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All visual elements of Death in Venice are excessive. The director, Luchino Visconti, costume designer Piero Tosi, art director Ferdinanco Scarf iotti, and cinematographer Pasquale De Santis have all been overindulgent. And, to me, that's exactly as it should be because my purpose in this study is not to comment upon the translation of Thomas Mann's novella into film but rather to concentrate upon the visual aspects of the film and to explore the ways in which Visconti uses imagery to re-create the decadence of pre-World War I Europe represented by Venice and Gustave von Aschenbach's experience there.
Mann had the advantage of being able to describe and analyze his character's thoughts; but it is difficult to accomplish this sort of interior probing in film, and Visconti's focusing of the camera on a silent Dirk Bogarde as Aschenbach traveling to Venice reveals little to the member of the audience who has not read the novella. Therefore, the film must use Its unique visual qualities to depict the world in which Aschenbach moves and then becomes paralyzed- the decadent Europe of the years preceding the First World War. Although the date of the action is never specified in the film, Visconti's careful attention to costume, setting, and artifacts place the film, even for the viewer unfamiliar with the novella, within the pre-World War I milieu.
For purposes of this paper, an appropriate definition of decadence follows:
"Pathology with social implications: it differs from individual sickness as pneumonia differs from plague. A decadent act must, it seems, possess meaning that transcends itself and spreads like an infection to others, or at least suggests a general condition of the society. Decadence . . . surely has something to do with death, with a communal ta edium vitae; decadence is a collection of symptoms that might suggest a society exhausted and collapsing like a star as it degenerates toward the white dwarf stage, 'une race a sa dernière heure'. ... 1
This definition not only fits pre-World War I Europe, it is also apt for Aschenbach himself as the representative of that age. In Visconti's treatment of the theme of decadence, soul-sick Aschenbach as the individual, and plague-ridden Venice as the microcosm of European society are each a mirror...