ART. You may see a hundred movies and then, one day, you go back to the likes of Death in Venice and everything is there again. All the little things that were missing in the other hundred. Mahler and Visconti and Thomas Mann and Venice, the light, the water, the sand, the umbrellas, the white clothes, the time, the time to watch it without any hurry, every single photogram. All that put together.
Every time you go back, everything is there, again.
Puedes ver cien películas y luego, un día, vuelves a tropezar con una como Muerte en Venecia y todo está allí de nuevo. Todas las pequeñas cosas que no estaban en las otras cien. Mahler y Visconti y Thomas Mann, la luz, el agua, la arena, los parasoles, los vestidos blancos, el tiempo, el tiempo para verla sin prisa, cada fotograma.
Cada vez que vuelves a ella, está todo allí, de nuevo.
Hello:
ReplyDeleteWe could not agree more. That most magical of cities and captured with such beauty and style in the film.
Happily for us a overnight train leaves Budapest every evening for Venice; we are often on it.
Yep - it's a classic! thanks for reminding me to have another look at it some time soon
ReplyDeleteoh j'ai tant aimé ce film… merci de raviver ces souvenirs.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of the saddest and most grandiose films I have ever seen. I agree with all your words about it.
ReplyDeleteToda la película es pura estética, como bien dices para disfrutar cada fotograma. Salu2.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favourite movies! You are so right about everything still being there and lacking from other movies. However when I go back to see a movie or re-read a book i always notice something that I didn't before!
ReplyDeleteSuperbe film, que de souvenirs.
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ReplyDeleteLuchino Visconti’s “Death in Venice” (1971) and How It Was Misperceived By The American Mass Cultural Worldview – (De-sublimated) “Sexcitement” vs. Overtones of Homoeroticism As A Part of Existential Sublime
ReplyDeleteCreative Emotional Alchemy of A priori Re-incarnation
Luchino Visconti’s “Death in Venice” (1971) When DV was released in US, American mass-cultural project of “liberating de-sublimation” in all areas of life was in a process of being deployed in full power. Visconti’s film narrates the story of last weeks of life of the person of rare sublimity of character and a great composer (Visconti sculpted his protagonist in view of Gustav Mahler) who became erotically obsessed with a young boy of classical beauty inspiring in him an unconscious mystical project of a priori reincarnation – the feeling that he will not lose the beauty of this world completely with his passing away (spiritual ties to the boy will somehow prevent it from happening). In mid-70s Visconti’s film fell victim to the climate antithetical to psychological sophistication as “educated snobbery” - it was understood as a sentimental story about an old and sick homosexual, Gustav Aschenbach coming out of the closet. Visconti addresses in advance the tendency of pop-mind not to differentiate between homoeroticism and homosexuality – he personifies this non-differentiation into two episodic characters: a personage on the ship arriving to Venice who insinuates that Gustav’s carries “ambiguous” sexual intentions and a clownish pantomime artist who “deconstructs” in his performance Gustav’s spiritual torments as sexual ones. Today, in forty years after the film was made, it becomes more obvious that DV is not gay-lib flick; the film is a cultural call for more complicated psychological life and more sublime and profound emotional ties between lovers, friends and human beings in general. DV is about a cognitive rapport between the emotional intelligence in two human beings, Gustav and Tadzio, both trying to understand the mystery of Gustav’s attraction to the boy. Homoeroticism (as different from homosexuality) is a spiritual parenthood or brotherhood and sisterhood helping people to accept death as a symbolic resurrection instead of being hooked on surplus-money and extra-power as a symbolic immortality. The film is a unique visual incarnation of serious music (here, Mahler’s). Cognitive mutuality between Gustav and Tadzio is depicted by Visconti as a triumph of human intelligence over human predicaments. Dirk Bogarde’s performance registering even the smallest movements in Gustav’s feelings with tactful articulateness and the grace is a unique example of the actor’s mastery of human psychology.
by victor enyutin