Death In Venice Revisited

The other night I watched 'Death In Venice' for the first time in years. For those of you who haven't seen it, this 1971 film, directed by Luchino Visconti and based on Thomas Mann's 1912 novella, follows the last few weeks in the life of an ageing German composer, Gustav von Aschenbach, who is convalescing at the Grand Hotel Des Bains on the Lido at Venice following a heart attack. He gradually becomes obsessed with the beautiful, indulged teenage son of an aristocratic Polish family staying at the same hotel. As rumours of a cholera epidemic in the city begin to drive guests away, he takes to following the boy and his family around, increasingly infatuated, ill and desperate; he suffers a second heart attack on the beach whilst gazing at his beloved on the shoreline, and dies. The action is slow, with minimal dialogue and much reliance on non-verbal communication, and it's interspersed with unhurried observation of the hotel guests going about their leisurely lives and panoramic shots of the beautiful Lido de Venezia. The music of Gustav Mahler, supposedly one of the originals drawn on by Mann to create the composite character of von Aschenbach, tugs at the heartstrings throughout.

Dirk Bogarde's performance in the lead role is extraordinary, and has stayed with me ever since I first saw the film in my early twenties. He manages to convey intense emotion, from elation to despair, by a mere twitch of the mouth or creasing of the forehead, The scene where, having determined to nip his infatuation in the bud by returning ahead of schedule to Munich, he discovers at the station that his luggage has been mislaid is particularly poignant, as he tries to suppress smile after smile at the unexpected reprieve. His gradual degeneration from orderly, fastidious Edwardian gentleman to desperate, lovesick, cosmetically enhanced old roue is a tour de force.

But there's no denying the dark underside to this forty-seven year old film, which sits uncomfortably with a modern audience; for after all, isn't this the story of an older man's attraction to an underage boy? And didn't Bjorn Andresen, whose androgynous beauty as the fourteen-year-old Tadzio still adorns every poster and article about Visconti's production, complain of having been forced, at sixteen, to visit gay bars with the director where he was exposed to the unwelcome attentions of older men?
'Adult love for adolescents', he told the Guardian in 2003, 'is something I am against in principle … because I have some kind of insight into what this kind of love is about.'
He has, he says, worked hard to cast off the shadow of Tadzio, trying to alter 'not only my appearance, but my whole identity' – a statement that leaves no doubt as to the traumatic effect of the role and its aftermath upon a shockingly unprotected child actor.

When the film first came out in 1971 I was thirteen years old, and too young to see it at the cinema (I've tried and failed to discover whether the British Board of Censors gave it an 'A' or an 'X' certificate, but I suspect the latter). I did however find a copy of the original novella in my local library and precociously devoured it, marvelling slightly at how chaste and ponderous and philosophical it was and wondering what all the fuss was about. There is, as critic Roger Elbert pointed out in his early review of the film, no indication in the novel that Tadzio is anything more than vaguely aware of the older man's interest, and they exchange no more than the occasional surreptitious glance. The original von Aschenbach is an author rather than a composer, and there is much discussion of the philosophical ideals of Beauty and Truth, and whether they can best be appreciated by the intellect or the senses – discussions replicated in flashback in the film, with von Aschenbach confidently championing the intellectual high ground, rendering his downfall all the more karmic. However Elbert opines that 'Visconti loses the philosophical content of the Thomas Mann work, and no amount of heavy-handed flashbacks can restore it'. In the film, Tadzio is all too aware of his admirer's interest, and although they exchange not one word of dialogue he is constantly posing and lingering before him, turning back to gaze at the older man through lowered lashes with a Mona Lisa smile. 'Vicsonti', says Elbert, 'lays on the turns, looks and smiles with such a heavy hand that the boy could almost be accused of hustling.'

And this, I think, is why the novel safely passes the test of modern acceptability while the jury remains out on the film. It would, however, be a shame were it ever to be cast into outer darkness – the sublime, hesitant sweetness of the 'Adagietto' from Mahler's Symphony no.5, the strength and subtlety of Bogarde's acting, the breathtaking beauty of the scenery and also, admittedly, of poster boy 'Tadzio' still combine to make it a poignant depiction of a dying man's pursuit of unattainable youth and beauty. At the very least it's galvanised me to add a long neglected novel to my to-read list – Thomas Mann's Death in Venice!