dolby Digital sound; theatrical trailer; nine-minute featurette with director Visconti scouting locations; photo gallery of production stills. (Warner Bros.)