Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1575 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-06-01
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 125 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Luchino Visconti's adaptation of the Thomas Mann story Death in Venice is the very definition of sumptuous: the costumes and sets, the special geography of Venice, and the breathtaking cinematography combine to form a heady experience. At the centre of this gorgeousness is Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde in a meticulous performance), a controlled intellectual who unexpectedly finds himself obsessed by the vision of a 14-year-old boy while on a convalescent vacation in 1911. Visconti has turned Aschenbach into a composer, which accounts for the lush excerpts from Mahler on the soundtrack (Bogarde is meant to look like Mahler, too). Even if it tends to hit the nail on the head a little too forcefully, and even if Visconti can test one's patience with lingering looks at crowds at the beach and hotel dining rooms, Death in Venice creates a lushness rare in movies. --Robert Horton

Special Features

• Visconti's Venice featurette
  
• A Tour Of Venice photo gallery
  
• Trailer
  
• Interactive menu
  
• Scene access

DVD Technical Information:

• Aspect Ratio: Widescreen 2.35:1 Anamorphic
  
• Audio: Dolby Digital (1.0) Mono
  
• Running Time: 2 hours and 5 minutes approx.
  
• Region Code: 2

Synopsis
Luchino Visconti's striking adaptation of Thomas Mann's DEATH IN VENICE follows the sickly composer, Gustav von Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde). As the film begins, Aschenbach is arriving by steam boat in Venice from Munich. He is deeply distracted, nervous, uncomfortable, and conflicted. Nonetheless, he settles into a breathtaking seaside resort, where he fixates on Tadzio (Bjorn Andresen), an angelic blond Polish boy who is there with his family. While flashbacks to happy times spent with his wife and small daughter fill in some of the blanks of Aschenbach's personal past, others recall Aschenbach's harsh and competitive friend, Alfred (Mark Burns), who criticised Aschenbach's music for being overly perfected and thus lacking in beauty and passion. Through these flashbacks, it becomes evident that Aschenbach feels defeated in both his personal and his professional lives. The film uses very little dialogue, relying largely on the characters's facial expressions to communicate the tortured mentality of the protagonist, the curious vanity of young Tadzio, and the precocious airs of the bourgeois women who parade the Venetian beaches in taffeta, bonnets, and parasols. As Aschenbach's infatuation with Tadzio grows beyond his control, he learns that, "Venice is gripped by pestilence," and the city is being sequestered to prevent the spread of a cholera outbreak. With concentrated, languid pacing, a colour scheme consisting of bold blacks and stark whites that are a constant reminder of the inevitable, and some hauntingly surreal scenes, DEATH IN VENICE captures the poignancy of Mann's novel with a sharp, sinister, and unwavering accuracy.

Customer Reviews

Cinema for cinema lovers
A proper film made the proper way, by not caring too much what the mass market might think of it. That's right, it's almost completely uncommercial in my opinion, and that's one of the main reasons for liking it. Photography, direction, filmscore, Bogarde, all superb. Will send you into artistic raptures or send you to sleep...or even both.

The acting couldn't save it
I adored the book and found the film a bit dull. It's always difficult to put a film on the screen when the book is almost entirely in someone's head. Bogarde does admirably and is very convincing as the obsessed professor, but even he couldn't really portray how much he loved Tadzio.

Tadzio is incandescent, and youthfully sensual and the music and the scenery is fabulous but it wasn't for me. I prefer the book, hugely.

dirk bogarde steals the show
Absolutely shocking sound quality nearly ruined this film but the quality of Dirk Bogarde's acting and a simple story well told saved the day. I studied the book many years ago and it seems to be a good re-telling of a story of a man who comes to terms with beauty rather than trying to create it in a mechanistic manner through art (a theme told in a rather clumsy fashion).

The end is moving for the lonely way of his death and the soundtrack is just fantastic. The quality of the camerawork is exceptionally high - sometimes it feels more like we are lingering over a canvas rather than watching a film.