Technically exquisite, but tedious and pretentious.
I found this movie to be beautifully photographed but very tedious, if not pretentious, if not downright *annoying.*

Toward the end of the movie, there's a scene where a woman is singing what I believe is a Polish song. And she goes on and on and on and on and on and on.

She gave me a freakin' headache!

It's interesting that many of the reviewers here who gave the film 5 stars freely admit that it's

... "slow moving"

... "not an easy film to watch"

... "lacking in action."

Yeah, right! So then why give it such high praise?

It's not that a movie has to be "easy" to watch, but it does have to have enough form and substance that the audience cares, one way or another, pro or con, about the central character, especially when the central character is empathetically presented.

I didn't care very much what happened to the Dirk Bogarde character. He was introspective but without the payoff an introspective character should have. "What's on this boy's mind?" I kept asking myself.

Why should we care or empathize with the Dirk Bogarde/Gustav Mahler character? We know very little about him. Yes, Mahler was a great artist, but this isn't a great movie.

The flashback scenes where Mahler is arguing with a colleague about the meaning of art and truth were, for me, forced and overbearing -- throw-ins.

That the Mahler character wanted to stay in Venice just to be around the young boy he fancied -- sorry, but that isn't enough for me as far as a "plot" is concerned. Even great directors have trouble with plots and endings and in that regard this movie, as beautifully photgraphed and as evocative as it is, copped out. Put another way: sometimes less *isn't* more; sometimes less is just less.

When you have a movie with human beings in it, then you need to have them doing things that human beings do. What they do can be absurd, illogical, antisocial -- but have them DO SOMETHING -- fer crissakes!

There seemed to be very little going on inside or outside the Mahler character's mind. Why, for example was he fascinated by the young boy? The film suggests that perhaps he was drawn to the boy because he was obsessed with beauty; perhaps because he's a homosexual; perhaps because as a great artist he inevitably has feelings too large, too sensitive for the world of the mundane. Or a combination of all three possibilities. Ok, but where did the story go from those suggested possibilities? Those are threads, it seems to me, that are relatively "easy" to establish in a movie -- the real art comes in taking those threads and making something meaningful with them. And here's where Visconti's work, ambitious and as technical masterful as it is, falls short.

The threads in great movies may not explain all there is to know or even all there is to contemplate in the human condition, but when the final scene is over, the audience should feel as though some insight has been offered -- insight beyond exquisite technical proficiency and/or outstanding "acting." How can an actor (Dirk Bogarde) give a great performance when his character lacks greatness within the context of the film. here I'm using the word "greatness" to mean a touchstone for an insight into the human condition. That just got by me in this movie.

The only thing I really "cared about" was Dirk Bogarde's luggage!

It's impossible to say that this was a bad movie or a failure, just a great disappointment and a bore.

Resubmitting review of "Death in Venice"
I already submitted this review last week. What I recall stating was that this was a beautiful VHS copy, am glad to have it, but that neither Amazon nor the seller gave any information that this was dubbed rather than subtitled.
So, as I stated before, this is a terrific product but more information would be much appreciated, especially with films where subtitles are preferred.

Film only for those gifted from Muses and Graces
It is hard to believe that some fellow from Illinois or the Midwest in general may enjoy this Gift from Venus. So, please, go and rent some other piece of junk at Blockbuster, you all farm-minded ignorants.
I'll signore Pecorelli

The sound of silence
The casting, acting, and visual surroundings are superb. One scene in particular stays with me: Aschenbach has seated himself so that he can compose music while looking at the boy (and we hear the Mahler he is composing).

What I don't understand is Aschenbach's interior silence. The story (Thomas Mann's) is told by a narrator, but Thomas Mann hardly ever created a principle character who wasn't full of recordable thoughts and feelings, and Aschenbach is not that exception. Aschenbach quotes (and misquotes!) authors in his head, has recorded thoughts, scraps of thoughts, feelings, scraps of feelings continually. I can only assume that Visconti, working in a visual medium, wanted to substitute Bogarde's face for what we read on the page. Although this is sometimes successful, it also accounts for the few negative reviews this film got--mostly due to not enough going on. Bogarde's face is wonderful, but Thomas Mann is a little more wonderful.

But STILL...5 stars.

***

"Mr. Bogarde, you have your rings mixed up."
(wriggling his fingers) "No, I don't."
"A wedding band goes on the fourth finger of your left hand, not right."
"Not if you're a German in 1911, it doesn't."
" Is that a fact? Well, nobody else wears one there. So switch it."
(Bogarde switches the wedding band to the fourth finger of his left hand)
"...and with your own ring--the onex--you always wear that one, don't you?"
"Unless the director doesn't want me to, yes."
"Put that one on the little finger of your right hand--it's too much with the wedding ring on the left hand."
(Bogarde moves his own ring to his right hand) "I'll be darned. It fits."
"Let's see."
(Bogarde holds his hands out). "Yes, that's fine. This director does not object."

