Redwarmin This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Thehibikiew Not even bad in a good way

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Tardis101 This film is terrible, it completely misses the point of the book, and destroys any of the philosophical discussion the book created. It's honestly just some not very well done scenes of a guy following a child around Venice. Unlike in the book there is no internal monologue describing why this man feels this way or why he is doing this. The few flashback scenes were pointless and the philosophy discussed in them isn't anything intellectual. A huge disservice to the beauty and tragedy of the novel. I can't believe the number of people raving over this film. It turns a book about beauty, idolization, decay, obsession, and aestheticism into a pretentious 2 hours of a creepy guy following s boy around.

daveedrenaud I must admit that on the surface Death in Venice seems to have a rather troubling, unpleasant plot. An old man follows a teenage boy for most of the movie. Let's pretend that we don't know anything about Mann's book and we dived straight into this film on television. Death in Venice is a lesson to avoid writing stories off as what you think it means or is about. There's much more going on beneath the surface here. If you don't relate to our lead character, who looks rather lost in Venice... then you should at least appreciate the absolutely incredible cinematography and the way the music Mahler fits into it. This is one of the best uses of classical music to pictures you will see after Stanley Kubrick's work on 2001 and a Clockwork Orange. Yet, this movie has a level of sophistication that you might compare more to Barry Lyndon.Okay, moving away from Kubrick, Visconti is his own artist, reaching levels typical of the greats of Italian art. Many won't agree with me because this film might not be their cup of tea for several reasons. There's some really long scenes here with seemingly not much point to further a plot. But that's not the style of Death in Venice. It's all about mood, atmosphere, often all the background people and fanfare going on at the hotel all around him, it reflects his state of mind and it's achieved with such precision to detail... and again here I'm going to compare to Kubrick, like Jack in the Shining - that kind of psychological breakdown. But The Shining has been appreciated by the mainstream too, while Death in Venice is largely unwatchable for the mainstream. This is higher art. The scenes where he comes close to the boy, and the finale is just so perfectly executed, that every filmmaker should watch Death in Venice as a lesson.

atlasmb I don't usually write reviews with spoilers, but it is nearly impossible to discuss this film without revealing some of its major plot points, especially since there are so few of them."Death in Venice" is based upon a Thomas Mann novel. It is said Mann was inspired when he heard of Gustav Mahler's death. Mann was gay and Mahler was presumed by many to be gay, despite his marriage and offspring. So, Mann created the story about Gustav Aschenbach, borrowing elements from Mahler's life and his own.Aschenbach is, like Mahler, a creator--specifically a writer. While in Venice, he is consumed by two things: his concern about his own health and his fascination with a fourteen-year-old boy. His focus on the boy becomes an obsession and that obsession takes up ninety percent of the film.Director Visconti--also a gay man--decided to make Aschenbach a composer. He also used some Mahler symphonies as background music.The other ten percent of the film are mundane happenings and Aschenbach's internal dialogue, with flashbacks that include philosophical discussions about art. (Does art arise from the intellect or the senses?) But these are minor, undeveloped diversions from the film's main themes. The cinematography is sometimes evocative of the works of William Turner or, more often, of Renoir. But the camera work often undermines the images, especially when Visconti repeatedly uses zoom to beat the viewer over the head with the obvious. The pace of the film is leisurely. That can be explained, in part, by the fact that the film takes place in the world of the leisure class. Aschenbach is living among those who are restrained and mannered. Starched collars and stiff behavior are the norm. But the languorous tempo only serves to accentuate the fact that this is a film in which very little actually happens. In the end, this film is not very entertaining. And its main themes have been explored much more effectively in other films.

tim-john-mead In DIV, Visconti overstates the Mahlerishness of Aschenbach to the point of confusion, and worse, does the same to the 'boy-ogler' interpretation of Aschenbach to the point of insult. The result ends up feeling like an horrific parody - or even fictional bio - of the great composer / conductor.Mann, upon whose work the film is apparently based, much admired Mahler, and, learning of his death, gave Aschenbach Mahler's first name and (apparently), his appearance - but unlike Visconti, Mann cast him as a writer, not a composer. Mann's written work was already mostly finalised when these 'honours' were bestowed at any rate. But more importantly, Mann is widely thought to have drawn from a number of different sources for his main character; different traits from different people, and to specific ends. In short, the clumsiness of the film's choice of visuals, seems to lecherise Mahler himself through a 'little boy obsessed' Aschenbach, and insinuate something of Mahler himself which has no real basis. The overplayed likeness left the feeling that what was going on was really nothing to do with the novella, but instead a 'secret revealed' about Mahler. And so the story lost all philosophical meaning immediately, and became something more like slander or gossip, leaving the perhaps less studied Mahler-appreciating audience to be misled into supposing all sorts of things - even trying to extrapolate something of the historical relationship between Mahler and Schonberg (as if Mahler's helping of Schonberg required any more motivation than memories of his aspiring composer / musician younger brother, Otto!)But aside from this terrific complaint which I might at least be able to (unreasonably!) write off to misinterpretation, the film's slow broody stillness - and labored sincerity - cannot reach a shadow of the way to the effortlessly profound music which it misappropriated. Way back in the day (July 19, 1971), Alan Rich did a great review of this movie in the New York Magazine. "...the insult to Mahler doesn't like in any imputation about homosexuality, not even in the way this element is luridly underlined in the movie. It lies, rather, in the cheap, uncomprehending niggle-naggle about the arts that Visconti puts into the mouths of Aschenbach-Mahler and Alfred [-Schonberg]..."It's easy enough to find on googlebooks. That review pretty much says it all - other than one more comment which desperately need to be made, and that being, that the film's lack of subtlety pushed it Aschenbach firmly into 'little boy ogler' territory, which was simply creepy, but which also obliterated much of the intelligent introspection and 'longing for the lost days of youth' that the film might have otherwise evoked. Someone likes it I guess. Not me. Tacky. Slow. Self-serious. Overblown. Self-important. Failed art- house bordering on mockumentry bordering on defamation.