There is much to love in the first half of this film. The opening sequence, where Dirk Bogarde as Gustav von Aschenbach is shown in closeup aboard a boat headed for Venice, with glimpses of the city looming in the background, is masterful and helps us to focus on his isolation. This sense of being outside the mainstream of life becomes dramatically clear in the subsequent ensemble scenes at the grand resort hotel on the Lido.
These are great scenes, giving us a portrait of resort life among the haute bourgeoisie in the years just before World War I, a way of life that never survived that war. Visconti creates a crowded, busy canvas, full of life, and then uses his camera searchingly, showing us life as viewed by von Aschenbach, the lone traveler from Germany. We see masses of people enjoying before-dinner refreshments in a great hall of the hotel; then watch them on the beach; and then--in a strange and wonderful scene--see them on the terrace being entertained by a ragtag Italian minstrel group.
During these scenes, von Aschenbach is increasingly attracted by the beauty of the androgynous boy Tadzio. At first this is intriguing. The boy is with his mother, governess, and siblings. He is aware of his attractiveness to von Aschebach and cannot help showing this awareness, though at the same time it is clear that there is a limit to how far this well-brought-up and strictly supervised boy will lead him on.
And that's where the movie becomes slow and even tiresome. Over and over we see von Aschenbach trailing after Tadzio and his family, longing for him and indeed in love with him. To give the second half of the movie a sense of direction, we are made to become increasingly aware that a plague has reached the city, and before long we understand that von Aschenbach will fall victim to it. And so he does. If the plague has some symbolic value, it never becomes clear.
The greatest flaw in the movie is the series of abrupt interruptions of the story with flashbacks showing von Aschenbach back in Germany, involved in fierce debates with a colleague about "art" versus "life," "spirit" versus "the senses," and so on. Clearly these are meant to inject some thematic sense into the main story in Venice, but the debates are almost ludicrously simplistic and the interruptions for them are at best distracting.
Is this a film about an aging man's longing for youth? An intellectual's plunge into the realm of the senses? A respectable man's descent into pederastry? Who knows? I'll have to re-read Mann's novella, which I last read a long time ago, to find out the real story.
These are great scenes, giving us a portrait of resort life among the haute bourgeoisie in the years just before World War I, a way of life that never survived that war. Visconti creates a crowded, busy canvas, full of life, and then uses his camera searchingly, showing us life as viewed by von Aschenbach, the lone traveler from Germany. We see masses of people enjoying before-dinner refreshments in a great hall of the hotel; then watch them on the beach; and then--in a strange and wonderful scene--see them on the terrace being entertained by a ragtag Italian minstrel group.
During these scenes, von Aschenbach is increasingly attracted by the beauty of the androgynous boy Tadzio. At first this is intriguing. The boy is with his mother, governess, and siblings. He is aware of his attractiveness to von Aschebach and cannot help showing this awareness, though at the same time it is clear that there is a limit to how far this well-brought-up and strictly supervised boy will lead him on.
And that's where the movie becomes slow and even tiresome. Over and over we see von Aschenbach trailing after Tadzio and his family, longing for him and indeed in love with him. To give the second half of the movie a sense of direction, we are made to become increasingly aware that a plague has reached the city, and before long we understand that von Aschenbach will fall victim to it. And so he does. If the plague has some symbolic value, it never becomes clear.
The greatest flaw in the movie is the series of abrupt interruptions of the story with flashbacks showing von Aschenbach back in Germany, involved in fierce debates with a colleague about "art" versus "life," "spirit" versus "the senses," and so on. Clearly these are meant to inject some thematic sense into the main story in Venice, but the debates are almost ludicrously simplistic and the interruptions for them are at best distracting.
Is this a film about an aging man's longing for youth? An intellectual's plunge into the realm of the senses? A respectable man's descent into pederastry? Who knows? I'll have to re-read Mann's novella, which I last read a long time ago, to find out the real story.