DEATH IN VENICE

Another forgotten favourite and the use of music in this stuck with me forever. I loved the melancholy Mahler and his life story too with his wife having affairs with artists from the Secession (Klimt etc) although I didn't realise it was originally about an author in original character Aschenbach

Death in Venice is originally a novella written by the German author Thomas Mann in 1912 as 'Der Tod in Venedig'. The work presents a great writer suffering writer's block who visits Venice and is liberated, uplifted, and then increasingly obsessed, by the sight of a stunningly beautiful youth.

Dirk Bogarde brave as the failing Aschenbach/Mahler in the film allowing the connection with the soundtrack and the Mahler association with the composer reveal his homosexuality's the principle character falling for a beautiful young boy in the cholera ridden Venice before he dies of a heart attack.

Death In Venice 1971 - Visconti

Silvana Mangano, 1950, photo by Peter Basch

Though almost all of her film work was done in Italy, beginning with her big success in Riso Amaro (Bitter Rice) in 1949, she did appear in several well-known international productions: Teorema, Death in Venice, Dune

Mangano in 'Death In Venice'

Dirk Bogarde and Visconti on the set

Bogarde and Visconti on the beach

 Björn Andrésen as Tadzio - Death in Venice

 Andresen struggled with the affects the film had upon his career and he objected finally to the gay iconography he was forced to become a part of. The Director cast and crew took the then teenager to gay night clubs and dance spots in Venice and he was uncomfortable with the greedy adulation for his striking and undoubted beauty. 

Dirk Bogarde in Venice 1971