The Most Beau­ti­ful Boy in the World and the dark lega­cy of Death in Venice

It was in Lon­don on 1 March, 1971, at the world pre­mière of Death in Venice, when Luchi­no Vis­con­ti first brand­ed 16-year-old Björn Andrésen ​“the most beau­ti­ful boy in the world”. Ine­bri­at­ed by the atten­tion, the bois­ter­ous direc­tor parad­ed the young Swedish boy among roy­als and celebri­ties as if the coy crea­ture stand­ing by his side was a sci­en­tif­ic discovery.

Based on the Thomas Mann novel­la of the same name, Death in Venice fol­lows Gus­tav Aschen­bach (Dirk Bog­a­rde), a com­pos­er on the brink of exhaus­tion, as he trav­els to the epony­mous Ital­ian city in the hope that the ocean breeze will rem­e­dy him. The first time the artist spots Tadzio (Björn Andrésen), the boy is at a din­ing hall in the com­pa­ny of his fam­i­ly, his sym­met­ri­cal face framed by stained glass win­dows as if to com­pare it to that of an angel – a beau­ty almost sacred. Gus­tav is imme­di­ate­ly besot­ted, pro­ceed­ing to spend his days lurk­ing after the boy, his obses­sion grow­ing to the point of fever.

Writ­ten by Mann as the ulti­mate embod­i­ment of beau­ty, Tadzio drove Vis­con­ti to a rig­or­ous cast­ing process. The Ital­ian direc­tor toured Scan­di­navia in search of per­fec­tion, the region being renowned for its blonde, pale-skinned, blue-eyed aes­thet­ic. One after the oth­er, boys turned and posed for the direc­tor, whose under­whelmed coun­te­nance only changed when he spot­ted Andrésen. The exhaus­tive cast­ing process led to a short doc­u­men­tary titled Look­ing for Tadzio, which would lat­er inspire The Most Beau­ti­ful Boy in the World, a new doc­u­men­tary on the life of Andrésen.

We see this lanky lad approach Vis­con­ti, his gate that of an ado­les­cent who still hasn’t fig­ured out the pro­por­tions of his grow­ing bones. As per the director’s instruc­tions, he twirls and strips in front of the cam­era, his body con­tort­ing to exter­nalise the dis­com­fort he can’t quite com­mu­ni­cate. The voyeuris­tic nature of the archive footage trig­gers imme­di­ate unease; the image of the boy pho­tographed from all angles wear­ing noth­ing but under­wear is deeply disturbing.

“Why call him Björn Andrésen still? He’s Tadzio now. Only Tadzio, a real gor­geous crea­ture, as well as an abstract idea, a prod­uct of the mind,” states a face­less nar­ra­tor as Andrésen begins to morph into the fig­ure that would for­ev­er tar­nish his sense of self. In Death in Venice, Tadzio is mere­ly a ves­sel, a walk­ing Greek sculp­ture con­ceived sole­ly to reflect Gustav’s deep­est fears and desires. To Vis­con­ti, Andrésen stands for a sim­i­lar notion, the young man Amer­i­ca to his Colum­bus, a shin­ing blue dia­mond that reflects his own per­ceived greatness.

Iron­i­cal­ly, the man who built the myth was also the one to destroy the man. When Death in Venice screened at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, Vis­con­ti joked with reporters about Andrésen being pret­ti­er at the time of cast­ing. ​“He’s 16, he’s too old now.” Time had already been tak­en from the teenag­er, and it was now act­ing as his execu­tor, the ever-tick­ing clock eat­ing away at his worth. Beau­ty, it seems, is only pure when found in the very young, a notion echoed by a dying Gus­tav who mut­ters under his breath, ​“In all the world, there is no impu­ri­ty as impure as old age”.

In The Most Beau­ti­ful Boy in the World, the Cannes footage is inter­wo­ven with scenes of an anx­ious Andrésen, now in his six­ties, get­ting ready for his evic­tion appeal. It’s a poignant nar­ra­tive choice, con­sid­er­ing how the French riv­iera pro­vid­ed the set­ting for the start of the actor’s demise, a con­se­quence of years of abuse at the hands of vul­tures who saw him as noth­ing but a title that had once been bestowed upon him. The old­er Andrésen appears frail, his long white beard and hair neat­ly tucked to give the appear­ance of some­one who was put togeth­er, not the van­quished man who saw his apart­ment – and his life – be con­sumed by chaos.

There is a moment in the doc­u­men­tary where a Japan­ese man­ga artist, who based one of her most famous char­ac­ters on Andrésen, takes a deep breath before pon­der­ing, ​“I always won­der if our per­cep­tion of him actu­al­ly hurt him.” Ulti­mate­ly, every­one want­ed a piece of the most beau­ti­ful boy in the world. The most beau­ti­ful boy in the world just want­ed to be a boy.