Nāve Venēcijā / Смерть в Венеции / Death in Venice

DEATH  IN VENICE
Morte a Venezia, 
Italy, France,USA, 1971, 130 min
Director: Luchino Visconti
Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Romolo Valli, Marisa Berenson, Carole André, Björn Andrésen, Silvana Mangano 

 “Whoever has seen beauty face to face is already marked by death,” wrote August von Platen.

Did Professor Gustav von Aschenbach reflect on this when he resolutely chose Venice as a refuge from the torment of his soul?
Is there another city in the world where one may wander aimlessly along canals, gazing into the depths of time mirrored in the green waters of the lagoon; lose oneself in narrow labyrinthine streets; surrender to the dazzling beauty of architecture eroded by water and time; breathe in the faintly sweet scent of algae and decay — and still stand in awe before this vast stone mass, slowly, heavily sinking into the sea?
Where else could a weary, disoriented musician turn, longing for solace — or perhaps for inspiration — in search of a divine harmony of sound?
Absorbed in the refined splendor of the city, letting his indifferent gaze drift across the faces around him, he suddenly stops, struck by an extraordinary vision…
It is love — unwanted, impossible, and yet inevitable: the love of an artist for the final apparition of Beauty; of a man for an unimaginable, illusory happiness. A fusion of shame, awkwardness, suffering, fever — and the sweetest, most forbidden delight.
Meanwhile, the sirocco — searing, laden with African dust and suffocating Mediterranean humidity — descends upon the ancient city.
An unbearable heat settles over the streets; the air grows so dense that scents no longer dissipate, but gather and swirl.
Driven by the wind, the water rises and floods Piazza San Marco, encircling the Doge’s Palace in a sinister ring.
And with it, merciless Asiatic cholera comes to Venice. And death.
In this existential retro-drama, three great artists of the twentieth century — Luchino Visconti, Thomas Mann, and Gustav Mahler — invite us to grasp and feel the image, the soul, and the spirit of Venice.
The film’s enduring power lies in its capacity, even after more than half a century, to immerse the viewer completely: exquisitely crafted, imbued with the tangible Venetian scent of decay and dissolution, it reveals the aching beauty of a waning decadence at the twilight of the belle époque.
A beauty that ceases to console and becomes instead a temptation — at once fatal and elevating.
 “I did not choose Death in Venice; it chose me. One might say that the theme of this work — which may be understood as the ‘death of art’ in its unequal struggle with life, or as the triumph of ‘politics’ over ‘aesthetics’ — remains as relevant today as ever.” — Luchino Visconti