Rome: Alfa Cinematografica, 1970

163pp. typed in purple, bound in blue oversized card wrappers, secured with two split pins to left edge. Text in English. Title label, cut from production stationery, to front wrapper, Italian printed call sheet, completed by hand, affixed to inside of front wrapper. Printed stamp of Alfa Cinematografica to front wrapper, names of production company and authors inserted by hand. Film’s title inked to lower edge of text block. With 3pp. ALS, stapled at top left corner, lacking the mailing envelope. Pages a little browned, wear to leading edge of p. 42. Wrappers sunned, edgeworn and heavily reinforced with now yellowed tape which in places has separated from spine.

ACTOR MARK BURNS’ WORKING SCRIPT FOR LUCHINO VISCONTI’S DEATH IN VENICE. HEAVILY ANNOTATED, AND WITH BURNS’ OWNERSHIP SIGNATURE TO REAR WRAPPER AND TITLE PAGE. ADDITIONALLY INSCRIBED BY BURNS IN 1989 TO THE TV AND FILM DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER MILES: ‘My Dear Friend Christopher Miles Professor of Film - Royal College of Art 31.7.89 Mark Burns’. WITH A 3pp. ALS FROM BURNS TO MILES DISCUSSING THE MAKING OF THE FILM. Script title page dated 21 April 1970. The second film in Visconti’s German trilogy, sitting between The Damned (1969) and Ludwig (1972).

Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice (1971) differs markedly not only from Thomas Mann’s 1912 novella, but also -- as this working copy shows -- from Visconti and Badalucco’s own screenplay. Where Mann’s von Aschenbach is an honoured writer and revered national figure, Visconti’s is a repressed and weak-willed composer whose profession provides the justification for the film’s glorious soundtrack. And in Mann’s novella, the young boy Tadzio represents a Platonic ideal of Beauty; in Visconti’s film Tadzio is also the object of von Aschenbach’s lust. And the character of Alfred (’Alfried’ in this screenplay) is an invention of Visconti’s, existing only to obviate the need for a ruminative voiceover by giving von Aschenbach someone to talk to.

The screenplay begins with von Aschenbach’s arrival in Venice, as does the finished film. In the screenplay, however, this arrival sequence is intercut with clunky, explanatory scenes of von Aschenbach’s imminent departure from Munich:

’I am not running away. Besides, a vacation will do me good [...] I must take this voyage [...] I must search...try to understand. My soul is open to the world...it awaits the suggestion of some place where I can be alone and have a quiet chat with myself, with my life and my destiny.’

These scenes did not make the final cut. Instead, in the finished film’s hauntingly beautiful opening sequence (cinematographer: Pasqualino de Santis), von Aschenbach’s Venetian steamer emerges uninterrupted from the mists, wordlessly carrying him to his fate on a swelling tide of Mahler.

Fifty years on, we know too much about the making of Death in Venice to be able to enjoy it without qualms. Björn Andrésen was fifteen years old when cast as Tadzio, and Visconti’s failure to safeguard his childhood during the making of the film is impossible to overlook. (The story is the subject of the 2021 documentary The Most Beautiful Boy in the World.) And there is a marked and dubious change of tone between Mann’s exalted treatment of this central relationship, and Visconti’s base, reductive one, however beautifully shot. Visconti’s treatment of Björn Andrésen before, during and after the making of Death in Venice remains unforgivable, and Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice contains some of the most beautiful set pieces ever committed to
film. Both of these things are true.

Mark Burns’ working script for his role as Alfred in Death in Venice is heavily annotated, and often revised. A call sheet in the Italian style is gummed to the verso of the front wrapper, dated 30 July 1970 and relating to the shooting of Sc. 22. (In the script the scene itself, an argument between von Aschenbach and Alfred, has several revisions in Burns’ hand.) The title page carries Burn’s ownership signature and his hotel address, as well as a later inscription presenting the script to Christopher Miles (see below). ALFRIED/Burns’ line entries are underlined in red throughout, and all his scenes have handwritten line revisions. Burns’ has used the verso of the final page to list his scene numbers and their locations, and has also jotted down useful telephone numbers for the shoot (Cinecitta, production office, hotel etc.). His name is inked in block capitals to the rear wrapper.

Laid in to the script is a 3pp. ALS from Burns to the TV and film director Christopher Miles dated 6 July [1970]. The two men had recently worked together on Miles’ film adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s The Virgin and the Gypsy (1970), and Burns writes to apologise that filming in Italy prevents him from being in the UK for the film’s opening: ‘I am so thrilled that the V&G has been so well received and even more thrilled for your personal success and recognition which is totally deserved -- congratulations.’ Burns goes on to update Miles on the filming of Death in Venice:

‘Death in Venice is very exciting and thank God I decided to go ahead and do it as it turns out to be the 3rd most important part in the film!! Still not a huge part but v. important. I play Schoenberg (Master’s [von Aschenbach’s] pupil) who doesn’t appear in the book but Visconti has brought him into the screenplay as Master’s alter ego, and we have lengthy & heated discussion as to whether ‘Beauty’ can be produced -- all extremely high-brow for me and a bit obscure, but as Dirk [Bogarde] says, it doesn’t matter as you ‘just do what Visconti says’!! Dirk is being absolutely charming and helpful -- he as you can imagine is very excited about V & the G & I think is writing to you.’

We know of only one other copy of this screenplay, in a different version, offered for sale more than ten years ago. It was in different wrappers, and was only 100 pages long. Marked FINAL to the front wrapper, and dated 21 March 1970, it was clearly superseded by this version, which not only is dated 21 April 1970 and is 163 pages long, but is the working copy of one of the film’s leading actors -- so clearly the final shooting script.