So I watched Luchino Visconti's 1971 film Death In Venice, based
on the Thomas Mann novella. For those who aren't familiar with either,
Death In Venice is the story of an older man man who becomes first
infatuated and then obsessed with a beautiful adolescent boy.
SPOILER (select text to make it visible)
The older man's infatuation/obsession is never requited; the protagonist
never even speaks to the boy, let alone touches him.
The musical theme which begins the film - and is reprised several times
throughout - I knew was Mahler. I was also pretty sure I'd heard it before
in at least one episode of Hannibal, but couldn't remember which episode, or which Mahler
symphony it was, though. I was right: it was in Hannibal, in S2E10 Naka-choko, the scene where Hannibal and Will eat the "long pig" Will has provided. I had to look up the music to figure both out. Turns out it was the Adagietto from Mahler's Symphony No. 5.
The same piece opens a film about a man who grows increasingly obsessed
with a beautiful boy... (select following text to view spoiler)
with whom he never actually has sex...
...and then forty-plus years later it's used in a TV series about two men who
grow increasingly obsessed with each other... (select text to reveal spoiler)
but never actually
have sex...?
I just find it really hard to believe this was a coincidence. I'm willing to
bet that Bryan Fuller saw Death In Venice at some point, probably in film
school. Being gay himself, it's not a stretch to think he could have
related to the plot of Death In Venice. OTOH, though, it could also have been
Hannibal's music composer and producer Brian Reitzell's idea.
Regardless... If not intentional, it is one hell of a coincidence. And if
it is intentional, it's a hell of a great choice: that particular piece of
music is sublime - beautiful, haunting, sensual, elegiac.
God, I miss Hannibal. I so wanted it to be picked up by Netflix or Amazon. Sigh. Guess that will never happen now. :(
ETA: I thought I had made this public but I hadn't until today... more than a month after I posted it.
I often create/edit posts while they're private, to make sure they look OK, then later make them public.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
