tribute to beauty

a creature that brings tears to my eyes, every and each time I see it. he was not human in this film, he was... eternal.
I watched the movie over and over again. I found the inner ME in its face, its smile, its look. and I say its, not his, because of the non-humanity, of the eternity and universality of the soul.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYJB1SgnXzQ&feature=related

A video tribute to Björn Andrésen (nickname The Beautiful Boy) who brought Tadzio to life in Luchino Visconti's 1971 film adaptation of Thomas Mann novella Death in Venice. Björn Johan Andrésen (born 26 January 1955, in Stockholm, Sweden) is a Swedish actor and musician.

He is most famous for playing the fourteen-year-old Tadzio in Luchino Visconti's 1971 film adaptation of the Thomas Mann novella Death in Venice. Andrésen had only appeared in one film, En Kärlekshistoria (1970) at the time he was cast in Death in Venice, which gained him international recognition. While the film performed relatively poorly at the box office, Andrésen was noted for his performance as Tadzio, the beautiful young Polish boy with whom the film's older protagonist Gustav von Aschenbach falls in love.

Film historian Lawrence J. Quirk commented in his study The Great Romantic Films (1974) that some shots of Andrésen "could be extracted from the frame and hung on the walls of the Louvre or the Vatican".

Rumors circulated in America at the time of the film's release as to whether or not Andrésen was homosexual (as the role demanded that he appear to exchange romantic glances with the protagonist and on other occasion be kissed and caressed by another teenage boy). Andrésen emphatically denied these, and later recounted his discomfort at being forced by director Luchino Visconti during filming to visit a gay bar, where he attracted the attention of a number of older men. Eager to dispel the rumors regarding his sexuality and to shed his "pretty boy" image, Andrésen thereafter avoided homosexual roles and parts which he felt would play off of his good looks.