L'ange blond de Visconti - Björn Andrésen, de l'éphèbe à l'acteur

Very interesting documentary about a human being sacrificed on the altar of the Seventh Art ;in 1972 , Visconti was at the peak of his genius and he had flair for discovering actors (Helmut Berger ,one of his lovers ,was prodigious in "la cadeti dei degli" and "Ludwig".)

So he spent some time to find the beautiful boy who would fascinate Dirk Bogarde in the fascinating "death in Venice" ;but,unlike Berger, Bjorn was still a child , traumatized by his mom's death when he was too young; although the director insisted the boy was his protégé and his love remained platonic, he did not seem to realize the young actor was overtaken by events : the newsreel at the movie première is revealing :the boy seems to live in a dream , or rather a sweet nightmare :he seems ill-at-ease among these stars (you can spot Romy Schneider on one photograph) and he never was to get over this "too much too soon" celebrity .

The doc blends the past ( the boy photographed from every angle ,even shirtless, pictures of Venice and of the places where the movie took place) and the present : Bjorn has become a long-haired bearded gaunt man (born 1955) ,old before his time ; the first scene in his apartment shows a guy who does not take care of himself ; his half-sister was perhaps his only helping hand when he was a kid, now she's replaced by his daughter even though his marriage was a failure ; now the man wanders aimlessly on the beach, watching the sea;he has returned to Venice ,but although he has become (reluctantly) a gay icon, his life was forever destroyed in a luxury hotel where Silvana Mangano was only a celluloid mother.

Bjorn Andresson's mother committed suicide when he was very young. He was then cast in Visconti's film 'Death in Venice', as Tadzio, who was, in the eyes of the film's main protagonist, "the most beautiful boy in the world". Subsequently, he does not consider himself to have had a very happy life. We're all made, at least in part, by our experiences; Bjorn, perhaps, was not well-served by his. Because his story is so particular, and peculiar, there's some interest here; but at the same time, things happen to all of us. One doesn't have to blame Bjorn for how his life turned out to see that there aren't stright lines between its beginning and its end; and sadly, there are many people who are unhappy and depressed, even those whose lives have contained little of external note. Sometimes, it's more interesting to watch a documentary than a fiction inspired by the truth; here, I felt that a novelisation of Bjorn's life might bee interesting than a straighforward reporting.

This documentary points to a particular case of this boy, who's grandmother tried to get her grandson to make into the film industry. Like many parents were hoping their sons got Tadzio's part, Björn was the one who got it. But unlike many young stars we know, he had problems copping with the attention for being shy and also having family problems didn't particularly helped him. In no way I see him been exploited. He just needed more feedback maybe.

Our sympathies follow this spectral Gothic figure as the familiar tale of instant fame followed by disillusionment is played out.

Not an actor (his acting in DIV minimal and awkward) and defined by his looks, I wish he had followed full time his talent for music. Watching him listening to his own playing of Chopin was revealing. But the musical part of his life is left out of this film and therein lies the imbalance.

Obviously a depressive which may have been inherited from his mother, would his life have been much different without DIV? Impossible to live with and self pitying.

I'm not sure why his grandmother comes in for such blame here. Using opportunities as they arise is not blameworthy. She surely would have wanted him to have a happy life, she brought the two children up and his sister seems to be well adjusted,

This is a fascinating documentary, particularly for anyone who knows Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice and is therefore already acquainted with the haunting beauty of the young Bjorn Andresen, who played Tadzio. The Most Beautiful Boy in the World is sumptuously photographed and deftly edited to create a legend around Andresen's main claim to fame - and therein lies the problem. It gradually becomes apparent that the producer-directors of this doco are hellbent on the main narrative being that of a beautiful innocent corrupted and all but destroyed by his youthful brush with movie fame. While nobody ever explicitly speaks in terms of a Death in Venice curse, it's very much implied in the shots of an aged and frail Andresen gazing along the same beach where his younger, more carefree self frolicked while making the film; and in the all-to-clear parallels between the lost, lonely old Andresen and Dirk Bogarde's pathetic, crumbling Aschenbach. What's troubling is that the documentary makers are quite clearly determined not to allow too many facts to get in the way of their myth-making. The emphasis is all on instant fame and the pressures of being labelled "The Most Beautiful Boy in the World" leading to Andresen having a deeply troubled life. In fact, this is 90% of the film, with stern fingers pointed at Andresen's fame-obsessed grandmother and some sly, not-entirely-justified jabs at Visconti for their parts in exploiting the boy. There's much less examination of Andresen dealing with a mentally unstable mother, his mother's grisly death when he was still a child, his loss of his own child to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or his struggles as a husband and father. All of these likely had a bigger impact on Andresen's life than briefly being a poster boy for youthful beauty, and they can't all be conveniently traced directly to his Death in Venice experience. The filmmakers also curiously omit any mention of Andresen actually having a fairly extensive film and TV career after Death in Venice, leaving the false impression that playing Tadzio not only led nowhere, but more or less destroyed him. Frankly, by the end of this weirdly deceitful exercise I formed the impression that Bjorn Andresen has been more egregiously wronged by The Most Beautiful Boy in the World than he ever was by Death in Venice.