Recencies van critici

Platonic love has never been depicted on screen with such transfixing intensity and lyricism as in Luchino Visconti’s sumptuous adaptation of Thomas Mann’s homoerotic 1912 novella.

Coming full circle to one of Mann’s influences for the novel—the life and work of Austrian composer Gustav Mahler—Visconti’s most significant departure (Aschenbach’s artistic background) embraces new physical and sensory tensions that emphasize the tragedy of things rendered obsolete and out of time.

Thomas Mann’s prose, which provides one with the eerie sensation of burrowing into a specific time and place, made a perfect fit for director Luchino Visconti, who often achieved the same effect through his languorous approach to past eras.

Thomas Mann's novella of an aging composer fascinated with a young boy is given the most banal reading imaginable by Luchino Visconti, who flatly turns metaphors (such as homosexuality) into meanings and trumpets his reduction as if he'd made a profound discovery.