Synopsis
Death in Venice (Morte a Venezia, 1971) is Luchino Visconti's Italian-French drama — watch it online on iFILM. Dirk Bogarde plays Gustav von Aschenbach, an ageing composer who arrives at the Hotel des Bains on the Venice Lido in the spring of 1911, worn down and searching for stillness. There he catches sight of Tadzio, a young Polish boy of striking beauty, and everything he thought he knew about art and desire begins to crack.
Visconti adapted Thomas Mann's 1912 novella into a film that works almost entirely through image and music. Swedish teenager Björn Andrésen was cast as Tadzio and became one of the most recognisable faces in European art cinema of the decade. Visconti chose Mahler's Fifth Symphony as the film's emotional backbone — the Adagietto runs through the picture like a slow tide. Meanwhile, cholera is quietly spreading through Venice while the authorities keep tourists in the dark.
The film took the Jury Grand Prix at Cannes in 1971. It is not a film about plot — it's about the quiet horror of an obsession a man cannot name, set against a city already beginning to rot. Stream Death in Venice (1971) on iFILM.
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