The most beautiful boy in the world

03.09.202203.09.2022 admin 0 Comments

The most beautiful boy in the world

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World review – devastating exposé of showbiz abuse

Luchino Visconti emerges badly from this desperately sad documentary about the exploitation of his Death in Venice child star Björn Andrésen

Damaged … The Most Beautiful Boy in the World. Photograph: Mario Tursi

T his documentary tells us how the most beautiful boy in the world became its saddest man, his life damaged by the exploitative abuse that the movie business incidentally hands out to all those beautiful girls in the world without anyone caring or making documentaries about them.

In 1970, Björn Andrésen was a shy, clever and musically talented 15-year-old from Stockholm, living with his ambitious and showbiz-happy grandmother who kept putting him up for auditions. Björn caught the hooded eye of Italian director Luchino Visconti, casting his film version of Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice, and looking for a boy to play the entrancing young Tadzio, who mesmerises the ageing composer to be played by Dirk Bogarde on the Venice Lido. Visconti was thrilled by Andrésen’s unaffected charm and breathtaking beauty; he made the boy a star, but showed not the slightest interest in taking care of this vulnerable child or protecting him from the cynical and predatory hangers-on who were to play a great role in messing up Andrésen’s young adulthood, and contributed to the tragedy and heartbreak of his personal life.

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World shows Andrésen now in his late 60s, affecting a Gandalf-type beard and long grey hair that make him look 20 years older. Visconti emerges very badly from this documentary: the 1970 audition film shows him leeringly telling Andrésen to take his clothes off, and – unforgivably – Visconti makes boorish jokes at the Cannes press conference in front of Andrésen about how his young star is already losing his looks. It would be nice to think Visconti was like Wilde’s Lord Henry Wootton, passionately engaged with and exalted by Dorian Gray’s beauty. Instead, Visconti seems to have shrugged and moved on to the next thing, leaving Andrésen to a chaotic afterlife of recording pop songs in Japan (where he became a star) and making a few movies and accepting pocket-money payments from dubious “producers”.

It is a desperately unhappy story, sympathetically told by film-makers Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri. As mentioned above, I would have liked to hear some feminist analysis of how Andrésen’s agony is visible in a way that the ordeal of young female stars generally isn’t, and to hear from his ex-wife Suzanna Roman or even the film-maker Roy Andersson, who was in fact the first director to cast the actor, in A Swedish Love Story (1970). Inevitably, the documentary shows the ageing Andrésen on the Lido, looking wistfully out at his intercut younger image from the film. Maybe it will bring him some closure and peace.

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World is released on 30 July in cinemas.

The most beautiful boy in the world

Sundance Film Festival
World Premier
January 29, 2021
3 P.M. EST

Cleveland International Film Festival
Cleveland, OH
April 2021

HotDocs
Toronto, Canada
April 29, 2021

Sedona International Film Festival
Sedona, AZ
June 12-20, 2021

Paradise
Toronto, Canada
October 24-30, 2021

Cinema du Parc
Montreal, Canada
October 1-14, 2021

Gateway
Columbus, OH
October 1-14, 2021

ESQUIRE
Denver, CO
October 8-15, 2021

Pickford Film Center
Bellingham, WA
October 14 and 17, 2021

ROXIE THEATRE
San Francisco
NOVEMBER 29
6:30
Q&A with filmmakers Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri to follow

Hamptons Doc Fest:
December 5, 2:00pm
Sag Harbor Cinema with Q&As with Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri

Scandinavian House NYC
December 6th, 7:00 p.m.
Post Screening Q&A Moderated by Isabella Rossellini

AFI
Silver Spring, Maryland
Tue, Dec. 7, 6:30 p.m.; Wed, Dec. 8, 4:45 p.m.
Q&A with filmmakers Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri on Dec. 6

In 1971at the world premiere of Death in Venice in London, Italian director Luchino Visconti proclaimed Björn Andrésen, the teen star of his latest film, «The most beautiful boy in the world.” This is the story of a boy who was thrust to international stardom for his iconic looks and lived a life of glamour. 50 years later, Björn looks back.

. haunting. it’s a psychologically probing portrait of Bjorn Andresen, who as a teenager was cast in “Death in Venice,” Luchino Visconti’s 1971 adaptation of the Thomas Mann novella.

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World is one of the few documentaries to dwell so gravely and persuasively on how sudden fame can ruin a young life, bypassing any perks of stardom.

This film has real purpose, it reminds us that human beauty is human first and foremost.

The documentary picks up with Andresen (American audiences might recognize him from the 2019 horror film “Midsommar”) 50 years after the premiere of “Death in Venice” and shows him as he examines his own personal histories, cinema history and the tragic events that surrounded his life as he tried to get his life back on track.

He was never a household name by any stretch, but 50 years ago there was a lad who was widely dubbed “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World,” which is now the name of a documentary about the now-old boy, Bjorn Andresen. It’s a sad, cautionary tale, after a fashion, as Andresen has spent a lifetime trying to divest himself of that sobriquet–one that is no longer true, of course, but that will rise again thanks to this cautiously insightful look at a singular, and quite melancholy, figure.

Sundance 2021: The Most Beautiful Boy in the World absorbing, sensitive story of the pains of objectification, fragile ephemerality of beauty.

Through a fascinating mix of archival footage and contemporary interactions with Andrésen, co-directors Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri explore the nature of overnight stardom and the objectification that sometimes comes with it. Andrésen, now in his 60s, bravely opens up about the irresponsible treatment he was subjected to and how the “curse of beauty” distorted his formative years. Being immortalised as an iconic boy meant that Andrésen spent most of his adult life trying to be invisible, refusing to have his identity shaped by a shallow fantasy about who he was. The Most Beautiful Boy in the World is a thoughtful and quietly devastating meditation on obsession, trauma, and the cost of fame.

Directed by Kristian Petri and Kristina Lindstrom
94 minutes
Swedish, English, French and Japanese
2021

Sundance Review: ‘The Most Beautiful Boy In The World’

Todd McCarthy

Film Critic & Columnist

Sundance Hot List: Titles To Warm Up This Year’s Virtual Festival

Early scene-setting reveals Andresen as an aging man in borderline dire straits, looking shockingly decrepit at only 65 and sporting a full head of long hair stretching well down his back. He looks like a more handsome Gabby Hays. Smoking away, he shares a filthy apartment overrun with countless bugs and you can only wonder where he’d be today without a Scandinavian social support system. We learn right off the bat that, lacking proper parents, he was largely raised by a grandmother.

All the more fortunate, then, that he should be discovered by one of the most famous directors in the world. No end of behind-the-scenes footage spotlights the 15-year-old, seemingly carefree Andresen cavorting on the beaches of Venice while the director applies himself to filming the story of an eminent artist who, at the end of his life, becomes fixated on the youngster he encounters on the Lido. It was a story that had preoccupied Visconti for years and the film gratifyingly offers generous bits of time to the imperious maestro both in action on location and speaking about his subject.

At the same time, the film can’t help but note that, from the director on down, “The whole crew was homosexuals.” Visconti laid down an edict that, “No one was to look at little Tadzio,” and went out of his way to stress that the story was “neither sexual nor erotic. It’s a higher form of love. Let’s say, ‘Perfection within love.’ ” We see the director showing his discovery precisely what to do in a given shot, and the boy complies, willingly and without difficulty.

There was a London royal world premiere in March 1971, with Queen Elizabeth in attendance, followed by the Cannes Film Festival two months later, where, starting with the gala post-screening party toplined by Visconti and leading actor Dirk Bogarde, the widespread “gay lust” for the beautiful boy took off. This was followed by an equally intense reaction to him in Japan, where he cut pop records, appeared in many commercials and became the nation’s “first idol from the West.” Another section alludes to an arrangement in the mid-1970s where a man set up the 21-year-old in a beautiful Paris apartment and 500 francs per week pocket money. “I felt like some kind of wandering trophy,” Andresen says, but all the while “I wanted to be somewhere else, and be somebody else.”

Despite the acclaim and attention stemming from Death in Venice, Andresen didn’t appear in another film until 1977, and he never acted in anything you’ve ever heard of until taking a small role in Midsommar two years ago. His life, from all the evidence, is a sad affair, and the film only partly suggests why this is the case. His face, surrounded by the abundant hair, has a ravaged beauty, but he’s almost painfully thin. He tends to hold back and not assert himself in public or group situations.

More than that, he seems afflicted with demons that have nothing to do with his one-time celebrity, and the filmmaking team of Kristina Lindstrom and Kristian Petri gently tries to lure them into the open, with limited success. The man is reticent on some issues and won’t address others; it’s clear there are some demons he has either put to rest or simply doesn’t want to confront.

That said, the most traumatic incident he has faced–the death of a young son in his bed in the 1980s–seems to have perhaps permanently shut him down emotionally to a considerable degree. Officially, the cause was Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, but the way Andresen recounts it makes is sound as though he felt personally responsible. “But my diagnosis is lack of love,” he says. “I wasn’t up to it.” After this he fell into a deep alcoholic depression and, despite his openness on many topics, he seems noticeably ineffectual, a shell of a man in many ways.

It is, in the end, quite a sad story. No one, including the subject, draws a direct link between Andresen’s one moment of fame to the despondency of his later years, but one feels there still might be some pieces missing, that the early highs had something to do with the later dramatic lows. And the unasked question is whether the subject feels his life would have been happier if he had never met Luchino Visconti and been considered the most beautiful boy in the world.

‘The Most Beautiful Boy in the World’ Review: A Crushing Story of Innocence Destroyed by Stardom

In 1971, director Luchino Visconti picked a shy Swedish boy to star in his «Death in Venice.» In Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri’s unsettling doc, we see the fallout.

Jan 29, 2021 5:44 pm

“The Most Beautiful Boy in the World”

Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Juno Films releases the film in select theaters on Friday, September 24.

At the height of his teenage fame, actor Björn Andresen was beset by a particular fear: that fans who sought him out at events were wielding scissors, in order to snip one of his golden locks. So overwhelming was the young Swede’s fame that the idea wasn’t just possible, it was probable.

Plucked from obscurity by Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti to star in his 1971 “Death in Venice,” Andresen rocketed into public consciousness at the age of 15, a consuming rollercoaster ride that has never quite abated. In Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri’s crushing “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World,” Andresen’s fraught past and complicated present merge into a single portrait of a man exposed to unimaginable grief and pain, so much of it care of a society that blithely consumes its most gentle citizens. The documentary does not grapple with some of the more salacious elements of Andresen’s story — now perhaps is the time to explain that “Death in Venice” follows an aging composer (the 50-year-old Dirk Bogarde) who becomes obsessed with a teenage boy (Andresen) — that never obscures the emotional fallout he experienced.

In the winter of 1970, Visconti traveled to Sweden in search of a “pure beauty” to anchor his film. He cut an imposing figure: Rich, famous, openly gay, and a visionary who wanted nothing less than a star whom he would later term “the most beautiful boy in the world.” Lindström and Petri find an early, unsettling tone to start their film, and as Visconti searches through a crowd of hopeful youngsters, we can only hold our breath.

