Lucchino Visconti: Death in Venice Viewing Questions 1. The overall pacing of Visconti s Death in Venice matches, in its slow movement, that of Mann s novella. However, the screenplay is surprisingly free of dialogue. Why? What impression(s) do you, as a viewer, take away from this combination of leisurely pace and relative silence ? 2. Visconti makes Aschenbach a composer rather than a writer. Why this change? 3. Visconti dispenses with the ominous traveler who confronts Aschenbach in the first part of Mann s novella. He keeps the painted older man, but the appearance is only cameo. In short, he seems to dispense with the time Aschenbach spends in Germany, in preparation for travel. What do you make of these adjustments? 4. Aschenbach s meditation on the hourglass, which takes place in one of the film s numerous flashbacks, is forefronted to early in the film, rather than its place somewhat later in the novel. Why? 5. Speaking of flashbacks, why so many of them? Why do our thoughts rest on Ashenbach s friendship with Alfred and on memories of his wife and daughter? What do these add to (or detract from) the storytelling of the film? 6. Possibly just as important when we consider the flashbacks in the film: why do we move so fluidly into them, when it is usually a directorial decision to mark them off clearly from the narrative present? 7. What are we to make of the exchange between Alfred and Aschenbach regarding art and morality? How do you see it informing the story that Visconti tells? Do you find it a relevant exchange in the context of Mann s novella? 8. What Visconti emphasizes more, it seems, than in the novella is the attempt of the city to cover up the epidemic and preserve the tourist trade. What do you make of this adjustment? 9. In Visconti s version of the story, contact between Aschenbach and Tadzio seems more definite and direct. Tadzio seems to be aware of Aschenbach s adoration, and even, perhaps, to encourage it. How does this shape your understanding of the relationship? Of what is going on in Aschenbach s thought? 10. The visit to the prostitute in the film is, as you have discovered, nowhere in Mann s novella. It is, in fact a transplant from his later novel, <a href="/keyword/doctor-faustus/" >doctor faustus</a> . Why would Visconti fuse the two works and bring Esmeralda into Death in Venice? 11. Notice how mirrors are used in the film. What do you make of this imagery? 12. Pay special attention to the film s final flashback, which begins with a highly unsuccessful concert of Aschenbach s, moves through Alfred s post-mortem of just what is wrong with his friend s music, and concludes in the Venice of the narrative present. How might you see this sequence as Visconti s visual engagement of the ideas he has adapted from Mann and explored earlier in the film through dialogue?