I really found disturbing that gang of street musicians who entered in the hotel. For me they represented the death.
shareNot unheard of for images of "Death" to be playing music in medieval paintings and drawings, perhaps if they had been playing Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saens then I would go along with that a bit more, however I think they signified a warning to leave: didn't look too healty did they.
shareI find it hard to believe death could be as plain irritating as that obnoxious foursome (4 riders of the apocalypse?)
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
Visconti was a well known communist so I believe the "utility" of the musicians in the movie context was to offer both a symbol of the dissociation/distance between classes and a satire of the pompous bourgeois guests in the hotel. At some point, the singer even says that the "Police may be the sickness", the kind of commentary that immediately doesn't make much sense but falls into place when you know who's the guy behind the director's chair.
shareIn both Thomas Mann's novel and in this movie, there were a numbers of red-headed characters who were harbingers of death: the grotesque old man on the boat who has tried to make himself up as someone who is young young enough to be his own grandson; the leader of the the street musicians who is truly repulsive; the man dying in the streets (or was it in the post office?), among others. There are even more of these omens of death in Man's novella.)
shareThese kind of locals are on every tourist traps
share