We’re introduced to Andresen the minute Visconti discovers him, thanks to an impressive selection of behind-the-scenes footage that will take us from screen test to filming to the wild Cannes premiere. Visconti is immediately taken with Andresen, gasping about how big he is for his age, relishing his glossy head of blond hair, and soon asking him to strip down to his underwear. You can see hints of the man Andresen will become, but at this moment he’s clearly a shy kid. Also obvious: his supreme discomfort.

Decades later, he still seems uncomfortable as we find an adult Andresen milling about his filthy kitchen. “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World” slides between Andresen’s strange, fame-laden years and his current existence where he’s beset by apartment issues, personal disarray, and a growing sense that there’s so much he still needs to come to terms with in his life. “Death in Venice” brought fame, the sick attention, and a sense that he was simply something to consume, but the film also touches on Andresen’s complicated childhood and family life, including an unknown father and a tragic mother.

Andresen and the film’s many talking heads do their damndest to navigate terrible memories. All that archival footage does wonders as we observe Visconti’s mythologizing and obsession unfold. From the production of “Death in Venice” during which the filmmaker told the majority-gay crew to not even look at Andresen, all the better to keep him for himself to the “living nightmare” of a festival tour that saw the Swede picked over like a piece of meat (and worse), all of it stings. It’s meant to, even if the film and its makers refrain from finger pointing.

For all of the filmmakers’ obvious care and respect, late-breaking inclusions feel like gotcha moments in a story that has enough shocks already. Andresen’s daughter is introduced late (as is the telling of a key story of a tragedy that befell the family when she was small), while the filmmakers make early space for talking heads who seem superfluous (one helps illuminate Andresen’s impact on manga artists like her, an interesting note that gets far too much screen time). Andresen’s continued acting career — including an indelible role in Ari Aster’s “Midsommar” — is only briefly referenced. It’s difficult to shake the sense that so much of Andresen’s story has not yet been told, but this is indeed a start for a life that’s still capable of much beauty.

Grade: B-

“The Most Beautiful Boy in the World” premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival in the World Documentary Competition section. Juno Films will release the film in theaters in 2021.

As new movies open in theaters during the COVID-19 pandemic, IndieWire will continue to review them whenever possible. We encourage readers to follow the safety precautions provided by CDC and health authorities. Additionally, our coverage will provide alternative viewing options whenever they are available.

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World

2021, Documentary, 1h 33m

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The Most Beautiful Boy in the World tells an undeniably familiar cautionary tale, but it’s no less unbearably tragic in the telling. Read critic reviews

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The Most Beautiful Boy in the World

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

93 minutesCountrySwedenLanguagesSwedish, English, French, Italian and Japanese

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World is a 2021 documentary film about Björn Andrésen and the effects of fame thrust upon him when he appeared in Luchino Visconti’s 1971 film Death in Venice. Andrésen was just 16 when the film came out, and was unprepared for instantly becoming an international celebrity. [3] [4] [5]

The title of the film came from a remark that Visconti made about Andrésen at the premiere of Death in Venice in London. [6] [7]

The film premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival on January 29, 2021. [8] [9] It received a nomination for the World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the festival. [10] The film was released in US theaters on September 24, 2021. [11]

35 Years Ago: Mayte Turns the Tables With ‘The Most Beautiful Boy in the World’

A gender twist on one of Prince’s most popular songs, Mayte Garcia’s «The Most Beautiful Boy in the World» arrived on July 22, 1994. The track was the lead single from her debut (and only) album, Child of the Sun.

Garcia began her career as a dancer, catching Prince’s eye after sending him a video tape of her performing. She would join his backing band, the New Power Generation, before later becoming romantically involved with Prince. The two were dating at the time of her album’s release and would marry less than a year later.

In her 2017 memoir, The Most Beautiful: My Life With Prince, Garcia recalled that the initial spark for her album happened during a performance alongside Prince in Spain.

«After a long, crazy concert of amazing songs, dances and love, he was preparing for the encore while I went out and worked the crowd, tossing out tambourines and saying hi to fans,» she wrote. «They started chanting ‘Mayte! Mayte! Mayte!’ and they didn’t stop, even when he came back out on stage. After a minute or so, (Prince) looked at them, looked at me, and then leaned in to shout over the noise: ‘You need to do an album.'»

Despite her initial protests, within weeks, the couple were working on her debut LP. It would be released in late 1995 on Prince’s NPG imprint in Europe and the UK, though it was not formally released in the U.S.

Although the 12-track album, which also included a remix of the Commodores funk hit, «Brick House,» called «House of Brick (Brick House),» failed to hit commercially or critically, in her memoir, Garcia wrote that working on the project was «actually a lot of fun.»

As for that specific song, Garcia confessed that Prince’s original version of «The Most Beautiful Girl in the World» wasn’t specifically about her, as most people had assumed. Instead, it was about his love for women in general.

“I know of three women, besides me, who believe it was written specifically for them,” Garcia acknowledged in her memoir. “I hope every woman who hears it thinks it was written specifically for her. Because it was.”

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World

It’s a boy, it’s a boy!

It’s a little boy.

I honestly can’t tell.

The baby is sleeping in the arms of the woman I love. I sit on the edge of the bed and stare at the pair of them, feeling like I belong in this room with this woman and this baby in a way that I have never belonged anywhere.

Later my parents are there. When she is done with the hugs and kisses, my mother counts the baby’s fingers and toes, checking for webbed feet. But he is fine, the baby is fine.

«He’s a little smasher,» my mum says. «A little smasher!»

My father looks at the baby and something inside him seems to melt.

There are many good things about my father, but he is not a soft man, he is not a sentimental man. He doesn’t gurgle and coo over babies in the street. My father is a good man, but the things he has gone through in his life mean that he is also a hard man. Today some ice deep inside him begins to crack and I can tell he feels it too.

This is the most beautiful baby in the world.

I give my father a bottle I bought months ago. It is bourbon. My father only drinks beer and whisky, but he takes the bottle with a big grin on his face. The label on the bottle says «Old Granddad». That’s him. That’s my father.

But now I have helped to bring another human being into the world.

Today I became what my father has been for ever.

Today I became a man.

I am twenty-five years old.

Chapter One

Some situations to avoid when preparing for your all-important, finally-I-am-fully-grown thirtieth birthday.

Having a one-night stand with a colleague from work.

The rash purchase of luxury items you can’t afford. Being left by your wife.

Losing your job.

Suddenly becoming a single parent.

If you are coming up to thirty, whatever you do, don’t do any of that.

Thirty should be a good birthday. One of the best.

But how to celebrate reaching the big three-oh? With a collection of laughing single friends in some intimate bar or restaurant? Or surrounded by a loving wife and adoring small children in the bosom of the family home?

There has to be a good way of turning thirty. Perhaps they are all good ways.

All my images of this particular birthday seemed to be derived from some glossy American sitcom. When I thought of turning thirty, I thought of attractive thirty-nothing marrieds snogging like teens in heat while in the background a gurgling baby crawls across some polished parquet floor, or I saw a circle of good-looking, wise-cracking friends drinking latte and showing off their impressive knitwear while wryly bemoaning the dating game. That was my problem. When I thought of turning thirty, I thought of somebody else’s life.

By thirty you have finally realised that you are not going to live for ever, of course. But surely that should only make the laughing, latte-drinking present taste even sweeter? You shouldn’t let your inevitable death put a damper on things. Don’t let the long, slow slide to the grave get in the way of a good time.

Whether you are enjoying the last few years of unmarried freedom, or have recently moved on to a more adult, more committed way of life with someone you love, it’s difficult to imagine a truly awful way of turning thirty.

But I managed to find one somehow.

The car smelled like somebody else’s life. Like freedom.

It was parked right in the window of the showroom, a wedge-shaped sports car which, even with its top off, looked as sleek and compact as a muscle.

When I was a little bit younger, such blatant macho corn would have made me sneer, or snigger, or puke, or all of the above.

Now I found it didn’t bother me at all. In fact, it seemed to be just what I was looking for at this stage of my life.

But its name didn’t really matter. I just loved the way it looked. And that smell. Above all, that smell. That anything-can-happen smell. What was it about that smell?

Amidst the perfume of leather, rubber and all those yards of freshly sprayed steel, you could smell a heartbreaking newness, a newness so shocking that it almost overwhelmed me. This newness intimated another world that was limitless and free, an open road leading to all the unruined days of the future. Somewhere they had never heard of traffic cones or physical decay or my thirtieth birthday.

I knew that smell from somewhere and I recognised the way it made me feel. Funnily enough, it reminded me of that feeling you get when you hold a newborn baby.

«You only live once,» the car salesman said, his heels clicking across the showroom floor.

I smiled politely, indicating that I would have to think that one over.

«Are you in the market for some serious fun?» he said. «Because if the MGF is about one thing, it’s about fun.»

While he gave me his standard sales pitch, he was sizing me up, trying to decide if I was worth a test drive.

«This model has the Variable Valve Control system,» he said, with what seemed like genuine enthusiasm. «The opening period of the inlet valves can be varied by altering the rotational speed of each cam lobe.»

«A total babe magnet,» he said, noting my dumbfounded expression. «Plenty of poke. A young single guy couldn’t do any better than the MGE.»

This was my kind of sales pitch. Forget the technical guff, just tell me that you can lose yourself in a car like this. Let me know you can lose yourself. That’s what I wanted to hear.

The salesman was distracted by something on the street, and I followed his gaze out of the showroom’s plate-glass wall.

He was looking at a tall blonde woman holding the hand of a small boy wearing a Star Wars T-shirt. They were surrounded by bags of supermarket shopping. And they were watching us.

Even framed by all those plastic carrier bags and chaperoning a little kid, the woman was the kind that you look at more than once.

If you had been to the cinema at any time over the last twenty years you would recognise it as a light sabre, traditional weapon of the Jedi Knights. This one. needed new batteries.

The beautiful woman was smiling at me and the salesman. The little kid pointed his light sabre, as if about to strike us down.

«Daddy,» he mouthed from the other side of the plate-glass wall which divided us. You couldn’t hear him, but that’s what he was saying.

«My wife and son,» I said, turning away, but not before I caught the disappointment in the salesman’s eyes. «Got to go.»

Daddy. That’s me. Daddy.

«You don’t even like cars,» my wife reminded me, edging our old VW estate through the thick early evening traffic.

«And you’re too young for a mid-life crisis,» she said. «Thirty is much too young, Harry. The way it works, you wait for fifteen years and then run off with a secretary who’s young enough to be your second wife. And I cut off the sleeves of all your suits. Not to mention your bollocks.»

«I’m not thirty, Gina,» I chuckled, although it wasn’t really all that funny. She was always exaggerating. «I’m twenty-nine.»

«For one more month!» she laughed.

«It’s your birthday soon,» our boy said, laughing along with his mother, although he didn’t have a clue why, and tapping me on the back of the head with his sodding light sabre.

«Please don’t do that, Pat,» I said.

He was back there with the week’s shopping, strapped into his little car seat and muttering under his breath, pretending to be in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon with Harrison Ford.

«I’ve lost my starboard engine,» he jabbered away to himself. «Fire when ready.»

I turned to look at him. He was four years old with dirty blond hair that hung down over eyes that were the same shade of blue as his mother’s. Tiffany blue. Catching my eye, he grinned at me with pure childish delight.

«Happy birthday, dear Daddy,» he sang. «Happy birthday, birth-day.»

