Death in Venice (Visconti, 1971): Prince Charles Cinema, 8.45pm
Guardian 1971 review:
Some people will be bored by Death in Venice. Those omnipresent office girls who invade press shows in far greater numbers than critics were certainly rustling long before the end of Luchino Visconti’s latest film. But then it is about an elderly gentleman with a platonic passion for a young boy and it is culled from a novella by Thomas Mann in which nothing much actually happens except within the mind’s eye. It is a very slow, precise, & beautiful film, proportioned by a master who is about to embark on a version of Proust’s life story and, whatever some think of it, it is important to say that it is 100% better than 99.99% of what’s on offer in London at the moment. The whole remains an immensely formidable achievement, engrossing in spite of any doubts. As a successor to The Damned it marks an astonishing return to Visconti’s first principles. As a predecessor to the Proust venture, it whets a wondering appetite. Above all, it makes most other offerings of recent months look like amateurs’ nights out.
Derek Malcolm
Here (and above) is the trailer,
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