***

Parting glances
Depending on whom you ask, Visconti's "Death in Venice" is either the most monumentally boring and pretentious film ever made or a wonderfully poetic and profound reflection on life, death, and what it takes to be a great artist. While I agree that gazing for hours into Andresen's ever-sleepy eyes can be a bit yawn-inducing at some points, in general I am in the latter camp. If beauty is its own justification (and consequently does not need words), then this work may perhaps be seen as the almost perfect embodiment of that idea in filmic form -- a movie with relatively little dialogue of any importance to the plot that completely relies on its photography and the Mahler symphonies as a score to convey whatever it has to say. And surprisingly, this movie actually feels less boring each time you watch it, so those who think it to be tedious have not seen it once too many but not often enough.

The novella on which this is based is well-known, but Visconti does not exactly make it easier for his viewers by doing away with the amusing little asides Mann gives us about von Aschenbach: "a man who had learned to administrate his fame", for instance. There are some flashbacks and Bogarde does his best to fill in missing details about his character by subtle facial expressions and body language, but it still helps enormously to have read the novella. Otherwise, even though the story seems simple enough at first glance, it might be a bit confusing at times. And that does not even cover all the little things Visconti throws in in top of what is in the novella, for example what is it about the photographer at the beach with his monstrous camera, which is featured so prominently in the scene at the end when Tadzio walks out into the sea? Also notice that the steamer that brings von Aschenbach to Venice is called 'Esmeralda', like the young prostitute we se him visiting in Germany in one of the flashbacks. Several viewings are required to fully catch each of these little details.

The movie relishes in contrasting the external and obvious with the internal and hidden. Just like the cholera epidemic that strikes Venice, von Aschenbach's emotional turmoils take place behind a stoic facade that only gets cracks during the finale of the film. Or study the gestures and facial expressions of the hotel director (the same actor who played the family priest in "The Leopard") when von Aschenbach is not looking at him. Ambiguity is really the keyword here.

Perhaps this is also the only film from the 1970s where the constant use of the zoom lens actually makes sense from a storytelling standpoint, because it allows us to go without cuts from the external (the hotel, the beach, people chatting, etc.) to the internal, to drill into von Aschenbach's eyes and soul and explore the unspoken thing that goes on between him and Tadzio.

The gist of the film seems to be that von Aschenbach realizes that his German friend Alfred is actually right -- to be a really great artist you have to open yourself fully to the subject of your art. But unfortunately, as soon as he accomplishes that, he also falls prey to his self-destructive, obsessive tendencies, which were probably the reason why he always tried to control himself as much as possible in the first place. His death is also ambiguous -- while he may simply have succumbed to cholera (external cause), he might also have died of an artist's broken heart (internal cause) -- the realization that he may never be able to create the perfectly beautiful work of art he desires, as symbolized in the movie by Tadzio.

The brilliant Criterion edition of "The Leopard" makes you wish that all Visconti films had been shot in Technirama and that they were all available from Criterion. But of course that is not the case. This one is in Panavision and when you compare it to "The Leopard", you do see the picture is a bit fuzzier and more grainy here, either due to the smaller negative or because WB did not do such a good job with the transfer. (If your DVD player has any post-processing options for improving image clarity it might be a good idea to turn them on for this disc.) Unfortunately, Visconti's zoom lens not only adds even more softness to the image but also some noticeable chromatic aberration (i.e., those colorful fringes around bright objects), particularly in the outdoor scenes. But in general the quality of the visuals is quite acceptable.

But maybe this film should never have been shot anamorphic in the first place. "The Leopard" was all about wide shots of sprawling landscapes and huge palace rooms, while "Death in Venice" mostly deals with closeups of faces. I have always felt that these more intimate movies actually work better in 4:3 than an anamorphic format, as it lets the audience concentrate more on the actors's facial expressions. (That is also why I have my reservations about people using 16:9 in their home movies to make them look more "professional".) As it is, I will make the heretic-sounding recommendation to use the zoom function of the DVD player to fill the 16:9 screen. You may find that the movie actually benefits from the tighter framing and that von Aschenbach's desperation in the end feels even more palpable than in 2.39:1. And you will discover the composition is still perfect in the cropped version -- Visconti knew better than to put important people or objects at the edges of his Panavision frame.

The extras on the disc are not exactly mind-blowing, although there is a ten-minute featurette with Visconti on the set of the movie, which is quite interesting, since Visconti generally did not talk about his work very much. So it is fascinating to at least get a glimpse of his approach to filmmaking. The English subtitles are also worth reading, as they translate a lot of all the French, Italian, Polish, and muffled English dialogue. Not that it is important for the plot, but enlightening nonetheless.

I also don't understand why WB still uses those flimsy cardboard/plastic cases for their DVDs. Perhaps they should realize that those cases not only look cheap but are also extremely inconvenient (especially when you try to peel off those plastic labels on the front and the cardboard underneath sticks to them and tears off!). A move to the cases everybody else is using would be much appreciated. But this is still an excellent movie, no matter what type of case it may come in. One of the masterpieces of a director who might only have Kubrick as a near-equal.