To Pat, my birthday was a chance to finally give me the home-made card he had hidden under his bed (Luke Skywalker decapitating a space monster with his trusty light sabre). To me it meant that the best might already be over. It really did.

«When did you become interested in cars?» Gina asked.

She wouldn’t let this car thing rest. «I bet you don’t even know what kind of petrol this one uses, do you?»

«Oh, come on, Gina.»

«What is it, then?»

«It’s diesel, you doughnut,» she laughed. «I never knew a man less interested in cars than you. What happened?»

What could I tell her? You don’t tell a wife that some inanimate object somehow represents all those things you know you are never going to have. The places you are never going to see, the women you are never going to love, the things you are never going to do. You can’t tell a wife all that stuff. Not even a wife you love very much. Especially not a wife like that.

«It only carries one passenger,» she said.

«What does?» I said, playing dumb.

«You’re still pretty thin and female,» I said. «Or you were the last time I looked.»

«What’s brought all this on, Harry? Come on. Tell me.»

«Maybe I’m compensating for becoming an old git,» I said. «I’m joining the old gits’ club, so, pathetically, I want to recapture my glorious youth. Even though I know it’s ultimately futile and even though my youth wasn’t particularly glorious. Isn’t that what men do?»

You’re turning thirty,» she said. «We’re going to open a couple of bottles and have a nice cake with candles.»

«And balloons,» Pat said.

«And balloons,» Gina said. She shook her lovely head. «We’re not having you put down, Harry.»

Gina was a couple of months older than me. She had breezed through her thirtieth birthday surrounded by friends and family, dancing with her son to Wham’s greatest hits, a glass of champagne in her hand. She looked great that night, she really did. But clearly my own birthday was going to be a bit more traumatic.

«You don’t regret anything, do you?’ she said.

«You know,» she said, suddenly deadly serious. «Like us.»

We had married young. Gina was three months pregnant with Pat on our wedding day and it was, by some distance, the happiest day of my life. But nothing was ever really the same again after that day. Because after that there was no disguising the fact that we were grown-ups.

The radio station where I was working gave me the week off and we spent our honeymoon back at our little flat watching daytime television in bed, eating M & S sandwiches and talking about the beautiful baby we were going to have.

Gina and I found ourselves separated from the rest of the world by our wedding rings. The other married couples we knew were at least ten years older than us, and friends our own age were still in that brief period between living with their mothers and living with their mortgages. Our little family was on its own.

While our friends were dancing the night away in clubs, we were up all hours with our baby’s teething problems. While they were worrying about meeting the right person, we were worrying about meeting the payments on our first real home. Yet I didn’t regret any of it. Yes, we had given up our freedom. But we had given it up for something better.

«I just really hate the way that life starts to contract as you get older,» I said. «The way your options narrow. I mean, when did owning a car like that become ridiculous for me? When exactly? Why is it such a joke? I would love to know. That’s all.»

«The Force is strong in this one,» Pat said.

«A red sports car,» Gina said to herself. «And you don’t even like driving.»

«Listen, I was just looking, okay?» I said.

«Happy birthday to you,» Pat sang, smacking me across the ear with his light sabre. «Squashed tomatoes and glue. You-look-like-a-monkey-and-you-act-like-one-too.»

«That’s not nice,» I told him, as the traffic ground to a halt and my ear began to throb.

Gina put the handbrake on and looked at me, as if trying to remember what she had liked about me in the first place. She seemed a bit stumped.

I remembered what I had liked about her. She had the longest legs I had ever seen on a woman. But I still didn’t know if that was the best basis for the love of your life.

Extracted with permission from Man and Boy by Tony Parsons (HarperCollins). Copyright Tony Parsons (2000)

The most beautiful boy in the world

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havent finished yet, saw it after Fyrisbio volontar. in Swedish. read some interviews, he used to struggle, but he is fine now, he resists the past in a very particular way. The documentary took several years to produce, which is quite rare and precious! But there are some common Swedish tenderness/politeness/evasiveness in it that you always run into when they handle sensitive things in their culture.

‘The Most Beautiful Boy in the World’ Documentary – Explained

His name may sound unfamiliar to some people, but he strikes people as easily as magicians from his brief appearances. Bjorn Andresen is a Swedish actor who is famous for his roles in several Swedish movies and TV shows. But the most significant role in his entire body of work is ‘Death in Venice’ in which he played the role of Tadzio. In 2019, he made a brief but significant appearance in the daylight horror movie ‘Midsommar’ by Ari Master. The film became an instant global phenomenon that inspires a lot of film with the genre daylight horror. But Bjorn Andresen himself never really been involving himself in many films. In fact, according to his IMDB account, he has only appeared in 19 films throughout his career. In 2021, a documentary called ‘The Most Beautiful Boy in the World’ was released based on the life of Bjorn Andresen.

Bjorn Andresen photographed during the audition in ‘Death in Venice’

He was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1955 and began acting at the age of only fourteen. He recently became a topic after a documentary called ‘The Most Beautiful Boy in the World’ was released this year. What makes him so interesting other than his looks? His perspective on ‘Death in Venice’s glory will make you disturbed and your heart wrenched.

The casting and release of the movie ‘Death in Venice’

Luchino Visconti and Bjorn Andresen in 1971 Cannes Film Festival

It all began around the brink of the decade 1960s. The Italian director Luchino Visconti had a clear and vivid vision of his upcoming movie, ‘Death in Venice’. It is supposed to be adapted from a book by the celebrated German author Thomas Mann originally written in German with the title ‘Der Tod in Venedig’.

Visconti was a highly prominent director working at the time. In 1960, he directed the highly appreciated Italian drama film with the title ‘The Leopard’. The film made its debut at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival and pocketed the highest award that night, Palme d’Or. It was clear that Visconti wanted his next film to be just as brilliant.

Before the film ‘Death in Venice’ was even released, there was a pre-documentary about the casting process of the main character, Tadzio. The documentary called ‘In Search of Tadzio’ and was released in 1970.

The documentary basically lays around the immense and intense search for the right talent to play the role of Tadzio, as predicted by the title. The director Luchino Visconti geared himself up to travel to some of the most populous nations of Europe to find the right person to play Tadzio. He traveled to Helsinki to find some young actors. There he met Bjorn for the first time.

Tadzio is depicted to have enchanting features and a natural demeanor. There is still a video online that recorded the process of audition for the role of Tadzio. Visconti blatantly ordered Bjorn to remove his clothing and look to the camera, which seemed really strange to look back on now.

At first sight, it all seemed very distant but clear that there was something strange about the movie. Thomas Mann’s early 19th-century novella is about a grown-up man who has a strange obsession with a young adolescent boy. Nonetheless, many people argued that the movie and the novel are metaphors of longing for youth.

The Release of ‘Death in Venice’

Bjorn Andresen with the cast and director of ‘Death in Venice’

‘Death in Venice’ premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on March 1, 1971. This was the beginning of the utter triumph that the film obtained.

True glory fell, of course, to Bjorn Andresen. Critics immediately called him “the extraordinary boy,” as well as “The most beautiful boy of the twentieth century.” One of them said of him: “His photos deserve to be hung in the Louvre and the Vatican.” This beauty once inspired Michelangelo and da Vinci. ” Bjorn himself never really seemed to agree to everything that was said to him. He was only fifteen.

Bjorn Inspired the revolution of Japanese manga and anime depiction

The film ‘Death in Venice’ was such a huge success in Japan. The Japanese poster of the film was everywhere on the film centers. But the reason the Japanese (especially Japanese girls) were so struck into the film is not necessarily the story or the cinematography, it was Bjorn Andresen himself. Girls went absolutely crazy for him and saw the Swedish adolescent as the perfect image of youth. Visconti then made a schedule for Bjorn to visit Japan on the brink of the year 1971.

He visited Japan two times between August and December 1971. The film’s success startled him too, but he took every chance possible for the ladder to the film’s popularity. He appeared in a bunch of Japanese commercials including the famous Meiji chocolate.

Bjorn appeared in a Japanese media

In that country, he briefly posed for An-An magazine with stylist Isao Kaneko and photography director Seiichi Horiuchi. He also recorded two singles for CBS / Sony.

His appearance as Tadzio in ‘Death in Venice’ also highly influential and inspired various anime and manga artists to portray beautiful male figures based on caucasian features. This is evident especially in the mangaka ‘Kaze to Ki no Uta Keiko Takemiya’.

He, alongside actor River Phoenix in the late 80s, enchanted many Japanese people for their appearance. So they both inspired so many Bishounen (the name of the idealistic handsome figure that regularly appears in comics) of shoujo mangas.

He felt uncomfortable around Visconti and the crew of ‘Death in Venice’

Bjorn Andresen said ‘I am not the God of beauty.” during an interview for a magazine.

Bjorn identifies himself as a straight man. So when Visconti showcased some strange behavior towards him, Bjorn was hesitant.

In his interview with The Guardian newspaper, Andresen told about his experience when he was popular at the age of 16 as Tadzio, Visconti took him to gay clubs where he felt uncomfortable with the eyes of the adult men there, “They see me without compromise as if I am a fresh food, “explained Andresen. He later explained that adult love for adolescents stands against his principle and that he felt irritated emotionally and intellectually.

Years later, he said that he wouldn’t have wanted to join the project if he knew how everything would turn out. Even so, he still smiled at the camera and assured himself that he didn’t regret the thing that has happened to him.

Suzana Roman with Bjorn Andresen and their daughter

He married his co-star in the film ‘A Swedish Love Story’, Suzana Roman in the 80s and gifted a daughter named Robin Andresen. Suzana and Bjorn met for the first time on the set of the film as teenagers in 1969, just the exact year before Bjorn met Luchino Visconti for the first time. The film itself is a young adult teenage romance movie with a heartwarming tone. It tells about groups of teenagers who are at their peak of pubescent and ready to taste love for the first time. The movie was quite popular in Sweden.

His appearance in ‘Midsommar’ and ‘The Most Beautiful Boy in the World’

Bjorn Andresen’s appearance in the Ari Aster movie ‘Midsommar’

Around fifty years later, his name resurfaces to the media after his sudden appearance in Ari Aster’s newest movie ‘Midsommar’. The horror film showcased some of the most festive and gleeful images of Sweden you can ever imagine. People gathering in groups, singing and dancing in the daylight with bright items of clothing and flower crowns. But Midsommar is a deluding piece of horror cinema that would actually make audiences sick. Bjorn took part in this project in 2019, making a comeback to work with a top-notch director after working with Luchino Visconti in the 70s. His portion is impactful enough to make you shiver of utter gory horror.

In this film, he successfully proved to the world that he’s not anyone’s typical temporary boyish imaginings, shallow sexual imaginations, and victim of desire and perversion. He was a blooming talent whose stardom potential tragically dashed.

‘Two years later, The Most Beautiful Boy in the World’ premiered in Sundance in early January of 2021 in the section of ‘World Documentary Competition’. Critics have been raving about the openness and of Bjorn’s yearning to make a personal account of his past story. It received great reviews.

A still from the 2021 documentary ‘The Most Beautiful Boy in the World’

In the documentary, he recalls some of the moments from the most significant, exciting, yet excruciating phase of his life. The time of life where he became attached to the character that he played, Tadzio. His hair grew gray and of course, his once youthful looks disappeared.

