Review of Death in Venice (1971) by Justin B — 15 Jun 2009

I haven't read the novel, from which this movie apparently departs significantly, so I don't have any prejudice against the book now; but this movie was dull and interminable. The main story is extremely simple: An old, gay or perhaps bisexual composer goes to Venice around 1910, becomes fixated on a young blonde pretty boy, and eventually dies.

This takes two hours and 10 minutes, with occasional flashbacks to his life with his wife and child, and his conversations with his jerk friend about art, which are possibly the most pretentious conversations I have ever heard in a movie.

There is very little dialogue and a lot of classical music. The director is supposed to be a master of visual style, and I suppose the deliberate camera work and detailed period sets attest to that, but I really had a hard time caring about any of that.

At 2 hours and 10 minutes, this felt longer than Kenneth Branagh's four-hour Hamlet. I said in my review of Slumdog Millionaire that that movie was marvelously alive; if so, this one is dead, stuffed, and preserved with formaldehyde.