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Italian 50 Lecture 8 Death in Venice.pptx - Italian 50...

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Italian 50 Lecture 8 Luchino Visconti’s Film, Death in Venice (1971) Based on the novella by Thomas Mann (1912)
This text brings together two great artists. •German writer Thomas Mann (1875-1955), author of the short story, “Death in Venice,” won the Nobel prize in literature in 1929. Mann fled to Switzerland when Hitler came to power in 1933. In 1939 when World War Two broke out, he escapedto the US. He moved back to Switzerland in 1952. • The story was published in 1912. • Luchino Visconti (1906-1976) is one of the great directors of post-War Italian cinema.The film came out in 1971. • The film’s cast is also distinguished, especially Dirk Bogarde, who playsthe composer, Gustav von Aschenbach .
A ponderous, slowly-paced film that demands a different kind of attention from the average film viewer, the mode ofDeath in Venice is lyrical rather than purely narrative. Visconti gives us a meditative, ruminating psychological portrait of a middle-aged widower who goes to Venice to clear his head and perhaps escape depression. There, he rehearses over and over in his head a set of aesthetic debates he is carrying on with a composer friend, Alfried. In Mann’s story, Aschenbach is a writer. Visconti highlights the music of German composer Gustav Mahler that marks the film so indelibly, by making his character not a writer but a composer. A movement from Mahler’s 5th symphony plays in the opening and closing sequences of the film. Sections from the 3rd symphony play during scenes of Aschenbach writing.
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