The documentary became not only just about a career immediately cut out of exploitation, but an account of what it means to see ‘beauty’. It is an important reminder that such a case of exploitation in the film industry is still relevant to this day.

User Reviews

I was fortunate to have seen this through Sundance’s 2021 virtual film festival, and it was followed by a Q and A with the filmmakers.

I’ve always considered Luchino Visconti’s 1971 film «Death in Venice» to be a masterpiece and I’ve wondered whatever happened to Bjorn Andresen after its release. Like the title of this documentary, he was often referred to as «the most beautiful boy in the world.» This film illustrates yet another example of what the effects of sudden fame can do to a pre-teenager, especially one that had been objectified so specifically by his looks. He was idolized in Japan, introduced to record deals, and doted on by gay men (although he doesn’t describe any sexual events or abuse, just being paraded as a «trophy.»). There is a particularly disquieting clip of a conference in Cannes in which Visconti speaks to the French press and describes him solely as just a body. There’s also a clip of his screen test for DIV, which I found fascinating.

What becomes clear as the film progresses is that fame was particularly lonely to Mr. Andresen because he and his sister had been abandoned by their mother, a single parent, at a very young age. He was left with a grandmother that pushed him into auditioning for the Visconti film role because she wanted him to become a star.

Unlike most documentaries, the film slowly answers questions as it unfolds. At one point we follow him into an archive where he discovers that his mother’s body was found in the woods by authorities in 1966. It’s not clear in the film if she had committed suicide or had been murdered (the filmmakers during the Q and A explained it was suicide), but it’s an incredibly intimate and painful scene that I almost felt voyeuristic watching. We also learn that during his marriage he lost a son to SIDS, which he blames himself for because he was drinking heavily at the time and didn’t feel he had the tools to be a father.

Much like «Death in Venice,» there is a sad, melancholy tone that pervades throughout most of the documentary’s running time. Mr. Andresen has all the signs of a man suffering from clinical depression, but the film never touches on whether or not he’s ever received professional help for it. The filmmakers described during the Q and A session that they had a lot of material they left on the cutting room floor in order to keep the film at a an acceptable running time. Some of the details seemed crucial to me: there’s no description of his marriage in 1983, just a few photographs. Additionally, IMDB lists close to 50 film and tv roles Mr. Andresen has been in, but the only one that’s illustrated in the documentary is a scene from Ari Aster’s «Midsommar.»

«The Most Beautiful Boy in the World» succeeds at being a very poignant portrayal of its subject. I recommend it, but feel that some important aspects of Mr. Andresen’s life were left out that would have given me a more complete picture of who he is. The filmmakers stated they purposely put the film together so the audience could read between the lines; that works for the film in some ways but works against it in others.

There isn’t that much written about Bjorn Andresen and not many interviews that I’ve read but I formed the impression that after making Death in Venice ( a film I love and have watched many times) he became what they call these days «entitled» and assumed because he’d been lucky enough to land the role of Tadzio (which didn’t call for much in the way of acting ability,) the rest of his career should have been one long success. This didn’t happen though he has had a number of acting roles during his adult life, details of which were hardly mentioned. I got the impression this change to semi obscurity left him resentful. I’ve met him several times and this impression was borne out. This unflattering aspect of his character was never explored, in case sympathy was lost I suppose. Although for some reason the row with his much younger girlfriend on the phone did give a glimpse of it!

The film was also very unbalanced, a few seconds view only of the famous film and Venice itself, nothing at all of the beautiful Hotel des Bains where it was set and far far too much time spent on his time in Japan. Very little said about his marriage, which ended after (I originally understood) to be the «cot death» of his younger child but in fact according to him, occurred because he passed out on the child while sharing a bed with him through intoxication. There seemed a distance between himself and his grown up daughter too though they were friendly. In fact I wonder whether this emotional detachment is a feature of the Swedish character and a reason why they seem to find relationships difficult to maintain. So I remain unconvinced that the Death in Venice experience as it were paved the way to a later unsatisfactory life, via exploitation etc. It played its part by raising expectations, but any unsatisfactoriness in later life must be mainly attributed to the kind of person Bjorn is.

I was interested to see he has a sister, something I’ve never till now heard mentioned, and that his mother was much more present in their younger lives than I’d realised. Yes, an intrinsically flawed personality albeit of an intelligent and not untalented man. I don’t think we can blame Death in Venice for that.

Greetings again from the darkness. In 1971, renowned Italian film director Luchino Visconti announced he had cast «the most beautiful boy in the world» as Tadzio in his new film, DEATH IN VENICE. Co-directors Kristina Lindstrom and Kristian Petri document the story of how Bjorn Andresen’s life took him from beautiful to broken. It’s a tragic tale of how adults wrecked a young man’s shot at happiness.

When we first meet Bjorn, he’s living in a filthy (truly disgusting) apartment and facing eviction. His girlfriend Jessica helps him clean the place, preventing him from having to move from his home of many years. Over the course of the documentary, we hear from Bjorn’s sister, a friend of his mothers, his Governess, Casting Director Margareta Krantz, and Bjorn’s daughter Robine. We learn of many tragic experiences Bjorn endured. These include his mother, an unknown father, his misguided Granny, and his 10 month old son. Beyond all of these unfortunate elements, we simply can’t shake the creepiness of Bjorn’s first meeting with director Visconti.

The most beautiful boy in the world

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‘The Most Beautiful Boy in the World’ Review: A Cautionary Tale

The 1971 film “Death in Venice” showcased the delicate androgyny of Bjorn Andresen’s face and form, but the changes it wrought on his life are indelible.

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Almost 30 years ago I interviewed the onetime child actor Bill Mumy, who was about 40 by then. He had played Will Robinson on “Lost in Space” when he was a kid and was now enjoying a creatively prosperous adulthood. Which has not often been the case for child actors. Citing himself and Jodie Foster, he insisted that what made a difference for them was preparation — professional training at an early age.

Growing up, Bjorn Andresen wanted to be a musician and spent time singing and playing. But his actual fate was something for which he could not have prepared: The film director Luchino Visconti hand-picked him to play Tadzio, the ravishing albeit inadvertent angel of death to Dirk Bogarde’s Aschenbach in Visconti’s 1971 adaptation of Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice.”

We meet Visconti early in this often spellbinding documentary directed by Kristina Lindstrom and Kristian Petri. In archival footage, Visconti visits Stockholm. He says he’s been all over Europe looking for a teen boy who embodies the perfection of Mann’s vision. This pursuit would be considered very odd and possibly actionable today.

Once he picked Bjorn — the audition reel in which he asks the then-15-year-old strip to the waist is unsettling — he was protective of him on set. However, after the movie’s premiere, and the director’s proclamation that Bjorn was “the most beautiful boy in the world,” it seemed as if nobody could, let alone would, shield him.

Certainly not his grandmother, who, according to Andresen, “wanted a celebrity for a grandchild.” Andresen is in his sixties now, with long hair and a beard that camouflages his face. He often wears shades to obscure the eyes Visconti once rhapsodized over. Following Bjorn over the course of a year or so, the movie shows him continuing to act. He appears, memorably, in the 2019 film “Midsommar,” although you’d never associate Tadzio with that horror movie without studying its credits. In low-key sequences, he unpeels his personal tragedies. He explores the disappearance of his beloved mother, recounts the death of one of his own children and has a melancholy return to Tokyo, where, post “Death,” he had pop music stardom foisted on him.

It was there that his “bishonen” (a Japanese word for the quality of a young man of androgynous beauty) was a rampant cultural sensation. One sees Bjorn/Tadzio’s face and hair, or some slight variant of it, in manga and anime to this day.

Andresen’s determination to rise above misfortune, and his hopes for himself, make this movie less than a total tragedy. But it’s an often shudder-inducing cautionary tale.

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World
Not rated. In English, Swedish and Japanese with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters.

Mayte – The Most Beautiful Boy In The World

Tracklist

1	The Most Beautiful Boy In The World (English Version)	4:07
2	¿Quieres Ser El Mas Bello De Este Mundo? (Spanish Version)	4:07

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Spine & front:
The Most Beautiful Boy In The World Performed by MAYTE

Flap:
Distribution:
D: edel company, A: emv, CH: Phonag AG,
UK: Grapevine / Terry Blood

Made in Germany by Optimal

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℗ & © 1994 NPG Records

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℗ 1994 NPG Records
© 1994 NPG Records
Made in Germany by Optimal

The Beautiful Boy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

AuthorGermaine GreerLanguageEnglishSubjectsArt historyPublisherThames & Hudson

The Beautiful Boy is a book by radical feminist academic Germaine Greer, published in 2003 as The Boy in the Commonwealth by Thames & Hudson and in the rest of the world by Rizzoli. [1] Its avowed intention was «to advance women’s reclamation of their capacity for and right to visual pleasure». [2] [3] [4] The book is a study of the youthful male face and form, from antiquity to the present day, from paintings and drawings to statuary and photographs.

The book was the subject of controversy due to its cover photo and topic matter. The subject of the book’s cover picture, Björn Andrésen, stated that his permission was not attained for the photo’s use. [5] [6] [7] Some writers characterised the book’s nature as paedophilic. [8] [9] [7]

Critical reception was largely positive towards the book’s illustrative value as a photo-book, but mixed towards its textual and theoretical value.

The most beautiful boy in the world

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The Most Beautiful Boy in the World

Now streaming on:

The documentary “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World” opens on a disturbing note: an aged Björn Andrésen, now 66 years old, walks slowly down a dilapidated, empty, blue-lit hallway. Paint is peeling from the walls. The ceiling is tattered and ruined. His silhouette, marked by his black overcoat, is nothing more than a lonely outline unearthing painful memories. A soundtrack of audio tapes from his childhood plays. Using cross cuts, editors Dino Jonsäter and Hanna Lejonqvist then transport us to February 1970, a cold day in Stockholm, the day that would change Andrésen’s life forever.

In “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World,” a heart-wrenching documentary, co-directors Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri puncture the uneasy vein of child star building, explaining how often the practice ensnares the vulnerable. They do so by telling the story of once Swedish teen idol Andrésen, who at the age of fifteen was cast as Tadzio in Italian director Luchino Visconti’s adaptation of Thomas Mann’s novel Death in Venice. The part would bring the Swedish actor fame, adulation, and adoring fans only for the ensuing noise of stardom to rupture his life, permanently.

The documentary first thrives as art imitating life. The Mann novel had enraptured Visconti for some years, formerly crystallizing his plans to adapt it while filming “The Damned.” The basic plot takes place in 1911 at the Grand Hôtel des Bains on the Lido, and concerns an older composer who becomes infatuated with an adolescent Polish boy named Tadzio, an attraction the openly gay Visconti did not consider homosexual in nature. The story lives and dies with Tadzio, an ethereal beauty described as an angel of death with honey-colored hair.

Similar to the composer, Visconti becomes obsessed with finding this boy. For the casting he searched Hungary, Poland, Finland, and Russia before landing in Stockholm. Lindström and Petri have a wealth of footage from the audition to draw from. In the opening clip, the blonde-haired Andrésen walks in, and there’s a sense of melancholy to him, a forlornness not unlike a Romantic poet. You get the sense that he’s never auditioned before. His nervous energy is palpable, an energy that heightens when Visconti asks him to take off his shirt. Seeing his anxious smile, as though he’s afraid of disappointing, the natural frustration of there being no parents in the room, no grown-up willing to stop the leering audition, sets the emotional tone for the rest of the film.

