Report on foreign language film - Research Paper Example

The movie revolves around a young Polish boy whom Visconti uses to incarnate beauty. He is a 14-year-old boy named Tadzio, played by Swedish Bjørn Andresen. The boy’s mother is played by Silvana Mangano, a beautiful Italian actress. Tadzio, the longhaired blond boy is the focus of attention of Gustav Von Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde). An obsession of the boys beauty by Aschenbach leads to the question on the nature of the admiration (Andre 34). The main question in the movie is whether it is ethically okay in the moral standards or not.

There is the mystery behind the movie in its structure and style, its symbolism and politics owing much of these to the novel by Thomas Mann’s with the same title Death in Venice, which the movie is based on. The movie is largely silent, in performance, and the actor Bogarde delivered an enlargement of meaning. The romantic suffering of Von Aschenbach manifested by his passion for Tadzio, emotional suffering on the death of his daughter. Setting Von Aschenbach on a journey of creation of beauty and purity discovered in Tadzio.

The cinematography by Pasquale De Santis is also depicted in the movie. Scenes are well framed; there are lots of camera spinning from left to right allowing the observation of secondary characters. Costumes are highly stylized, and convey a Victorian look and feel, (Can 18). Can continues by making analysis on the soundtrack, which he says are echoes of one of Mahler melodies; the Adagietto of the Fifth Symphony. According to Snowball, Visconti overdid many things in the movie, which is quite evident at the end with the death of Aschenbach.

He feels the movie become very boring toward the end but only saved by lovely things on the periphery. According to Snowball, he movie represents a deadly pestilence threatening both physically and represents the corruption that compromises and threatens all ideals. James feels that the Death in Venice was