Ladymol's Review

I hated this film. I know it’s a classic, and you’re always supposed to like classics, but it’s so interminably slow that I really don’t have enough life left to spare for something like this. Dirk Bogart’s performance seemed utterly over the top to me. He spends most of the film on the verge of a heart attack: sweating, grey, staggering.

The film is a magnificent piece of costume drama, however. I can’t fault the costumes. The setting, in Venice, is utterly authentic. But nothing happens. Bogart spends the whole film watching this pretty boy then he dies. The boy is pretty, but he’s nothing more than that. He’s as vacant as the perfect sunset or the perfect flowers. Their whole world seems to be one of surface perfection and underlying longing, which doesn’t really lend itself to a film. I’ve not read the book, but I suspect that it’s a better medium to convey a story like this.

Cerisaye's Review

The first time I saw this movie based on a novella by Thomas Mann my lingering memory was Dirk Bogarde in a chair on the Venice Lido with hairdye creeping down his face.  And bemused, bewildered bafflement.  Now, I found the film almost unbearably sad, an elegant elegy to unattainable youth & beauty.

Professor Aschenbach goes to Venice to rest & recuperate.  He’s a composer who, following personal tragedy, suffers a sort of breakdown.  He gets very little peace, however, because he develops an obsession with a beautiful youth, Tadzio (Bjorn Andresen), son of a Polish noble family staying at the same hotel by the beach. 

Aschenbach struggles with infatuation, tormented by overwhelming attraction to this unobtainable boy, whose adolescent vitality so contrasts with his own decrepitude.  Andresen decorates the cover of Germaine Greer’s homage to male youth, The Boy.  Visconti knew what he was doing when he cast the film.

Aschenbach watches Tadzio, who knows he’s the object of attention. Tadzio, a perfect illusion of youthful innocence, is a shameless coquette.  He enjoys the power he has over the older man, leading him on to see how far he’ll go.  He cavorts on the beach wearing a clinging bathing costume that reveals his lithe body, flirting with Aschenbach, driving him crazy with unrequited love.

Venice almost steals the show, another character in the story, decayed, corrupt, hiding its secrets.  Aschenbach’s visit coincides with an outbreak of cholera, a plague that terrorises the city, though a conspiracy of silence tries to keep news of the pestilence from the tourists on whose money Venice depends.  Clearly a metaphor for the sickness that threatens to destroy Ashenbach, corruption of mind & soul.  It’s painful to watch him crumble under emotional intensity.  Most of all when he allows a barber to dye his hair and make him up like a grotesque queen, rouged and painted in a pathetic attempt to look younger.  Has he crossed the line between voyeurism and actually wanting to act on his desire?  I don’t know.

Andresen is so perfect it’s easy to understand Aschenbach’s obsession.  He never properly meets the boy, so not to spoil the illusion.  Tadzio’s the one to show signs of homosexuality whereas Aschenbach is repressed.   I wasn’t sure whether Aschenbach’s relationship with his colleague we see in flashback is meant to imply more than friendship.  The movie isn’t very erotic though it fetishises youthful beauty. 

There are moments when it gets ridiculous.  Most of us will have seen take-offs, so it’s sometimes hard to keep a straight face. The film moves very slowly, with little dialogue or action.  Bogarde conveys Aschenbach’s obsession for Tadzio without making him into a dirty old man.  He’s hardly predatory.  It’s Tadzio who calls the shots.  Though I wonder whether the film could be made today, sure to be condemned for promoting paedophilia.  Is there a double standard at work here, that pederasty is okay in arty movies watched by an elite? 

This is a classic gay movie.  From the era when homosexuality meant no happy endings.  If it’s a story about coming out, and I’m not so sure it is, then it’s a pity Aschenbach seems almost to welcome his own destruction as some sort of divine punishment for daring to love so unwisely.   It’s one of the most beautiful films you’re ever likely to see.  It gave me plenty to think about.  And that ending is still unforgettable.