Death In Venice may be "a turgid adaptation of Thomas Mann's story of sexual obsession" but it's tempting to revisit due to an exquisite performance by Dirk Bogarde. Not only is he sublime as the camp composer Gustav Aschenbach, but on the DVD he unwittingly provides a key reason for the film's self-indulgence and shapelessness.

Death Warmed Up

The film is presented on a print that's in good shape bar the odd fleck of damage. The mono soundtrack is quite adequate, but given that a key selling point of the movie is the score, it's a shame that it has not been given a stereo remix.

Visconti's Venice

The only extra feature of any note is a vintage 'making of' featurette where we see the Duke of Milan in action. If he or his film has any delusions of grandeur, then they pale in comparison to this short film, which fawns over Visconti as if he were a sacred figure. A prick to this over puffed balloon of nonsense is Dirk Bogarde who dryly observes that Visconti is not one for taking much interest in the script. That rather explains the state of the other 125 minutes on this DVD then.

EXTRA FEATURES

This DVD was reviewed on a JVC XV-N5 DVD player.