If Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini had a penchant it was for voluptuous
women and seductive nymphet girls, then Luchino Visconti must have had a penchant
for voyeur types that idolize sex objects from afar. Visconti’s sexual
obsession tale Death in Venice must have been a groundbreaking
sensation when it premiered in 1971 only because it danced with taboo, but now
it’s just embarrassing. The story deals with an obsessive attraction that
an aging composer has for a young boy who embodies perfect beauty in his eyes.
The maestro, Gustav Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde), meanders alone in Venice on his
getaway when he locks eyes with a boy whose family is visiting from Poland.
He spends the film not exactly stalking him but casually arriving in areas ahead
of time before the boy crosses his path so he can stare at him.
There’s a lot of staring and a lot of discreet leering at the film and
not much else. The film is based on a Thomas Mann novel which must have contained
some generous internal dialogue with the main character. But in the film there
is no central idea of who this man is, he’s left as a mysterious lecher
with intellectual pretensions. Gustav mostly comes off as a pervert whose greatest
elation is seeing the curly-locks blonde boy seen against a gentle backlight.
In the novel, to my understanding, there is a certain ambiguity to the protagonist
because this boy stirs up emotions in the maestro that he can not entirely understand.
The film has no ambiguity because the maestro has a straight-forward homosexual
attraction for the boy.
The book has another crucial difference from the movie according to film critic
Roger Ebert. “The way Mann tells the story, the boy is totally unaware
of any homosexual implication – and the man indeed is in love with an
ideal rather than a person,” says Ebert, Roger Ebert’s Movie Home
Companion, 1990 Edition. “The boy’s function in the film, which
he performs at least two dozen times, is to self-consciously pose in front of
the man, turn slowly, smile sweetly, and turn languorously away.” Two
dozen times might be a generous low-estimation, Roger! The entire film is made
up of this repetition, in different locales, in different blocking arrangements,
in different lighting. Occasionally there are flashbacks at his life before
his trip to the city of canals, but that’s it. I couldn’t further
appreciate the insight however, Roger, thank you.
This boy is practically leading this old man on with his eyes – the way
he’s photographed by Visconti is as obsessive as how Kubrick photographed
his props in his films. In fact, prior to this film, the most thoroughly detailed
portrait of obsessive love between in old man and a young child was Kubrick’s
Lolita which contained that famous shot of Sue Lyon tantalizingly sputtering
her eyelashes at a befuddled Humbert Humbert who to his credit, tried to maintain
a sense of guilt about his feelings. Tadzio, the boy and object of Venice, skips
along in pretty boy sailor outfits and swim suits and is gussied up in blushing
white virgin scarves in the film. Visconti treats his subject as if he were
interested in photographing a centerfold and not a true flesh-and-blood character.
This is maybe one of the rare films ever made that is specifically geared to
an audience of perverts who dream of spying on young and innocent boys.
There isn’t much in the flashbacks to justify the present story. There
are just embarrassing passages of didactic dialogue. What we learn of Gustav
in the flashbacks is his diffident behavior with his wife and child, the funeral
of his child, his seeming impotence with a prostitute in a bordello and the
heavy-handed discussions about “beauty” with colleagues. “The
creation of beauty and purity is a spiritual act,” says Gustav. “Beauty
belongs to the senses!” his comrade argues. As brief and transitory as
the film’s dialogue is, it manages to be screeching to the ears. The only
harmony on the soundtrack is the classical Gustav Mahler music which connotes
the only feeling of sad sincerity in the film. The film is distasteful all the
way through without being truly filthy. While there is a fatality in the film,
you’re likely to prefer a permanent moratorium on the film. Undeniably
beautiful in its imagery of the canals, Venice is inevitably an art-house snoozer
with portentous window dressing.
On the DVD, there is a ten-minute piece called “Visconti’s Venice”
which document the days leading up to the first days of shooting. There’s
some pretentious praise showered on Visconti and his operatic methods, but nevertheless,
some interesting behind the scenes footage does arise. The disc includes a stills
gallery and a theatrical trailer. But these additions do not improve on the
film at all. Movie: *1/2 Extras: **
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