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Luchino Visconti has become famous to the world after his marvelous production THE LEOPARD. Movie fans got to know the style of the director who introduced himself as one among the post war new realists, an aristocrat who developed his individual free thinking and, consequently, expressed them as an artist. However, when applied to this movie, MORTE A VENEZIA based upon the novel by Thomas Mann, it's a slightly different story.
The entire film is, at first view, so unique, so psychological and so much influenced by the various thoughts of an artist (both director and main character Gustav von Aschenbach) that it seems to be "unwatchable" for many viewers. Therefore, such opinions about the movie rose as being "too slow", "unendurable" or "endless boredom". Why? The reason seems to lie in a significant view widespread nowadays: "GOOD MOVIE IS PARALLEL TO FLAWLESS ACTION." Here, it would be appropriate to say: "GOOD MOVIE IS PARALLEL TO NO ACTION." As a matter of fact, everyone would be able to say one sentence about the whole movie's content and that would suffice. All that we find in MORTE A VENEZIA has a sense of vague reality filled with both profoundity and shallowness that appear to be significant for the sake of each single moment. And it is so when we notice the psychedelic scenes in Venice, when we see Gustav at the railroad station, when we are supplied with his intensely emotional memories. The insight into his decaying mind is sometimes so intense that the only way for the viewer to go on watching the film is to do his/her best to feel and experience rather than see and think. All is doomed to fade, to wither like flowers on meadow when their time comes. In other words, all has a sense of loss and death without many events or even dialogs. As a result, it is quite unlikely that you will get the idea of the movie after a single viewing. It must be seen more than twice with the mind that is constantly open. If you'll like it or not...that's a different story, very personal one.
The artistic values are the factor that is noticeable at first sight and stays with us throughout. Beauty as something very meaningful for the main character that appears to come and leave; rest as something he's heading for so badly and which comes to him in the most unexpected way; feeling that he finds in a teenage boy who appears as a model of all the dreams and desires, as a forbidden fruit of homosexual lust which vanishes. The costume designer Piero Tosi does a splendid job in this movie. Through lots of wonderful wardrobe he supplies us with a very realistic view of 1911 when the action takes place. The cinematographer Pasqualino De Santis provides us with a terrific visual experience that can be called a real feast for the eyes. And in the background comes Gustav Mahler's music, the composer whose life inspired Thomas Mann to introduce the character.
The performances are top notch, particularly from Dirk Bogart as the main character, Gustav von Aschenbach, who wants a rest after hard artistic job and vainly attempts to find it in crowded Venice. For the majority of the film, we have a great insight into his thoughts, feelings and acts of anger, exhaust and despair. Though sometimes depressing, he keeps us on the right track till the end not losing hope for the less tragic end... Tadzio (Bjorn Andersen) depicts the model of decadent homosexual desire but also a model of beauty and purity that appears to last pretty short... "Adieu Tadzio, it was all too short" says the main character. A great, though very controversial, job is done by Mark Burns as a sort of "super ego" Alfred with whom Gustav polemics about such ideals as beauty, justice, hope, human dignity. For Alfred, beauty belongs to the senses. How Freudian, yet how dangerous the idea might be! And ever present in artistic Italian movies of the time, Silvana Mangano - here as an elegant lady from Poland, Tadzio's mother.
Memorable moments indeed constitute the movie's strong points; yet, not all viewers will find them unforgettable. They, similarly to the whole odd movie, require much effort to get onto the right track in director's individual ego and within the four walls of his psyche. Among such scenes, I consider the beach sequence pretty important, particularly the way Gustav observes Tadzio. The physical distance accurately represents the lack of courage to come closer... I also appreciate the shots when Gustav is sitting in the gondola and the city's view moves in the background - how memorably that may raise existential thoughts of transfer. Aren't we, people, a sort of "passangers" in the world, in the journey that life is.
In the end, I must tell you one important thing. I had found MORTE A VENEZIA extremely weird until I started to look deeper at what the director is really trying to convey. Then, every scene turned out to be meaningful in its interpretation with which you don't have to agree (I hardly agree with anything the main character does) but you should at least tolerate this as something the author badly wanted to say. Listen to his voice, allow him for a few words in one page of reality...
Therefore, there is a long way towards understanding the film since not many movies like that were being made in 1971 and are being made now. Paradoxically, it seems that we are all bound to have the right feelings about this film in the long run similarly to that we are all bound to experience once a strange, unavoidable, usually unexpected reality that death is... 7/10


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