THE LEITMOTIF OF DEATH: FROM TEXT AND MUSIC TO FILM
THE LEITMOTIF OF DEATH: FROM TEXT AND MUSIC TO FILM

Summary/Abstract: Considering death as a leitmotif may be the core element that could create an inter-semiotic connection between literature, music and cinematography.Analysed in these three sign systems (textual, musical and cinematic) the leitmotif of death reveals its artistic specificity but transposed from the narrative or/and musical medium into the cinematic one, it needs to be adapted to the new artistic conventions and signs. It is the case of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice and Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony when appropriated for Luchino Visconti’s film – Death in Venice.The study intends to explore the means of adapting the textual and musical leitmotif of death to the cinematographic medium in order to understand this artistic phenomenon as an act of (re)generation regarded from the interrelated perspectives of artistic production, based on an extensive process of trans-coding, of creation,involving both the stage of (re)interpretation and (re)creation and of perception,experienced as an inter-textual and inter-semiotic engagement.

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