It was no easy task to translate Thomas Mann’s psychological novella Death in Venice to the screen. Bogarde gives a subtle and moving performance that fits beautifully with the atmospheric realism of the pre–World War I Venice depicted by Visconti in exquisitely painterly style. Bogarde plays a German composer on vacation and on the verge of mental and physical collapse whose obsession with a young boy leads to his over-extended stay in plague-ridden Venice.