Death in Venice

"Do you know what lies at the bottom of the mainstream? Mediocrity!"

Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice (1971) is an overblown curiosity. This adaptation of Thomas Mann's novella is an aesthetic masterwork, anchored by Dirk Bogarde's commendable performance. Unfortunately, it lacks the dramatic weight to match its epic pretensions.

Hack composer Gustav von Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde) arrives in turn-of-the-century Venice on holiday. He leaves behind a tragic past: a rivalry with fellow composer Alfred (Mark Burns), a shattered marriage (Marissa Berenson) and a family tragedy. Aschenbach considers beauty as an intellectual construct, a view challenged when he meets teenaged Tadzio (Bjorn Andersen). Aschenbach grows obsessed with Tadzio, following him around Venice and even changing his appearance. But Aschenbach's new-found love takes a backseat when cholera strikes the city.

If nothing else, Death in Venice offers a sumptuous sensory experience. As with The Leopard, Visconti mixes impeccable costumes and period detail with gorgeous compositions. He matches the overcrowded hotel and dusty Venice streets with verdant flashbacks and a finale framed like a Renaissance painting. Ever-present flowers subtly introduce a death motif. Coupled with Gustav Mahler's music, dialogue-free passages of Aschenbach riding a gondola or hotel guests dining have the hypnotic effect of 2001's spaceship scenes or Sergio Leone's ritualized duels. Death is certainly never dull.

But Visconti's artistry serves a simplistic plot. At its crudest, Death provides a simple "coming-out" story: a repressed homosexual faces his identity, accepts himself and dies a happy man. Tadzio may be an aesthetic rather than sexual ideal, but Visconti's presentation make it hard to avoid a simple surface reading. If Aschenbach was better-developed, his dilemma would seem poignant rather than an exercise in self-torture. Similarly, the thematic pondering on art and mortality might register more strongly if they weren't restricted to flashbacks and an occasional gripe about plague warnings. Visconti provides operatic grandeur when a low-key approach would work better.

Dirk Bogarde admirably shoulders a character who in less rarefied hands would seem a creepy pederast. He does well conveying inner turmoil with meaningful glances and pathetic gestures; his self-embrace at a nighttime encounter with Tadzio is particularly effecting. Visconti symbolizes Aschenbach's quest for youth in cruder ways: in a particularly facile touch, Bogarde dons ghoulish makeup and runny hair dye for the finale. His life as a failed artist, all theory and no skill, emerges only in hamfisted debates with Alfred. Bogarde's more grounded characters in The Servant and Victim are more compelling.

Of the supporting cast there's not much to say. Bjorn Andersen embodies the youthful beauty required of Tadzio. Still, it's not really a performance. Romolo Valli's (Duck You Sucker) obsequious hotelier provides light comic relief. Marissa Berenson rehearses her meaningful glance style perfected in Barry Lyndon; Mark Burns (Charge of the Light Brigade) provides hammy ranting as Bogarde's fellow composer.

As sensual art, Death in Venice is fascinating. But it's certainly not the masterpiece Visconti wants it to be. Any thematic conceits become overwhelmed by luscious imagery and the protagonist's agonizing angst.