e alone, as the small steamer chugs up the Lido to the strains of the Adagio from Mahler's Fifth Symphony, is one of the finest opening passages in all of cinema. Nor is it quite as ambiguous as many people claim.

Death in Venice isn't perfect; there are cumbersome flashback sequences that add nothing to the film but for a good deal of the time this is often as great as movies can get. It was made in English, ( the Italian supporting cast are dubbed ), by Luchino Visconti and it's based on Thomas Mann's novella but with the central character of Aschenbach changed from a writer to a composer and obviously based on Gustav Mahler, whose music is used to sublime effect. The opening sequenc

eath in Venice (I) is a 1971 film directed by the late Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti. The second installment in Visconti’s "The German Trilogy"—the other two being The Damned (1969) and Ludwig (1973)

In this adaptation of the Thomas Mann novel, avant-garde composer Gustave Aschenbach travels to a Venetian seaside resort in search of repose after a period of artistic and personal stress. But he finds no peace there, for he soon develops a troubling attraction to an adolescent boy, Tadzio, on vacation with his family. The boy embodies an ideal of beauty that Aschenbach has long sought and he becomes infatuated. However, the onset of a deadly pestilence threatens them both physically and represents the corruption that compromises and threatens all ideals.

On its most basic level this is a picture about a middle-aged man's passion for a young boy, (some people simply see it as an artist's struggle to preserve beauty which just happens to be represented by the boy, Tadzio, played by

Björn Andrésen

), but as Aschenbach becomes more obsessed with Tadzio it's difficult not to see this as a tale of thwarted homosexual love, (

). And in the role of Aschenbach, Dirk Bogarde is simply magnificent. This is one of the greatest performances in all cinema; every movement, every gesture disguises the Bogarde we think we have come to know and creates rather a character so rounded and so individual that the actor disappears into his skin.





Björn Andrésen as Tadzio in Death in Venice

Aschenbach is dying all through the film and he has come to Venice, a city that is also dying, to recuperate so that when death finally catches up with him, alone on the beach, his beloved Tadzio a distant figure on the horizon, it is not unexpected but nevertheless no less heartbreaking. Tadzio, however, isn't given anything like a personality, (

), so his presence could be read as purely symbolic, (

), while Bjorn Andresen plays him with such a lack of feeling you wonder what it is, other than his natural beauty, that Aschenbach sees in him, (

).





A Still from Death in Venice

Death in Venice is also one of the most gorgeous films ever made. The cinematography, in Panavision, of Pasqualino De Santis, the designs of Ferdinando Scarfiotti and the costumes of Piero Tosi are simply perfect. If it weren't for those darned, and unnecessary, flashbacks this might have been a serious contender for any list of all-time best films.