Now the once teen idol, a kind of Timothée Chalamet of his era, is vastly different from the naive young man in the 1970 Super 8 footage. If you’ve ever seen Caspar David Friedrich’s painting “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog,” you’ll know it’s emblematic of the romantic hero: the young man looking over the vista of cloudy mountains toward his vast unknown future. There’s a sense of reflection and quiet abandonment to the work, an amber protected portrait of youth. The present-day Andrésen, bordering on frail, with his long, grey wispy hair providing half his weight, is Friedrich’s romantic hero, but now at the other side of the mountain. And he’s looking over a view that isn’t nearly as hopeful.

“The Most Beautiful Boy in the World” has a slightly fractured arrangement. Driven by Filip Leyman and Anna Von Hausswolff’s hard-charging score, Lindström and Petri’s film cycles through the tragedies in Andrésen’s life, which are often more experientially connected than narratively. Rather his recollections often play as siloed investigations, a timbre the unraveling edit tries to piece together.

While fighting an eviction notice (his apartment is described as an “environmental hazard”) and working to maintain his relationship with his girlfriend Jessica Vennberg, he thinks back on the aftermath of working on “Death in Venice,” especially during the Cannes Film Festival. It’s here the moniker “the most beautiful boy in the world,” bestowed upon him by Visconti while in London, takes shape. In the clips, there’s a targeting on the director’s part: at one point, he explains how Andrésen’s lost some of his beauty now that he’s slightly older. Andrésen often veers very closely to equating homosexuality with pedophilia, which should offer some pause, even if the documentary doesn’t endorse the sentiment.

It’s not until “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World” re-contextualizes again the generational trauma that led Andrésen to who he is now—the death by suicide of his mother—that the narrative solidifies around an emotional focal point. The bleakest instances occur when the Swedish actor reads his mom’s police report, which describes how her body was found, and when he remembers the child he lost to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. By the film’s end, there are two overarching thoughts: “this was a man who was fated to be hurt” and we want to reach back into time and pull him away from that audition.

“The Most Beautiful Boy in the World” isn’t a perfect watch, and it’s often confusing and confounding. But it gets at the heart of this forlorn figure, a once idol turned tragic Greek hero. It’s unflinching, and one of the most honest portraits of the pitfalls that can happen in child stardom.

Now playing in theaters.

Robert Daniels

Robert Daniels is a freelance film critic based in Chicago with a MA in English. He’s the founder of 812filmreviews, and he’s written for ThePlaylist, Consequence of Sound, and Mediaversity.

Watch the world exclusive trailer for The Most Beautiful Boy in the World

The star of Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice reflects on his life in this melancholy documentary.

O ne of the standout titles at this year’s virtual Sundance Film Festival was The Most Beautiful Boy in the World, which recounts the strange and tragic story of Björn Andrésen, the Swedish star of Luchino Visconti’s languid tale of lust and obsession, Death in Venice.

Named after the Italian director’s somewhat bombastic description of his then 15-year-old lead at the film’s premiere in 1971 – Visconti famously scoured all of Scandinavia to find the perfect blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy for the role of Tadzio – Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri’s documentary puts Andrésen centre stage as he reflects on his life 50 years on.

It’s a fascinating meditation on a bygone era and a cautionary tale of the price of achieving international stardom at such a tender age. With the film set to be released in UK and Irish cinemas on 30 July courtesy of Dogwoof, take an exclusive look at the first official trailer below, along with the brand new UK quad poster.

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World is released in UK and Irish cinemas on 30 July.

The Most Beautiful Boy In The World

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Beautiful Boy

2018, Biography/Drama, 1h 52m

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critics consensus

Beautiful Boy sees Timothée Chalamet and Steve Carell delivering showcase work that’s often powerful enough to make up for the story’s muted emotional impact. Read critic reviews

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‘Death in Venice screwed up my life’ – the tragic story of Visconti’s ‘beautiful boy’

Björn Andrésen was the striking child star of the classic film, the perfect embodiment of youthful beauty. Fifty years on, he is still haunted by the exploitation that continued long after filming

Angelic … Björn Andrésen with Dirk Bogarde in Death in Venice. Photograph: Allstar/Warner Bros

B jörn Andrésen was just 15 when he walked straight into the lion’s den, being cast as Tadzio, the sailor-suited object of desire in Luchino Visconti’s film Death in Venice. Its release in 1971 made him not merely a star but an instant icon – the embodiment of pristine youthful beauty. Sitting alone in Stockholm today at the age of 66, he looks more like Gandalf with his white beard and his gaunt face framed by shoulder-length white locks. His eyes twinkle as alluringly as ever but he’s no pussycat. Asked what he would say to Visconti if he were here now, he doesn’t pause. “Fuck off,” he says.

No one who sees The Most Beautiful Boy in the World, a new documentary about Andrésen’s turbulent and tragic past, will be surprised by that answer. Visconti, he tells me, “didn’t give a fuck” about his feelings. He wasn’t alone in that. “I’ve never seen so many fascists and assholes as there are in film and theatre,” says Andrésen. “Luchino was the sort of cultural predator who would sacrifice anything or anyone for the work.” He makes his feelings about Death in Venice itself equally plain: “It has screwed up my life quite decently.” Although he is an accomplished pianist, no one seems very interested in that side of him. “Everything I ever do will be associated with that film. I mean, we’re still sitting here talking about it 50 years later.”

The documentary includes footage of his audition, where he looks angelic but intimidated, not least when Visconti’s interest in him becomes suddenly inflamed. The director issues a string of escalating demands: smile, walk round the room, remove your top. At that last one, the young Andrésen lets slip a nervous laugh, wondering if he has misheard. Soon, though, he is down to his trunks, shifting awkwardly as Visconti and his assistants evaluate his body.

‘Everything I ever do will be associated with that film’… Andrésen at the Lido in Venice. Photograph: MantarayFilm 2021

When he strolled into that audition, he was no stranger to the camera. His grandmother, who was raising him after the death of his single mother four years earlier, was a regular Mrs Worthington, dispatching him to auditions practically as soon as he could walk. He is happy to have starred in Roy Andersson’s 1970 debut A Swedish Love Story (“I was there at the start of his career!”) and wasn’t too perturbed making Death in Venice. “It was a cool summer job,” he says. It also sounds incredibly lonely. Visconti was an imposing figure who warned the crew to keep their hands off the boy during shooting, then dragged him off to a gay club after filming had finished.

Andrésen’s relationship with Dirk Bogarde – who played the ageing composer smitten with him – was nothing more than “neutral”. In his 1983 memoir An Orderly Man, Bogarde described him with a mixture of fascination and pity. “He had an almost mystic beauty,” he wrote. To preserve Andrésen’s complexion and poise, “he was never allowed to go into the sun, kick a football about with his companions, swim in the polluted sea, or do anything which might have given him the smallest degree of pleasure … He suffered it all splendidly.”

It felt like a swarm of bats around me – it was a living nightmare

Bogarde’s one complaint concerned the “slabs of black bubble gum which he would blow into prodigious bubbles until they exploded all over his face.” Andrésen shrugs at the detail: “I don’t remember that.”

The late actor got at least one point right: “The last thing that Björn ever wanted, I am certain, was to be in movies.” If Andrésen didn’t already feel that way, the hoopla surrounding Death in Venice convinced him. The London gala premiere, at which he met the Queen and Princess Anne, was a breeze compared with the film’s unveiling at the Cannes film festival, where he was mobbed by carnivorous crowds. “It felt like swarms of bats around me,” he recalls in the documentary. “It was a living nightmare.”

Escalating demands … with Visconti on the set of Death in Venice. Photograph: Mario Tursi

For Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri, the directors of The Most Beautiful Boy in the World, the footage from the Cannes press conference was uniquely revealing. The assembled hacks are shown laughing obsequiously at Visconti’s jokes about Andrésen losing his looks. The young man simply appears bewildered. “There was no compassion or empathy,” says Lindström. “He had the feeling of being used,” Petri adds. “He was packaged as an object.”

Worse was to come. In Japan, Andrésen was dragooned into public appearances and musical turns, and plied with pills to help him survive the punishing schedule. In his early 20s, he found himself in Paris on the promise of an acting job. He was installed in an apartment by an older man and paid a generous stipend. Meals and gifts came his way from assorted male admirers; one composed love poems in his honour. The film is cagey about what happened during that year in Paris. “He didn’t talk about it,” says Petri, “and we didn’t want to dig any further than was necessary. He does say now that he doesn’t regret much, except for his time in Paris.”

There is a pervasive, necessary sadness to the documentary: we see Andrésen discovering details about his mother’s suicide, and reflecting on the death of one of his own children. But what endures is its subject’s dry humour and buoyant, philosophical spirit. He is also a generous soul: though the movie makes clear that there was a dereliction of duty on his grandmother’s part, he is reluctant to add to the criticism. “Maybe she wasn’t the sharpest blade in the box,” he tells me. “But I got over it. I don’t have any demons left. I kicked them all out. I haven’t had a demon since …” He thinks for a moment. “1992.”

Object of desire … Andrésen and Bogarde in the film classic. Photograph: Allstar/WARNER BROS

He can pinpoint it that specifically? “Yes. I was sitting in my kitchen and they hopped out one by one. I gave them name and number and said, ‘You’re fired.’ ‘What?’ ‘You heard me.’ And that was it.” He claps his hands together briskly as if wiping them free of dust and dirt. What did the demons represent? “All kinds of anxieties and horrors and memories. I still have the memories but they don’t frighten me. I’m scared of very little these days. Too old for that.”

Andrésen is pleased with The Most Beautiful Boy in the World, if perhaps foggy on his reasons for agreeing to it, other than his friendship with the film-makers. “I’m not after attention,” he says. “I got an overdose of that 50 years ago.” The directors have their own ideas about why he let them follow him for the six years it took to make the picture. “After being a public figure for so long, I think it was nice for him to take back the story of his life,” says Petri. “We didn’t want Visconti experts or other talking heads discussing him.” Lindström nods enthusiastically: “I think Björn also liked that we wanted to do a cinematic film, and to do it beautifully, like Death in Venice.”

Andrésen is still acting, and still insisting it’s not the life he chose, though he did tell Lindström recently: “OK, I’m an actor.” She smiles at that: “At 66, he finally said it!” He had a memorable role three years ago in Midsommar, as an elderly man who sacrifices himself at a pagan ceremony: he jumps off a cliff, then a bystander finishes the job by smashing his head with a mallet. “Being killed in a horror movie is every boy’s dream,” he laughs. It seems like a supremely perverse joke – to take the face that has bewitched millions of viewers and then destroy it. Perhaps The Most Beautiful Boy in the World is doing something similar, minus the mallet. Its message is clear: Tadzio is dead. Long live Björn Andrésen.

The most beautiful boy in the world

Documentary “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World,” about the teenage actor in Luchino Visconti’s “Death in Venice,” has been sold to numerous territories by Berlin-based sales agency Films Boutique.

The Swedish film, directed by Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri, premiered in Sundance in the World Cinema Documentary Competition. It receives an online market screening at Cannes’ Marché du Film on Tuesday at 9.30 A.M.

