Death in Venice (1971)

Original title

Morte a Venezia

Directed by

Luchino Visconti

Genre

drama film, LGBTQ-related film

Country

Italy

Runtime

2h 10m

Rated

+18

Rating

7.2 of 10 from 546 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

An aging composer becomes obsessed with a beautiful young boy while staying at a hotel in Venice. The story follows his internal struggle between propriety and desire as a cholera epidemic spreads through the city.

slow-burnmelancholicvisually lushtensecerebraldreamlikeunsettlingelegiac

What happens

Death in Venice (Italian: Morte a Venezia) is a 1971 historical drama film directed and produced by Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti, and adapted by Visconti and Nicola Badalucco from the 1912 novella of the same name by German author Thomas Mann. It stars Dirk Bogarde as Gustav von Aschenbach and Björn Andrésen as Tadzio, with supporting roles played by Mark Burns, Marisa Berenson, and Silvana Mangano, and was filmed in Technicolor by Pasqualino De Santis. The soundtrack consists of selections from Gustav Mahler's third and fifth symphonies, but characters in the film also perform pieces by Franz Lehár, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Modest Mussorgsky. Preceded by The Damned (1969) and followed by Ludwig (1973), the film is the second part of Visconti's thematic "German Trilogy". The film premiered in London on 1 March 1971, and was entered into the 24th Cannes Film Festival. It received positive reviews from critics and won several accolades, including, at the 25th British Academy Film Awards, the awards for Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, and Best Sound, in addition to nominations for Best Film, Best Direction, and Best Actor in a Leading Role for Dirk Bogarde. For his work on the film, Visconti won the David di Donatello Award for Best Director. Retrospectively, Death in Venice was ranked the 235th greatest film of all time in the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll, the 14th greatest arthouse film of all time by The Guardian in 2010, and the 27th greatest LGBT film of all time in a 2016 poll by the British Film Institute. It is the 209th greatest film of all time as per the list aggregation site They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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