Based on the novel by Thomas Mann, Luchino Visconti's elegant film plays like a live production of a requiem for a lost man, with Dirk Bogarde slowly transformed from a disheveled, lost soul, into a disintegrating mess, literally melting before death finally liberates his soul.

Warner Bros have found a lovely print, and the anamorphic transfer is very clean, with fine detail, and good colour balance for Pasquale De Santis's cinematography, and Ferdinando Scarfiotti's exquisite art direction. Visconti's penchant for precision detail also adds some amusing visual humour, particularly the monstrous hats adorning women's heads, and the saber-length hatpins that are just plain nasty.

Much of the film centers around Bogarde's heavy obsession with an androgynous blonde boy, with lengthy scenes of watching, whimpering, longing, and stalking; for those familiar with Nicholas Roeg's “Don't Look Now” (1973), however, there's a peculiar sense of déjà vu, recalling Donald Sutherland's own obsessive shadowing of a red-raincoated ghost in Venice's narrow alleys. The city's aging architecture, rich history, and exposure to sometimes ominous natural elements seem to attract stories of death, secrets, and characters living unhealthy fantasy lives.

A vintage short, filmed during the movie's final street stalking sequence, assembles generous behind-the-scenes footage with English interviews from star Bogarde, and director Visconti. Billed by the narrator as the centre of Italy's ‘film triumvirate' (flanked by Frederico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni), Visconti's characterized as an exacting director with “uncompromising demands,” and “Death In Venice” certainly contains an obsessive amount of nuances and lengthy, artfully composed takes.

Viewers should note that in this rare instance, the brief and occasional background dialogue in foreign languages has been translated for the DVD's English subtitle track.

© 2004 Mark R. Hasan