The film will be distributed in the following territories: Japan (Gaga), U.K. (Dogwoof), Australia and New Zealand (Madman), Korea (Watcha), BeNeLux (Amstel), Spain (Filmin), Germany, Austria and Switzerland (Missing Films), Italy (Just Wanted), Greece (Carousel), China (Moviezone), Czech Republic and Slovakia (Film Europe), Denmark (Film Bazar), Norway (Another World), Poland (Against Gravity), Ex-Yugoslavia (Five Stars) and Israel (Lev Cinema).

The Swedish distributor is TriArt, which will release the film on Oct. 15. Juno has the North American rights, and will release Sept. 24.

Born & Raised In Beverly Hills

JENNIFER WARD DUDLEY

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World

He shot himself in the head. That was the first thing I heard. I squirmed. Couldn’t imagine. Didn’t want to.

The New York Times and Hollywood Reporter reported a different story. A suicide by pill overdose. Asleep. In his pajamas. Thank God.

Finally. His battered soul was free. Henry Louis Jourdan, my beloved friend, dead at 29.

Louie and I were buddies from the start. We met in Kindergarten at Hawthorne School on Rexford Drive in Beverly Hills. I was an anxious little girl with a patch on my left eye to strengthen the right. It was crossed. Add some frizzy red hair, freckles, and stick thin legs, and you had anything but a candidate for a cute kids contest.

I held my mother’s hand, walked into the large unfamiliar room, and immediately felt better – Mrs. Wilber, a heavy woman, with a soft, open face came over to say hello. My first teacher. She made me feel safe and eased some of my tension.

Every Kindergarten student arrived with a blanket. There were mats for nap time. Blue for boys and pink for girls. Naturally, mine was yellow. The one who never fits in. Unique. A misfit. Troublemaker extraordinaire. Or, as my mother used to say: “Jenn, you are a caution.” You know it. Look out.

Mrs. Wilber asked us to find a new friend. I saw a little boy across the room. He sat ever so still with his hands at his side. He looked like an angel. I approached gently.

“My name is Louie,” he said with a hint of French accent. And with that, we were fast friends.

Both of our families attended the Good Shepard Church on Little Santa Monica. My mother would troop in with her six daughters every Sunday for 9 a.m. mass. Louie was always there. He and his famous actor father, Louis Jourdan, and his lovely, petite French mother, drew admiring looks. Despite a congregation filled with the notably famous, they were outstanding. At least in my mind.

After mass, Louis and I headed for the social hall to prepare for First Holy Communion. We sat in a circle on a hard wood floor with our legs crossed and hands in our laps, while a nun gave instruction. Once in a while Monsignor Sullivan would check in to see how we were “coming along.” He was a cold, mean, son of a bitch. But Sullivan didn’t scare Louie or me. Not one bit. We giggled. He scolded. The more trouble we got in, the more infectious our laughter. Once, both of us wet our pants. Despite our devilish behavior, Louie and I were approved for the Big Day. But not before we had our first confession. Because, as you know, second graders are riddled with sin.

I had no idea what to confess. The evil Monsignor slid open the screen in the tiny, dark confessional. You could make out a bit of his silhouette. This is the stuff of actual nightmares. I gathered my courage.

“Bless me father, for I have sinned.” And then I blurted, “I’ve committed adultery.”

Instead of the man taking it in stride, or humor, he outlined the mother of all penance: Stations of the Cross and three rosaries. I had no idea what sin I had committed and no one filled me in.

Me. A 7-year-old adulteress. It had a pretty nice ring to it.

I was absolved just in time to join the parade of boys and girls for our First Communion. We weaved around the Church sidewalk in two straight lines. The girls were visions in white from head to toe: veils, fancy dresses, patent shoes, rolled down silk socks, and gloves. We were led to believe we were Brides of Christ. Indoctrination never smelled as sweet, because as we walked slowly up the sides of the marble aisle, Louie was my partner. They were supposed to be Grooms of Christ. Instead, I pretended Louie was mine.

Louie and I enjoyed five more years hanging out on the Hawthorne playground before my family had to move to Westwood. My father was in some trouble with his film business, and the elegant house on Heather Road off Coldwater Canyon had to go. I was pissed. By then, I was running with Louie’s clique, which included Danny Attias, Bobby Gersh and Lon Levin. I had tight girlfriends, Debbie, Laurie and Victoria. And I had an I.D. bracelet from Mike Sheridan. (I heard he too overdosed.)

But, by some turn of luck, I actually liked our new house and my new school at St. Paul the Apostle. I made friends quickly. Fenny was my best friend, followed closely by Cassie Murphy and Laura Setterholm. One of my new classmates, Mark Harmon, went on to fame far beyond, I am sure, his expectations. And he was as genuine and handsome then as now. I also found a new boyfriend – Paul Palmer. He got a St. Christopher Medal instead of an I.D. bracelet. What I lacked in looks I made up for in personality.

Louie and I continued to see each other when I was invited back to Hawthorne parties. I thought I was so cool – smoking Newports, wearing white erase on my lips, sporting miniskirts and making out. But not with Louie. We were tethered by something finer and more intense.

It wasn’t until High School that we separated. I to Marymount High School. He to Beverly High. We both got lost in our diverse worlds. Especially Louie.

After graduation, I heard through the gossip line that Louie had gotten into psychedelics, uppers, downers and heavy drinking. A friend asked me to go to Louie’s house and speak with his father. Help Louie get some help.

I knew what I was up against. Louie’s dad was mean, cold and unforgiving with his son. Louie confided, and I kept his trust, that he had a three-year-old sister who died when he was five. The family never spoke of her, and I believe he bore the full brunt of that tragedy.

Mr. Jourdan opened the door to their Crescent Drive home.

“Mr. Jourdan. We would like to see Louie.”

“Of course,” he responded with his perfect French, affected accent. I sensed reticence, arrogance and anger.

Louie came down the stairs loaded. We suggested they sit while we remained standing. I told them I would like to go with Louie to the Manhattan Project – a youth addiction center in Pasadena. Mr. Jourdan lost it.

“NO. There is nothing wrong with Louie. Please leave.”

I didn’t know the French for ‘denial,’ but I did know ‘fuck you’ in three different languages. Despite that, I held back.

Louie phoned me later that day. I invited him to our home for dinner. By then, we’d moved back to Beverly Hills. Despite knowing our family well, he sat in silence and didn’t say a word. Admittedly, getting one in at the boisterous Dudley table was rough going. But, after the dishes were cleared, we went into the little den. He agreed to go with me to a meeting. A first step. Or so I thought.

A few evenings later, Louie held my hand tightly as we walked into the building and into the main room. We sat down on a wood floor with our legs crossed like we had so many years before at church. The group began to share stories of drugs, LSD trips, heroin binges, booze and arrests – the gamut. He never moved or spoke. Tears fell. From his eyes and mine.

We left just as we came. In silence. He wanted me to drop him off at a phone booth close to Beverly Drive and little Santa Monica. I figured he was going to connect and score. I had no more control than he did. I got out of the car and hugged him until my arms ached. I figured it would be the last time.

But ten years later, as I was walking alone down the shopping district of Beverly Hills, I stopped by 308 Rodeo Drive where my father’s company, Dudley Pictures LTD, used to be. I let the memories take up some time in my head, and then I J-walked back to the other side. Peering into a shop window, I saw a refection behind me. A tall man. Dirty, disheveled. Greasy hair with bandana. In a long black coat.

I moved toward him and looked down. He was barefooted, toes invisible with filth. His eyes were dark and empty.

“Jennifer, it’s Louie.”

I was numbed. Words were lost. I stumbled awkwardly toward him, held his hand, and gave him a kiss. He kissed me too.

It was 1981. A month later. He would be dead.

It took me a full year to find the courage and send his parents a letter. It was about my love and loss. I referred to him as here: The Most Beautiful Boy in the World.

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World (2021)

TOMATOMETER

Critics Consensus: The Most Beautiful Boy in the World tells an undeniably familiar cautionary tale, but it’s no less unbearably tragic in the telling.

AUDIENCE SCORE

Critic Consensus: The Most Beautiful Boy in the World tells an undeniably familiar cautionary tale, but it’s no less unbearably tragic in the telling.

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World Photos

Movie Info

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Critic Reviews for The Most Beautiful Boy in the World

A small, impressionistic, oddly heartfelt movie about beauty, stardom, adoration, exploitation, and loss.

his fascinating but dismally depressing Swedish documentary is well worth seeing, but never fully escapes the feeling that it’s all been seen before.

Andrésen has spent a long time without the language to express what he went through. The Most Beautiful Boy in the World explores and honors that trauma in equal measure, and documents a troubling moment in the history of sexuality in popular culture.

The result is a cinematic curio in search of a more conclusive theme and emotional payoff.

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World provides a haunting portrait of the corrosive effects of fame, especially of the sexualized variety, at an early age. But there are times when the film feels exploitative of its subject.

Andresen’s determination to rise above misfortune, and his hopes for himself, make this movie less than a total tragedy. But it’s an often shudder-inducing cautionary tale.

[Björn Andrésen] reveals lifelong and unimaginable struggles in this sensitively made film.

While the film is engrossing, it’s also disquieting, in that it’s a tale of the results of child exploitation that itself can seem exploitative of the man the child has become.

Pretentious and rather humorless, The Most Beautiful Boy has that quality of voyeurism a documentary acquires when it seems to be exploiting a subject’s apparent misery without really providing insight into it.

A delicate, artful and heartrending film which speaks across time to the tragic nature of innocence taken too soon.

The film is a potent demonstration of the danger of objectifying youth. But it transforms a real person into a pillar of misery, ignoring anything that could complicate this picture.

Powerfully illustrating the effects of the exploitation of child actors in the film industry, this Swedish documentary also is an intimate portrait of a broken and lonely man still searching for his identity.

Audience Reviews

There are no featured reviews for The Most Beautiful Boy in the World at this time.

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World Quotes

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Juno Films Acquires Sundance Doc ‘The Most Beautiful Boy In The World’

Greg Evans

Associate Editor/Broadway Critic

Peter Hedges Film ‘The Same Storm’ Starring Sandra Oh, Mary-Louise Parker, Elaine May & More Acquired By Juno Films

In 1971 at the London premiere of Death in Venice, the director proclaimed his Tadzio as “the world’s most beautiful boy.” Fifty years after the premiere, Andrésen takes us on a remarkable journey made of personal memories, cinema history, stardust and tragic events in what could be his last attempt for him to get his life on track.

“We filmed The Most Beautiful Boy in the World during five years in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Paris, Budapest, Venice, and Tokyo, following in Björn’s footsteps,” says director Kristian Petri. Co-director Kristina Lindstrom adds “It is a story about obsession with beauty, about desire and sacrifice, about a boy whose life was changed forever when the film director Luchino Visconti declared him to be the, ‘World’s most beautiful boy.’ Who was this boy and what happened to him? This film lets us listen to the boy’s own story. He, who was made into an image by others, an icon, a fantasy, which took over his young life.”

The deal was negotiated by Elizabeth Sheldon, founding partner and Chief Executive Officer of Juno Films. Film Boutique recently announced that they have acquired Worldwide Sales Rights.

User Reviews

I was fortunate to have seen this through Sundance’s 2021 virtual film festival, and it was followed by a Q and A with the filmmakers.

