Death in Venice (film)

Death in Venice
File:Death in Venice DVD cover.jpg DVD cover
Directed by	Luchino Visconti
Written by	Thomas Mann (novel) Luchino Visconti Nicola Badalucco
Produced by	Luchino Visconti
Starring	Dirk Bogarde Romolo Valli Mark Burns
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release dates	March 1, 1971 UK release
Running time	130 min
Language	English

Death in Venice is a 1971 film directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Dirk Bogarde as Gustav von Aschenbach and Björn Andresen as Tadzio. The film is based on the novella Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. It tells the story of the composer Gustav von Achenbach who travels to Venice, where he becomes obsessed with the stunning beauty of an adolescent boy named Tadzio.

Film historian Lawrence J. Quirk wrote, in his study, The Great Romantic Films (1974), "Some shots of Björn Andresen, the Tadzio of the film, could be extracted from the frame and hung on the walls of the Louvre or the Vatican in Rome. For this is not a pretty youngster who is supposed to represent an object of perverted lust; that was neither novelist Mann's nor director-screen writer Visconti's intention. Rather, this is a symbol of a beauty allied to those which inspired Michelangelo's David and Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, and which moved Dante to seek ultimate aesthetic catharsis in the distant figure of Beatrice."