Death in Venice (1971)
High-class gay kitsch. Luchino Luchino Visconti's adaptation of the Thomas Mann novella looks gorgeous but has none of the subtlety of the original work. Visconti changed the protagonist, nicely played by Dirk Bogarde, from a novelist to a composer loosely based on Mahler, probably as an excuse to cover the soundtrack with Mahler's music, which overwhelms the film itself. It also provides Visconti with justification for ignoring the complex inner life of the hero, whose thoughts about writing and art and his own emotional turmoil are completely absent from the film. Presumably composers don't have all those heavy thoughts in their heads the way writers do. The result is over two hours of middle-aged Bogarde staring longingly at an effeminate blonde boy on the beaches of Venice. I found it difficult to keep up with the agonizingly slow pace. Instead I amused myself with speculating on how Pauline Kael must have eviscerated it, but when I looked in her 5001 Nights at the Movies, I was disappointed to discover that the film wasn't included. I guess Penelope Gilliatt (who alternated with Kael every six months as The New Yorker's film critic) was saddled with reviewing this white elephant.
For those looking for better examples of Visconti's work, The Damned (1969), also starring Dirk Bogarde is a compelling look at Nazism but shares Death in Venices's (and Visconti's) obsession with the gay theme (not that there's anything wrong with that, to quote Seinfeld), since it focuses on the SA, or brownshirts, a paramilitary Nazi group which was heavily homosexual and eliminated by Hitler shortly after he took power in the Night of the Long Knives.
But enough about influences. Get hold of the above films and prepare for many hours of dazzling imagery and pointed social critique. Unlike so much of today's Hollywood product, you won't find climaxes every 3 minutes. Or is it every 2 minutes?
For those looking for better examples of Visconti's work, The Damned (1969), also starring Dirk Bogarde is a compelling look at Nazism but shares Death in Venices's (and Visconti's) obsession with the gay theme (not that there's anything wrong with that, to quote Seinfeld), since it focuses on the SA, or brownshirts, a paramilitary Nazi group which was heavily homosexual and eliminated by Hitler shortly after he took power in the Night of the Long Knives.
La Terra Trema (1948) is a nearly three-hour long neorealist film about Italian fishermen and their families. (All right, it's 2 hours and 40 minutes, but it felt longer.) One of my college film professors thought it was one of the three greatest films ever made. (I still wonder what the other two were.) I struggled to stay awake.
The Innocent 1976, with Seventies Italian superstar Giancarlo Giannini and the ineffably lovely Laura Antonelli, was Visconti's last film. It's visually impressive and enjoyable.
I haven't seen the two Visconti films that are perhaps most highly-regarded, The Leopard (1963), and Rocco and His Brothers (1960); I dearly look forward to seeing his first film, Osessione (1943), an adaptation of the 1934 James M. Cain novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, which would be brilliantly made in Hollywood with John Garfield and Lana Turner, 3 years after Visconti's version.
Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo, was an Italian aristocrat, a communist, an openly gay man, a screenwriter and director whose films are long and leisurely and invariably beautiful to look at. There's no question in my mind that Kubrick was influenced by him (and by Antonioni and Max Ophuls), particularly in Barry Lyndon. (Marissa Berenson plays the wife in that film and also Death in Venice). I think both Kubrick and Robert Altman appropriated Visconti's slow zoom ins and zoom outs and graceful panning shots. Eyes Wide Shut seems to be influenced by Visconti's fascination with decadence as well.
Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo, was an Italian aristocrat, a communist, an openly gay man, a screenwriter and director whose films are long and leisurely and invariably beautiful to look at. There's no question in my mind that Kubrick was influenced by him (and by Antonioni and Max Ophuls), particularly in Barry Lyndon. (Marissa Berenson plays the wife in that film and also Death in Venice). I think both Kubrick and Robert Altman appropriated Visconti's slow zoom ins and zoom outs and graceful panning shots. Eyes Wide Shut seems to be influenced by Visconti's fascination with decadence as well.
But enough about influences. Get hold of the above films and prepare for many hours of dazzling imagery and pointed social critique. Unlike so much of today's Hollywood product, you won't find climaxes every 3 minutes. Or is it every 2 minutes?
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