Morte a Venezia (Death in Venice)

Von Aschenbach, an aging and celebrated composer in poor health and suffering a crisis of his creative powers, visits Venice. There he becomes possessed by the beauty of a young Polish boy, to whom he never speaks but who appears to embody his ideals of physical beauty and spiritual purity. He remains in Venice, in spite of a cholera epidemic, until ill health and his obsession combine to kill him. Visconti's transposition of Mann's novel is intelligent and sensitive, and evokes fin-de-siècle Venice to breathtaking perfection.