All are very welcome to join us when we continue our Dirk Bogarde season by screening Death in Venice (1971, Luchino Visconti, 130 mins) on Wednesday the 20th of March, 5-7pm, in Jarman 6.

Like our previous film, Victim, Death in Venice tackles a controversial subject, and is much written about in film studies. Based on German writer Thomas Mann’s 1912 novella, it stars Bogarde as composer Gustav von Aschenbach. Aschenbach has travelled to Venice for his health, and the film depicts his growing obsession with an adolescent Polish boy, Tadzio (Bjorn Andresen), as  Venice becomes gripped by a cholera epidemic.

The decision to change Death in Venice’s  protagonist from a writer to a composer of music is especially interesting, and the film’s famous score may be a particular point of discussion in relation to melodrama.

Do join us if you can, for one Bogarde’s early European films.