The most beautiful boy in the world

Sundance Film Festival
World Premier
January 29, 2021
3 P.M. EST

Cleveland International Film Festival
Cleveland, OH
April 2021

HotDocs
Toronto, Canada
April 29, 2021

Sedona International Film Festival
Sedona, AZ
June 12-20, 2021

Paradise
Toronto, Canada
October 24-30, 2021

Cinema du Parc
Montreal, Canada
October 1-14, 2021

Gateway
Columbus, OH
October 1-14, 2021

ESQUIRE
Denver, CO
October 8-15, 2021

Pickford Film Center
Bellingham, WA
October 14 and 17, 2021

ROXIE THEATRE
San Francisco
NOVEMBER 29
6:30
Q&A with filmmakers Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri to follow

Hamptons Doc Fest:
December 5, 2:00pm
Sag Harbor Cinema with Q&As with Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri

Scandinavian House NYC
December 6th, 7:00 p.m.
Post Screening Q&A Moderated by Isabella Rossellini

AFI
Silver Spring, Maryland
Tue, Dec. 7, 6:30 p.m.; Wed, Dec. 8, 4:45 p.m.
Q&A with filmmakers Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri on Dec. 6

. haunting. it’s a psychologically probing portrait of Bjorn Andresen, who as a teenager was cast in “Death in Venice,” Luchino Visconti’s 1971 adaptation of the Thomas Mann novella.

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World is one of the few documentaries to dwell so gravely and persuasively on how sudden fame can ruin a young life, bypassing any perks of stardom.

This film has real purpose, it reminds us that human beauty is human first and foremost.

The documentary picks up with Andresen (American audiences might recognize him from the 2019 horror film “Midsommar”) 50 years after the premiere of “Death in Venice” and shows him as he examines his own personal histories, cinema history and the tragic events that surrounded his life as he tried to get his life back on track.

He was never a household name by any stretch, but 50 years ago there was a lad who was widely dubbed “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World,” which is now the name of a documentary about the now-old boy, Bjorn Andresen. It’s a sad, cautionary tale, after a fashion, as Andresen has spent a lifetime trying to divest himself of that sobriquet–one that is no longer true, of course, but that will rise again thanks to this cautiously insightful look at a singular, and quite melancholy, figure.

Sundance 2021: The Most Beautiful Boy in the World absorbing, sensitive story of the pains of objectification, fragile ephemerality of beauty.

Through a fascinating mix of archival footage and contemporary interactions with Andrésen, co-directors Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri explore the nature of overnight stardom and the objectification that sometimes comes with it. Andrésen, now in his 60s, bravely opens up about the irresponsible treatment he was subjected to and how the “curse of beauty” distorted his formative years. Being immortalised as an iconic boy meant that Andrésen spent most of his adult life trying to be invisible, refusing to have his identity shaped by a shallow fantasy about who he was. The Most Beautiful Boy in the World is a thoughtful and quietly devastating meditation on obsession, trauma, and the cost of fame.

Directed by Kristian Petri and Kristina Lindstrom
94 minutes
Swedish, English, French and Japanese
2021

The most beautiful boy in the world

The director Luchino Visconti was 64-years-young when he directed his rumination on youth and beauty seen from the opposite end of life. Death in Venice saw Dirk Bogarde vacationing in a plague-riddled seaside hotel where a teen-boy called Tadzio (Björn Andrésen) suddenly sends his overheated brain reeling across platonically idyllic places. And now here 50 years later, premiering at Sundance, comes the documentary The Most Beautiful Boy in the World, which turns around and gives us Tadzio’s perspective looking back. The sun doesn’t shine as brightly from that direction.

It reaches back further than fifty years, into Andrésen’s childhood with his so-called «bohemian» mother who one day up and went missing; from there he was under the negligent care of a grandmother who just wanted a famous grandson, and who would seemingly would steer him anywhere so she could get it. Grandmother’s the one that got Björn into that audition room where Visconti, much like Bogarde’s character, lit up at the sight of the shy fifteen-year-old, and the footage of the director asking the boy to strip down for the camera is unsettling, to put it mildly. Especially the more we learn about how Björn got to that room, and all that would result from it. (A passage through Japanese fandom is especially baffling.)

The most beautiful boy in the world

The Swedish distributor is TriArt, which will release the film on Oct. 15. Juno has the North American rights, and will release Sept. 24.

The most beautiful boy in the world

To mark the release of newly restored The Who Dare on 5th September, we’ve been given 2 copies to give away on Blu-ray.

During the Second World War, Lieutenant Graham (Dirk Bogarde) is sent on a mission to destroy two German airfields on Rhodes that may threaten Egypt. Under his command, a group of six Special Boat Service, two Greek officers and two local guides are assembled.

The group is taken to Rhodes by submarine and comes ashore at night on a desolate beach. From there, the group has to traverse the mountains to reach its targets. At a pre-designated location, the party splits into two raiding parties. After having infiltrated the air bases, they blow up the aircraft, but two of the raiders are taken prisoner by the Italians. Hunted by the many enemy patrols, will the others evade capture and make it back to the submarine in time?

Damn the Defiant!

Haven’t yet seen all the best old-school vintage naval combat epics? This color & ‘scope thriller has a terrific cast of Brit stars and up-n-comers, can boast excellent visuals and is historically accurate. Alec Guinness captains a ship during the Napoleonic Wars, and finds his duty complicated by a psychopathic top officer (Dirk Bogarde) who usurps authority and sees the crew as fresh meat for his sadistic ideas about discipline. All the tech and art credits are top-tier, plus we get nice supporting perfs from the likes of Anthony Quayle, Nigel Stock, Maurice Denham, Victor Maddern, Tom Bell, and Murray Melvin.

Damn the Defiant!

1962 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 101 min. / Street Date June 29, 2022 / H.M.S. Defiant / Available from Viavision / Australian 34.95 / and Amazon US / 34.95

Starring: Alec Guinness, Dirk Bogarde, Maurice Denham, Nigel Stock, Richard Carpenter, Peter Gill, David Robinson, Robin Stewart, Ray Brooks, Peter Greenspan, Anthony Quayle, Tom Bell,

Win The Gentle Gunman on Blu-ray

To mark the release of the newly restored The Gentle Gunman on 7th March, we’ve been given 3 copies to give away on Blu-ray.

At the height of World War II, Terry (John Mills) and his younger brother Matt (Dirk Bogarde) are undercover Ira foot-soldiers working in London. But while Matt is fully committed to the cause, Terry is now beginning to question their violent methods. When two fellow Ira members are arrested, the brothers are asked to break them out. Will Terry follow his orders, or will his misgivings put the two in harm’s way?

Please note: This competition is open to UK residents only

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The Small Print

Open to UK residents only The competition will close 10th March 2022 at 23.59 GMT The winner will be picked at random from entries received No cash alternative is available Please note prizes may be delayed due to Covid-19 To coincide with Gdpr regulations,

Monica Vitti Dies: Italian Screen Icon Of 1960s Classics Was 90

Monica Vitti, the Italian screen icon known for a string of 1960s classics, died Wednesday at 90, according to reports in Italy.

The news was conveyed by writer, director and politician Walter Veltroni on behalf of Vitti’s husband, Roberto Russo:

Roberto Russo, il suo compagno di tutti questi anni, mi chiede di comunicare che Monica Vitti non c’è più. Lo faccio con dolore, affetto, rimpianto.

— walter veltroni (@VeltroniWalter) February 2, 2022

The feted actress, best known for movies including L’Avventura (1960), Red Desert (1964), L’Eclisse (1962) and La Notte (1961), had been battling Alzheimer’s disease for two decades.

Born Maria Luisa Ceciarelli on November 3, 1931, in Rome, Vitti acted in amateur productions as a teenager then trained at Rome’s National Academy of Dramatic Arts.

The actress shot to global fame following spectacular collaborations with legendary director Michelangelo Antonioni in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Vitti starred in L’Avventura as a detached and

A Tale of Two Cities (1958)

It’s the ‘other’ version of Dickens’ terrific novel, an English film that few Americans have seen. This Australian DVD is in the Pal format and from a rather outdated transfer, yet I thoroughly enjoyed seeing a favorite story enacted by a great batch of UK talent. Dirk Bogarde stars and the many character roles go to familiar faces: Cecil Parker, Athene Seyler, Ian Bannen, Alfie Bass, Rosalie Crutchley, Freda Jackson, Christopher Lee, Leo McKern, Donald Pleasence, Eric Pohlmann, Danny Green and the lovely Marie Versini. It’s a regular actor-spotting quiz. Ralph Thomas directed and much of the film was shot in France … with excellent English diction.

Region 2 Pal DVD

1958 / B&w / 1:33 adapted flat / 117 min. / Street Date January 5, 2022 / Available from Viavision / 19.95 au

Starring: Dirk Bogarde, Dorothy Tutin, Cecil Parker, Stephen Murray, Athene Seyler, Paul Guers, Marie Versini, Ian Bannen, Alfie Bass,

Dancing with Crime + The Green Cockatoo

Lovers of vintage English crime thrillers will have a lot to chew over with this pair of escapist gangster pix, one pre-war and one post-. In each an innocent young couple suffers a run-in with a criminal gang. John Mills and Richard Attenborough are the ‘fresh’ new talent on display. The leading lady of Dancing with Crime is Sheila Sim, playing opposite her husband Attenborough. The co-feature The Green Cockatoo sports credits for William Cameron Menzies and Miklós Rózsa.

Dancing with Crime + The Green Cockatoo

Cohen Film Collection / Kino Lorber

1937 & 1947 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 82 + 64 min. / Street Date January 25, 2022 / Available from Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Richard Attenborough, Sheila Sim, Barry Jones; John Mills, René Ray, Robert Newton.

Original Music: Benjamin Frankel, Miklós Rózsa

Directed by John Paddy Carstairs; William Cameron Menzies

The Blu-ray era has given home video devotees great opportunities to catch up with ‘exotic’ genre films from abroad. American TV

Alfred Hitchcock, Vivien Leigh, Roald Dahl Among Those Whose Lives Are Revealed in U.K. 1921 Census

Director Alfred Hitchcock age 21. “Rebecca” star Laurence Olivier at 14. “Gone With The Wind” icon Vivien Leigh at 7. Author Roald Dahl age 4 years and nine months.

The 1921 census, which was released by the U.K.’s National Archives department on Thursday, provides a snapshot into the lives of some of Britain’s best known names long before they became famous. In all, 38 million people were required to fill out the survey just over a hundred years ago, with each citizen individually listed by name.

According to his census entry, in 1921 Alfred Hitchcock was still living at home in Southwark, south London, alongside his 56-year-old mother Emma. His occupation is listed as “Title Designer for Film Company.” At the time, he was working at Famous Players-Lasky, Paramount Pictures’ production arm, which was based in Islington.

Laurence Olivier, still years away from becoming one of Britain’s best-known actors, was 14 years and one

In his own words by Anne-Katrin Titze

Björn Andrésen at age 15 had his life turned upside down when Luchino Visconti anointed him to play Tadzio in his film version of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice

Björn Andrésen at age 15 had his life turned upside down when Luchino Visconti anointed him to play Tadzio in his film version of Thomas Mann’s Death In Venice, starring Dirk Bogarde and pronounced him to be “the most beautiful boy in the world”.

