DEATH IN VENICE

Italy, 1973, 125 minutes, Colour,
Dirk Bogarde, Bjorn Andreen, Silvano Mangano, Mark Burns.
Directed by Lucchino Visconti.

Death in Venice is a formally perfect work of art, but one which might appeal only to connoisseurs or those prepared to accept Visconti's terms, pace and vision.

It is set in the rich society Venice of tourists and hotels in 1911. It is based on Thomas Mann's novel which is said to be based on the life of the composer, Mahler. The setting (as for Visconti's The Leopard, 1963 and The Damned, 1969) is so meticulously, and here so beautifully, reconstructed that the audience feels immersed in it.

However, Visconti's style is so leisurely and slowly-paced that the audience has to make a deliberate effort to slacken to his tempo. Many would be unwilling to do this and they would find the film a laborious observation of an ageing and dying master-composer. They would watch him disintegrate spiritually and physically as he watches a young Polish boy with growing infatuation.

This is what happens, but Visconti is trying to make his audience (or invite them) to sit, stroll and gaze with his musician, to share his confusing and dying experience and its clash with the values of purity and hard creative work (not art as spontaneity) that he has tried to live by all his life. Symbols and colour (Venice being menaced by an infiltration of cholera, a potentially dying city and the elegant whites of the costumes, hotels and the old-fashioned lido) create a mood of dying. This is artificially emphasised by the composers being artificially made up to look young - a final deception. The composer's struggle with his standards and beliefs (flashbacks are his conscience), his mad infatuation and his death symbolize the passing of a nineteenth century world. Dirk Bogarde won the acting award at Cannes for his performance. With effort and sympathy, one can find much to appreciate in this film.

1. Did you like this film? Did you enjoy it despite its length and slow pace?

2. Comment on Visconti's re-creation of Venice 1911. Did it make a difference to your understanding of Aschenbach?

3. What kind of world did this Venice of wealthy tourists, hotels, dinners, conversations, elegant dress, and lido, represent and symbolize?

4. Death was in Venice with the hidden infiltration of cholera. What significance did this have for the whole film?

5. Did you think Visconti's leisurely style, with its long, lingering look at rooms, faces, the beach, suited the film? Would the same mood and effect have been gained with more action and swifter cross-cutting? Would the meaning of the film have been changed? is it too fanciful to call the slow pace of the film a 'dying' pace?

6. Did you understand the character of Aschenbach? Why had he come to Venice (comment on the opening of the film, its lack of colour, his face on the vaporetto, his wrangle with the gondolier, his apprehensive expression)? Was he a good man? What kind of artist was he? Had he grown old gracefully - how petulant was he, how bored, how dissatisfied? What was he searching for? What did his collapse early in the film show him?

7. How effective were the flashbacks? What did they tell you about the composer - his artistic purity, his dedicated work and planned and well-constructed art, his fear of contamination? Contrast the theories of spontaneity of Alfred. Had Aschenbach repressed his spontaneity too much so that there eventually had to be some breaking through?

8. Had Aschenbach had a happy married life - note the flashbacks to his wife, to his child, to the fresh mountains, to the prostitute and the brothel, to his being hissed at the concert and his wife's support. Were the flashbacks his conscience? Why did he remember these things in Venice?

9. Did you feel sorry for Aschenbach? Did you understand why he became infatuated by Tadzio? Did Tadzio do anything to attract the composer or was it all in his own mind and imagination? Did Visconti present the infatuation well so that we really understood what it meant to Aschenbach at this stage of his life? - the tableaux of Tadzio's family, the hazy glow in which he was photographed, the meals, the lido, the children at play?

10. Did Aschenbach make a deliberate choice to go? Did he make a real choice to come back and made his luggage an excuse? Note his contented expression as he returned to the hotel, contrasting with his earlier trip to the hotel.

11. Why was he so worried about the plague and people's secrecy? Note his imagining of his warning to Tadzio's family.

12. What was the meaning of his allowing himself to be painted to look younger - and his stalking of Tadzio through the streets? His collapse and the make-up running - what did this symbolize?

13. Why did he stay to die? Was there anything left for him?

14. Why didn't the film end with his dying? What did the extra minute where the lido attendant finds him dead and he is unceremoniously carried off add to the film?

15. The film has been considered as a work of formal perfection but not engaging. Do you agree? Did it help you to some understanding of a human being?