Why you can trust GamesRadar+ Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.
Does Visconti's overwrought adaptation of Thomas Mann's novella actually warrant the masterpiece status it's routinely accorded? Of course not, as anyone coming to this re-released print with an objective mind will surely realise.
It's the portentous tale of Gustave von Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde), a widowed German composer who arrives in a plague-ridden Venice. Hoping to rest and relax, he instead becomes bewitched by the beauty of young Polish boy Tadzio (Björn Andrésen).
Hardly riveting stuff, especially given it unfolds at a funereal pace in hazy soft focus and is over-reliant on its sublime Mahler soundtrack for emotional impact. Bogarde's off-puttingly mannered central performance doesn't help either, and the stilted flashback conversations between Aschenbach and a musical colleague are an annoyance.
That said, Visconti and cinematographer Pasquale De Santis impressively recreate an overcast, fin-de-siècle Venice, in particular the decorous Hotel Des Bains and its private beach. Sumptuous, then, but curiously insubstantial.
Massive Stalker 2 patch starts chipping away at the notoriously glitchy game's worst problems, including over 80 cutscene problems and nearly 2,000 more bugs
Batman V. Superman star Jesse Eisenberg thinks that playing Lex Luthor in the poorly received film "hurt [his] career in a real way"
Preview Grant Morrison and Matt Fraction's one-page horror stories from Ice Cream Man #43
