Luchino Visconti's beautifully cadenced rendition of the Thomas Mann novella. In slow zooms and panning shots, it scrutinizes the deterioration, amid wilting heat and epidemic, of a prissy musical composer, lingering too long at a deluxe hotel, held there by the physical magnetism and riveting gaze of an aesthetic-erotic ideal of male youth, just out of reach. Dirk Bogarde, struggling against the downhill slide, is both affected and affecting; and at the finish, he makes one of the most woeful images in movie history, his ridiculous, rejuvenating hair-dye melting in the sun and trickling down his cheeks like hideous black teardrops. (1971) — Duncan Shepherd
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