From Thomas Mann to Luchino Visconti: from Tadzio to Björn

Swedish actor Björn Andresen (right) and Italian director and screenwriter Luchino Visconti (left) on the set of Visconti's movie Morte a Venezia

My present comment regarding Alla ricerca di Tadzio (TV 1970) is not an opinion on Morte a Venezia, the 1970 film version of Mann's novella Der Tod in Venedig, yet it is an inevitable reflection of my thoughts about the circumstances of its translation to the screen.

Directed by Visconti himself, this short feature offers an insightful look at the arduous process he had to go through to cast the child actor for the pivotal, most significant part in the movie: that of Tadzio, the tangible ideal of beauty in the eyes of egregious literary artist Gustav von Aschenbach. As the filmmaker admits it in the documentary, he was to leave untouched the character of Tadzio even though he had changed Aschenbach into a music composer, what made for a better use of cinematic language and was ironically closer to Mann's original conception, nurtured from the figure of renowned classical musician Gustav Mahler. However, Visconti did transform, cinematic wise too, the original Tadzio. He had to: he met Björn Andresen.

Andresen was 14, 15 years old at the time, and much tall; but he was also androgynous, and his incredible Renacentist beauty was what get him the role. Mann's Tadzio is a 12-year-old boy of quite naive and plain nature in comparison. Visconti got it right, ultimately; I don't know how he wanted to do his film with a perfect replica of the character when he had already an Aschenbach composer, not writer, in mind. And these weren't to be the last licenses he was to take concerning the scenario and the themes from the original source (but that could be the stuff of a review for the actual full-length film).

Alla ricerca di Tadzio lets us be with Visconti in Poland, Finland, Italy, searching for Tadzio even after the unmatched Björn had already made his impressive appearance; the footage focusing strictly on his casting is priceless. There is also a limited yet somehow more straight, raw view of Mann's Venice than that in Visconti's feature film, something that may be regrettable to a certain point, given the director's roots in the documentary genre and the Neorealist movement are somehow missing in there but definitely, albeit briefly, in evidence here. Images of the aging Visconti being interviewed, on the locations, practically almost making his picture mentally before us, all throughout punctuated by passages from the novella underlying the choices he would eventually make, for better and for worst. Nonetheless, as Morte a Venezia remains a moving film on its own -- even if it is only a partially successful take on Mann's work --, this thirty-minute documentary proved to be a fascinating watching experience.