Andrésen in Ari Aster’s Midsommar plays a man who has reached the end of his life. In Kristian Petri and Kristina Lindström’s claustrophobic and disquieting documentary The Most Beautiful Boy In The World (Världens Vackraste Pojke), produced by Stina Gardell we are introduced to a man in his Sixties who is having a difficult time dealing with life.

Kristian Petri with Kristina Lindström and Anne-Katrin Titze on Björn Andrésen: “The scenes are like we are

Kristian Petri and Kristina Lindström’s claustrophobic and disquieting documentary The Most Beautiful Boy In The World (Världens vackraste pojke), produced by Stina Gardell, introduces us to the present-day Björn Andrésen now in his Sixties by way of his supremely filthy apartment with commentary by his then girlfriend Jessica Vennberg who may not be the best match for him or for her to get life in order.

Björn at age 15 had his life turned upside down when Luchino Visconti anointed him to play Tadzio in his film version of Thomas Mann’s Death In Venice, starring Dirk Bogarde, and pronounced him to be ‘the most beautiful boy in the world’. Well chosen archival footage shows his supremely uncomfortable screen test in Stockholm, Björn on.

Björn Andrésen on His Tortured Relationship With Luchino Visconti’s ‘Death in Venice’: ‘That Son of a Bitch Sexualized Me’

Björn Andrésen was just 16 when he landed the role that would change his life. The Swedish teenager was handpicked by legendary Italian auteur Luchino Visconti to star as Tadzio in the 1971 film adaptation of the 1912 Thomas Mann novella “Death in Venice.” In the film, Andrésen’s youth and striking looks obsess Dirk Bogarde’s Gustav von Aschenbach, a composer grappling with failing health. But that lucky break became a nightmare, particularly after Visconti labelled Andrésen the “most beautiful boy in the world” at a Cannes press conference for the film and then dropped the young man he had made a star.

“Life and career-wise, it fucked up a lot of things,” says Andrésen.

After gifting Andrésen with the memorable moniker describing his ethereal looks on that fateful day in the South of France, Visconti never spoke to the actor he’d plucked from obscurity and set off on a fateful collision course with teen idoldom.

‘The Most Beautiful Boy in the World’ Review: The Angelic ’70s Teen Idol of ‘Death in Venice’ and What Became of Him

The Damned (La caduta degli dei)

The Criterion Collection 1098

1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 157 min. / La caduta degli dei, Götterdämmerung / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date September 28, 2021 / 39.95

Starring: Dirk Bogarde,

‘The Most Beautiful Boy in the World’: Film Review

Spain’s Mario Camus, Director of ‘La Colmena,’ ‘Holy Innocents,’ Dies at 86

This year’s San Sebastian Film Festival is in mourning as Spanish director Mario Camus, celebrated for his sober but caring adaptations of distinguished Spanish novels such as “La Colmena” – written by Nobel prize winner Camilo José Cela – Ignacio Aldecoa’s “Young Sánchez” and “The Holy Innocents” by Miguel Delibes, died on Saturday in Santander, northern Spain, the city where he was born. Camus was 86.

Among his career achievements, Camus took the Berlin Golden Bear for best film with “La Colmena” (1983), a Cannes Prize Ecumenical Jury prize for “The Holy Innocents” (1984). Such films proved a highpoint in Spain’s ruling socialist left’s dream, pushed when Pilar Miró took over as head of Spain’s Icaa film institute in 1982, of maintaining Spanish cinema’s social edge but priming its production levels and taking it onto a European stage.

Camus also participated in Cannes’ Directors Fortnight and at the Moscow Festival

Celebrating 70 years of ‘Hallmark Hall of Fame’

On Christmas Eve 1951, NBC aired the very first “Hallmark Hall of Fame” with the world premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti’s Christmas opera “Amahl and the Night Visitors.” Rosemary Kuhlman and 12-year-old Chet Allen starred in this Peabody and Christopher Award-winning holiday story of the three Magi who stay with a young physically disabled boy and his widowed mother on their way to Bethlehem to find the Christ child. The presentation was so popular, the cast reprised their roles the following April. The production was done three more times in the 1950s on NBC, but Bill McIver played Amahl because Allen’s voice had changed.

The “Hallmark Hall of Fame,” which would air on NBC, ABC and CBS and is now exclusively on the Hallmark Channel, is the longest-running primetime series in TV history. In the past 70 years it has won over 80 Emmy Awards and dozens of Peabody Awards, Golden Globes,

The Servant review – Losey and Pinter’s nightmarish version of Jeeves and Wooster

The subversive 1963 classic crackles with undertones of class, sexuality and communism, with Dirk Bogarde at his finest as the sociopathic manservant

Bogarde plays Barrett, a professional manservant whose manner is sometimes self-effacingly blank, sometimes ingratiating, camp and cunning. He is hired as a live-in valet by Tony (Fox

From Mansfield Park to Mojo: why Harold Pinter’s acting deserves to be celebrated

With the Pinter-penned 1963 classic The Servant back in cinemas, there’s a chance to reflect on the playwright’s less-acknowledged acting performances

Like an unhurried but dependable butler, The Servant is here again. It was only nine years ago that Joseph Losey’s crackling psychological drama, about the shifting power games between a toff (James Fox) and his manservant (Dirk Bogarde), was last doing the rounds in cinemas. But this is not a film that ever gets old.

Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips

Win a Blu-ray Bundle of Mr Klein and The Servant

To mark the release of Joseph Losey’s Mr. Klein on 13th September and The Servant on 20th September, we’ve been given 2 bundles of each film to give away on Blu-ray.

This brand-new restoration of the César Award-winning political thriller directed by Joseph Losey is starring Alain Delon in a career defining role with a special appearance from Jeanne Moreau. Mr. Klein, with its Kafkaesque focus on the themes of identity and obsession, has become a classic of the doppelgänger paranoia genre and is one of Losey’s darkest films.

Paris, January 1942 – art dealer Robert Klein (Alain Delon) is making a killing. For this loyal Frenchman the Nazi occupation is a unique business opportunity. He stands to profit from the Jewish people’s misfortune, as they sell their possessions in a hurry to leave the country. But when a Jewish newspaper turns up on Klein’s doorstep,

Victim at 60: the heartbreaking gay drama that pushed boundaries

Dirk Bogarde’s magnificent performance as a man hiding his sexuality is the strongest note in a difficult, and groundbreaking, film that challenged censors

Twenty seven minutes into Victim, after some circuitous beating around the bush, the word is dropped into the dialogue – an unprecedented bombshell on screen at the time, and if it no longer shocks today, you can still sense the film bracing for impact. It’s not a slur, or a profanity, but it was enough to make audiences wince and censors bristle: in 1961, the simple word “homosexual” was more dangerous than an idle swear. Its blunt appearance in Victim ensured the British film initially fell foul of US censors. The British Board of Film Censors let it squeak by with an X rating, though objected to a different scrap of innocuous dialogue, when one man says of another, “I wanted him.” Sixty years ago, the love

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World Review

Throughout history, the world of filmmaking has chomped up childhoods in its sharpened teeth and spat them into an uncertain, damaged adulthood.

Stories of damaged and destroyed lives are commonplace: Judy Garland was fed an assortment of pills that stunted her growth and affected her mental health; Drew Barrymore was addicted to drugs and alcohol before she was a teenager; Corey Feldman was sexually abused and assaulted.

These young and tiny little lives are fed through a machine with no protection. With the popularity ofTikTok and Youtube, these child celebrities are on the rise with barely any safety net.

So it feels very pertinent that Kristina Lindströmand Kristian Petri’s documentary The Most Beautiful Boy in the World is released now. The movie revolves around Björn Andresen who starred in Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice and the title of this documentary relates to Visconti’s viewpoint on the star

Prince
Miscellaneous
The Most Beautiful Boy In The World
Could U be the most beautiful boy in the world?
It’s plain 2 see U’re the reason that God made a girl

When the day turns into the last day of all time
I can say I hope U are in these arms of mine, of mine
And when the night falls before that day I will cry
I will cry tears of joy cuz after U all one can do is die, die

Could U be the most beautiful boy in the world?
Could U be?
It’s plain 2 see U’re the reason that God made a girl

How can I get through days when I can’t get through hours?
I can try but when I do I see U and I’m devoured
Who’d allow, who’d allow a face 2 be soft as a flower?
I can bow and feel proud in the light of this power

Could U be the most beautiful boy in the world? (Could U be?)
Could U be?
It’s plain 2 see U’re the reason that God made a girl

And if the stars ever fell one by one from the sky
I know Mars could not be 2 far behind
Cuz baby, this kind of beauty has got no reason 2 ever be shy
Cuz honey, this kind of beauty is the kind that comes from inside

Could U be (Could U be?) the most beautiful boy in the world?
So beautiful, beautiful
It’s plain 2 see (Plain 2 see) U’re the reason that God made a girl

Could U be the most beautiful boy in the world?
U must be beautiful
It’s plain 2 see U’re the reason that God made a girl
So beautiful

If the stars ever fell one by one from the sky
(Could U be the most beautiful boy in the world?)
I know Mars could not be 2 far behind
(It’s plain 2 see U’re the reason that God made a girl)

Could U be the most beautiful boy in the world? (Could U be?)
So beautiful, beautiful
It’s plain 2 see U’re the reason that God made a girl

Brian Is The Most Beautiful

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Для вашего поискового запроса Memo Boy Brian Is The Most Beautiful мы нашли 50 песен, соответствующие вашему запросу. Теперь мы рекомендуем загрузить первый результат Brian Is The Most Beautiful который загружен Memo Boy Topic размером 4.94 MB, длительностью 3 мин и 45 сек и битрейтом 192 Kbps.

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Beautiful Boy

2010, Drama, 1h 40m

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Источники:

The most beautiful boy in the world

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World review – devastating exposé of showbiz abuse

The most beautiful boy in the world

Sundance Review: ‘The Most Beautiful Boy In The World’

Todd McCarthy

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‘The Most Beautiful Boy in the World’ Review: A Crushing Story of Innocence Destroyed by Stardom

In 1971, director Luchino Visconti picked a shy Swedish boy to star in his «Death in Venice.» In Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri’s unsettling doc, we see the fallout.

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Grade: B-

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World

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The Most Beautiful Boy in the World

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35 Years Ago: Mayte Turns the Tables With ‘The Most Beautiful Boy in the World’

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World

The most beautiful boy in the world

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The Most Beautiful Boy in the World

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World Reviews

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‘The Most Beautiful Boy in the World’ Documentary – Explained

The casting and release of the movie ‘Death in Venice’

The Release of ‘Death in Venice’

Bjorn Inspired the revolution of Japanese manga and anime depiction

He felt uncomfortable around Visconti and the crew of ‘Death in Venice’

His appearance in ‘Midsommar’ and ‘The Most Beautiful Boy in the World’

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The most beautiful boy in the world

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‘The Most Beautiful Boy in the World’ Review: A Cautionary Tale

Mayte – The Most Beautiful Boy In The World

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The Beautiful Boy

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The most beautiful boy in the world

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The Most Beautiful Boy in the World

Robert Daniels

Watch the world exclusive trailer for The Most Beautiful Boy in the World

The Most Beautiful Boy In The World

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