Behind the classic film images from Visconti’s masterpiece lies a world that is not very beautiful ★★★☆☆

In the TV show The prettiest girl in the class presenter Jaap Jongbloed looks back on the lives of former ‘most beautiful girls’, who usually (briefly) joined some international jet set. Never, in all the years of the program’s existence, was it ever about the prettiest boy in the class. But now there is the superlative, with the documentary The Most Beautiful Boy in the Worlda portrait of the now 67-year-old Swede Björn Andrésen.

At the age of 15, Andrésen was cast by director Luchino Visconti as an angelic boy in a sailor suit in Death in Venice (1971). His story is more tragic, grander and more poignant than an entire season prettiest girls together. Andrésen, the child of two absent parents, was hoisted on the podium by the Italian cinematographer as a trophy. Visconti again adjusted his adoration for this ‘perfect beauty’ at the film’s press conference, joking that his little actor – then 16 – was already too old, and ‘less beautiful’.

During the tour of the film, the kid fell into the hands of the crew and clique all around Death in Venice† men who took him as a showpiece to Parisian gay clubs. Andrésen was especially a star in Japan: generations of manga artists were inspired by his fragile appearance. The Swede, a creditable pianist, also recorded some albums. To keep up with the Beatles scenes, the boy was fed ‘pills’; he didn’t know what was in it.

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World shows the unsatisfactory world behind the classic film images from Visconti’s masterpiece: the exploitation by and subsequent disinterest of all those types who ran away with the ‘prettiest boy’. How unhealthy and devastating it all was for a child without a stable foundation.

The documentary by Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri also follows Andrésen in the present: a haggard-looking man who is affected by alcohol and personal suffering in a dirty apartment. Still an actor, because blessed with a striking head. He could be seen, among other things, as the elderly man who crashes into the horror hit as part of a ritual Midsommar from 2019. It couldn’t be more symbolic.