Luchino Visconti was born into an aristocratic and highly cultured family in Italy and rose to become one of the country’s greatest filmmakers. In addition to his work in cinema, Visconti was also an accomplished musician, theatre director, and writer. Although his filmography is relatively limited in number, each of his works can be considered a masterpiece in the history of cinema — from La Terra Trema (1948) to Rocco and His Brothers (1960), from The Leopard (1963) to Senso (1954), and finally to the film that is the focus here and arguably his most significant work: Death in Venice (1971).
Visconti adapted the film from a novella by Thomas Mann (1875-1955). At the time of its release—nearly half a century ago—the film tackled a subject that was both bold and highly controversial: a “Platonic,” one-sided love between an aging, morally upright composer and a young boy of extraordinary beauty. The film presents an unresolved and perhaps unresolvable tension: the confrontation between art and morality. Should the artist remain faithful to the “beautiful” or to the “moral”? Are these two realms inherently in conflict, or is it possible to reconcile them?
The story unfolds in a Venice shrouded in a concealed, deadly cholera outbreak—an ominous setting for the so-called “city of lovers,” which appears to be slipping into an untimely death. This atmosphere of decay mirrors the inner decline of the aging composer, who becomes emotionally consumed. Caught between his unwavering moral code and an overwhelming, unspoken love, he cannot surrender either, and slowly, under the weight of this inner conflict, he fades away.
Death in Venice is a cinematic masterpiece that rivals—and in some ways surpasses—Thomas Mann’s original novella, especially in its visual allure. The central and profound theme of the film is the irreconcilable tension between aesthetic devotion to beauty and the puritanism of moral restraint—a question that remains unresolved throughout cultural history.
Film Details (English): Death in Venice, Luchino Visconti, 1971, 130 min. Italy & France.
This is an AI-assisted English translation of a note originally written in Persian by Nasser Fakouhi, published on his website:
