The great Luchino Visconti concocts a stunning banquet of horrors with some of his favorite gourmet dishes: the corruption and decadence of the upper classes, incest, mamma's boys and monstrous/fascinating mothers. The setting this time is National Socialist Germany where the perversions find their perfect home. There is, however, a slight but disturbing enjoyment of the whole putrid thing. Visconti's extraordinary attention to detail requires more than a couple of viewings. Ingrid Thulin's hairstyles are a masterpiece on their own. After Ingman Bergman, Visconti gives her her most showy role. She's a pervert's mother if I ever saw one. Magnificent in her over the top understatement. Creepy Helmut Berger is perfect here. Even his real voice adds to the luridness of his character. In "Ludwig" he was dubbed by Giancarlo Giannini transforming his third rate talent into something,seemingly, transcendental. Dirk Bogarde, Charlotte Rampling, Umberto Orsini plus the gorgeous Renaud Verley and Florinda Bolkan contribute considerably to the rigid and humorless vision of one of the greatest aesthetes the movies have ever known.
73 Reviews
"Abandon hope all ye who enter here".
Galina_movie_fan14 July 2006
The first chapter in Lucino Visconti's trilogy of "German Decadence", "The Damned" ("Götterdämmerung"), 1969 is a deep and heavy drama; or rather tragedy with many references to Shakespearean and ancient tragedies themes. The film follows a German rich industrialist family, the munitions manufacturers (possibly modeled after Germany's Krupp family) who attempts to keep their power during the rise of Nazism regime. It takes place from the night of the Reichstag fire when the Von Essenbecks have gathered in celebration of the patriarch Joachim's birthday to their eventual downfall ("The Fall of Gods" is the film's Italian title) shortly after the Night of Long Knives.
A Marxist and an aristocrat, Visconti was both repelled by and drawn to the decaying society that he depicts in impressive and loving details and often in a flamboyant style - the examples are the scene with Helmut Berger impersonating Marlene Dietrich's Lola-Lola "Blue Angel", the beer party, the orgy and following them massacre during the "Night of Long Knives".
Both film's titles, "The Damned" and "The Fall of the Gods" prepare us for entering the gates of Inferno - "Abandon hope all ye who enter here". The characters we met, the members of the respected and famous family are "Fallen Gods" and they are ready to take the eternal damnation of their souls in the exchange for Power which is above money, love or any human feelings. The weakest and tender will vanish; the most unscrupulous, merciless, backstabbing, hating and cruel will celebrate on this feast during the time of plague.
The acting is very impressive by all members of a fine international cast that includes Ingrid Thulin, Dirk Bogarde, Charlotte Rampling, Renaud Verley, Umberto Orsini and Helmut Berger. I just want to say couple of words about Ingrid Thulin (Baroness Sophie, the widowed daughter in law of a steel baron Joachim) and Helmut Berger as her son, Martin. I've never seen Ingrid Thulin as beautiful, desirable yet wicked and evil as the German Lady Macbeth/Queen Gertrude/Agrippina the Younger. I dare say that I like her in Visconti's film better than in Bergman's films that made her world famous. Helmut Berger was born to play Martin - immoral, corrupted, and bad to the bone playboy-pedophile Hamlet/Nero in Nazi uniform yet at some point strangely sympathetic. And was he pretty as Lola-Lola :).
8/10
A Marxist and an aristocrat, Visconti was both repelled by and drawn to the decaying society that he depicts in impressive and loving details and often in a flamboyant style - the examples are the scene with Helmut Berger impersonating Marlene Dietrich's Lola-Lola "Blue Angel", the beer party, the orgy and following them massacre during the "Night of Long Knives".
Both film's titles, "The Damned" and "The Fall of the Gods" prepare us for entering the gates of Inferno - "Abandon hope all ye who enter here". The characters we met, the members of the respected and famous family are "Fallen Gods" and they are ready to take the eternal damnation of their souls in the exchange for Power which is above money, love or any human feelings. The weakest and tender will vanish; the most unscrupulous, merciless, backstabbing, hating and cruel will celebrate on this feast during the time of plague.
The acting is very impressive by all members of a fine international cast that includes Ingrid Thulin, Dirk Bogarde, Charlotte Rampling, Renaud Verley, Umberto Orsini and Helmut Berger. I just want to say couple of words about Ingrid Thulin (Baroness Sophie, the widowed daughter in law of a steel baron Joachim) and Helmut Berger as her son, Martin. I've never seen Ingrid Thulin as beautiful, desirable yet wicked and evil as the German Lady Macbeth/Queen Gertrude/Agrippina the Younger. I dare say that I like her in Visconti's film better than in Bergman's films that made her world famous. Helmut Berger was born to play Martin - immoral, corrupted, and bad to the bone playboy-pedophile Hamlet/Nero in Nazi uniform yet at some point strangely sympathetic. And was he pretty as Lola-Lola :).
8/10
Riding The Tiger
bkoganbing29 May 2009
The Damned tells the story about the Nazi consolidation of power from the Reichstag fire of 1933 through the famous Night Of The Long Knives purge in 1934 as seen through the eyes of a prominent German industrial family, the Von Essenbachs. The Von Essenbachs are a Prussian Junker clan who survived World War I with fortune intact. They are a munitions manufacturing outfit based on the real life Krupps and in order to survive the Great Depression and the coming Nazi preventive counterrevolution they make a deal with the new Third Reich.
As we know from history the Nazis manufactured an incident with the famous Reichstag fire to spread fear and create the climate for the new Chancellor Adolph Hitler to assume dictatorial powers. The next year was a struggle for power within the Nazi movement as well as the country. The Von Essenbachs have their own power struggles with in the family that parallel the Nazis and the country.
Luchino Visconti based some of his characters on some real life German personalities of the day. Dirk Bogarde is based on Hjalmar Schacht the finance minister who in fact was a technician and who did in fact play a large role in German recovery from the Depression. Bogarde is a new man brought in to reorganize the munitions factory and who like Schacht thinks he can ride the tiger.
Swedish actress Ingrid Thulin plays the daughter of the patriarch of the clan Albrecht Schoenhals. She's one vicious woman who has bought completely into the Nazi ideology. I believe she's based on Joseph Goebbels wife Magda, one of the most terrifying women in history. Though the two of them indulged in many affairs, they were committed partners in support of Hitler. Magda Goebbels was a woman who along with her husband so couldn't stand the thought of Germany losing World War II and her children living under Russian/Slavic occupation that she and Joe killed their seven kids as well as themselves. One of the sickest people in history and I can definitely see Thulin doing the same thing in the same circumstances.
The Damned was nominated for an Oscar in 1969 for Best Original Screenplay, it lost to the more popular Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid. As much as I like Newman and Redford this story is far better. Sadly this was the only nomination for the film, incredibly not even nominated for Best Foreign Film.
As Visconti states in the film Nazism may have been born with Hitler and discontented veterans of World War I, but it was incubated in the factories of Germany during the Great Depression. It was fed to the workers by the owners who were in terror of a Communist revolution. In many ways the Nazi takeover was a preemptive strike against that occurring, but it was a horrible price.
As we know from history the Nazis manufactured an incident with the famous Reichstag fire to spread fear and create the climate for the new Chancellor Adolph Hitler to assume dictatorial powers. The next year was a struggle for power within the Nazi movement as well as the country. The Von Essenbachs have their own power struggles with in the family that parallel the Nazis and the country.
Luchino Visconti based some of his characters on some real life German personalities of the day. Dirk Bogarde is based on Hjalmar Schacht the finance minister who in fact was a technician and who did in fact play a large role in German recovery from the Depression. Bogarde is a new man brought in to reorganize the munitions factory and who like Schacht thinks he can ride the tiger.
Swedish actress Ingrid Thulin plays the daughter of the patriarch of the clan Albrecht Schoenhals. She's one vicious woman who has bought completely into the Nazi ideology. I believe she's based on Joseph Goebbels wife Magda, one of the most terrifying women in history. Though the two of them indulged in many affairs, they were committed partners in support of Hitler. Magda Goebbels was a woman who along with her husband so couldn't stand the thought of Germany losing World War II and her children living under Russian/Slavic occupation that she and Joe killed their seven kids as well as themselves. One of the sickest people in history and I can definitely see Thulin doing the same thing in the same circumstances.
The Damned was nominated for an Oscar in 1969 for Best Original Screenplay, it lost to the more popular Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid. As much as I like Newman and Redford this story is far better. Sadly this was the only nomination for the film, incredibly not even nominated for Best Foreign Film.
As Visconti states in the film Nazism may have been born with Hitler and discontented veterans of World War I, but it was incubated in the factories of Germany during the Great Depression. It was fed to the workers by the owners who were in terror of a Communist revolution. In many ways the Nazi takeover was a preemptive strike against that occurring, but it was a horrible price.
Horrific but captivating
francheval16 February 2006
Warning: Spoilers
This movie opens on a most impressive intro. Flames and smoke come up from a furnace, and as the titles jump on and off the screen, we hear a harrowing music theme by Maurice Jarre (the melody is close to Dr Zhivago's, but played with a frantic rhythm). The English/French title, "The Damned ", is far more appropriate than the Italian/German one which is "The Fall of the Gods". As the intro suggests, we are entering an inferno, and the characters we are going to see are the sort who will not hesitate sell out their soul to the devil in exchange of power and glory. "The Damned" is certainly a horrific movie, but as artfully made as can be.
Action takes place in the Ruhr industrial region of Germany, just after Hitler's rise to power. The aristocratic family von Essenbeck is the country's leading steelwork owner, a fictional equivalent of Krupps or Thyssens. Now, this movie is not trying to denounce the fact that big German industrials financed Hitler, but instead, it focuses on the internal struggle for power inside the family. Therefore,"The Damned" is not really a movie about nazism, even if it is often regarded as such. It a movie about power. Nazism is only used as an extreme context where the mechanisms of power are made more evident than anywhere else, because it is a system that openly legitimates the absolute domination of the strongest.
Baroness Sophie (Ingrid Thulin) is the daughter in law of an aging steel baron. Her husband is apparently dead during WW1, but he left her with a son, Martin (Helmut Berger) who is immediately presented as immature and perverse. Baroness Sophie has an official lover, Friedrich Bruckmann (Dirk Bogarde), and both are acquainted with an influent member of the nazi party called Aschenbach (Helmut Griem). Sophie is a modern incarnation of Lady Macbeth. Her schemes are to take control of the Essenbeck steelworks by any means, determined to crush anyone who might stand in her way.
Sophie doesn't care for anybody. Her lover Friedrich is anything but an angel, but he appears as a weaker character whom she adroitly manipulates. She has an obvious contempt for her son Martin, which gets obvious right away, as she is seen laughing behind a curtain while he is performing a transvestite number at his grandfather's birthday party...The only one who seems to have her esteem is Aschenbach the nazi, who is just as devoid of scruples as she is.
The steel lady gets both her father-in-law and one of her brothers-in-law murdered, while her other brother-in-law is forced to exile, and her timid nephew to silence. Her son Martin becomes therefore the legitimate heir of the steelworks, but she only intends to use him as a puppet as she plans an official marriage with her lover Friedrich, through which she hopes to take control of the family's fortune. The wedding will take place, but not the way she expected...
The only enemy she did't think about (and does she think about enemies!) is her own son, whom everybody regards as incapable and degenerate. Indeed, Martin, by the way a pedophile, is not interested in power or money. But the blemished love of the boy for his mother has reverted into an infernal hate. Hate is going to be Martin's driving force to become the much unexpected winner of the game, as he is really capable of ANYTHING, even beyond what his merciless mother ever would have imagined.
Ingrid Thulin's performance is stunning, probably her best one ever, and though Helmut Berger tends to overact, you couldn't find a better choice for the satanic role of Martin. The evil figures appear much more intense than the few innocent ones, among them a barely recognizable Charlotte Rampling in one of her early appearances. The baroque lavishness of the scenery makes a striking contrast with the ghastly minds of the characters (hard to speak of heroes) and their equally ghastly deeds. The film makes you wonder if the the already renowned Luchino Visconti deliberately intended to shock by all means, since all his other movies, before and after this one, were by far tamer.
But indeed, in 1969, all ingredients were there to make it a perfect bomb. Two episodes of nazism are spectacularly rendered : first the public burning of books on the streets, then the Night of the Long Knives, which is depicted in a very long and shocking scene. A beer drinking party turns into a homosexual orgy, and eventually ends in a bloodbath. But even worse is still to come...
It can be established that "the Damned" was the first screenwork to deal with nazism so openly, and as such, it abruptly broke a long-lasting taboo. This film has been a trend-setter in many ways, and opened the path to a series of others that hinted to nazism as darkly erotic and fascinating, a trend that some called "nazi sexploitation of the seventies". True, the influence of "the Damned" can be traced in many vile under-products, but also in leading works such as "Cabaret" or "The Night Porter". A reaction to that trend came with the ensuing wave of holocaust movies, which made a point in reminding that nazism was above all sheerly destructive.
Action takes place in the Ruhr industrial region of Germany, just after Hitler's rise to power. The aristocratic family von Essenbeck is the country's leading steelwork owner, a fictional equivalent of Krupps or Thyssens. Now, this movie is not trying to denounce the fact that big German industrials financed Hitler, but instead, it focuses on the internal struggle for power inside the family. Therefore,"The Damned" is not really a movie about nazism, even if it is often regarded as such. It a movie about power. Nazism is only used as an extreme context where the mechanisms of power are made more evident than anywhere else, because it is a system that openly legitimates the absolute domination of the strongest.
Baroness Sophie (Ingrid Thulin) is the daughter in law of an aging steel baron. Her husband is apparently dead during WW1, but he left her with a son, Martin (Helmut Berger) who is immediately presented as immature and perverse. Baroness Sophie has an official lover, Friedrich Bruckmann (Dirk Bogarde), and both are acquainted with an influent member of the nazi party called Aschenbach (Helmut Griem). Sophie is a modern incarnation of Lady Macbeth. Her schemes are to take control of the Essenbeck steelworks by any means, determined to crush anyone who might stand in her way.
Sophie doesn't care for anybody. Her lover Friedrich is anything but an angel, but he appears as a weaker character whom she adroitly manipulates. She has an obvious contempt for her son Martin, which gets obvious right away, as she is seen laughing behind a curtain while he is performing a transvestite number at his grandfather's birthday party...The only one who seems to have her esteem is Aschenbach the nazi, who is just as devoid of scruples as she is.
The steel lady gets both her father-in-law and one of her brothers-in-law murdered, while her other brother-in-law is forced to exile, and her timid nephew to silence. Her son Martin becomes therefore the legitimate heir of the steelworks, but she only intends to use him as a puppet as she plans an official marriage with her lover Friedrich, through which she hopes to take control of the family's fortune. The wedding will take place, but not the way she expected...
The only enemy she did't think about (and does she think about enemies!) is her own son, whom everybody regards as incapable and degenerate. Indeed, Martin, by the way a pedophile, is not interested in power or money. But the blemished love of the boy for his mother has reverted into an infernal hate. Hate is going to be Martin's driving force to become the much unexpected winner of the game, as he is really capable of ANYTHING, even beyond what his merciless mother ever would have imagined.
Ingrid Thulin's performance is stunning, probably her best one ever, and though Helmut Berger tends to overact, you couldn't find a better choice for the satanic role of Martin. The evil figures appear much more intense than the few innocent ones, among them a barely recognizable Charlotte Rampling in one of her early appearances. The baroque lavishness of the scenery makes a striking contrast with the ghastly minds of the characters (hard to speak of heroes) and their equally ghastly deeds. The film makes you wonder if the the already renowned Luchino Visconti deliberately intended to shock by all means, since all his other movies, before and after this one, were by far tamer.
But indeed, in 1969, all ingredients were there to make it a perfect bomb. Two episodes of nazism are spectacularly rendered : first the public burning of books on the streets, then the Night of the Long Knives, which is depicted in a very long and shocking scene. A beer drinking party turns into a homosexual orgy, and eventually ends in a bloodbath. But even worse is still to come...
It can be established that "the Damned" was the first screenwork to deal with nazism so openly, and as such, it abruptly broke a long-lasting taboo. This film has been a trend-setter in many ways, and opened the path to a series of others that hinted to nazism as darkly erotic and fascinating, a trend that some called "nazi sexploitation of the seventies". True, the influence of "the Damned" can be traced in many vile under-products, but also in leading works such as "Cabaret" or "The Night Porter". A reaction to that trend came with the ensuing wave of holocaust movies, which made a point in reminding that nazism was above all sheerly destructive.
Rigorous classicism.
FilmSnobby1 April 2004
Pauline Kael famously called this movie "hysterical" (she was contrasting it to Bertolucci's *The Conformist*, which was supposed to be more "lyrical".) Well, a movie about decadent Nazis is bound to be a little hysterical -- what, were you expecting something tasteful? Hysteria is probably the best mode with which to treat the Third Reich. What's astounding is that director Luchino Visconti forced his sweaty, hysterical visuals into a rigid classical structure. The set-up is pure clockwork: one betrayal leading to another; one devastation opening up an even deeper abyss for another perpetrator.
Basically, Visconti is taking on *Macbeth*, here. Dirk Bogarde plays the Macbeth figure, an up-and-coming industrialist who's sleeping with an evil Grande Dame of Nazi finance, Sophie von Essenbeck (Ingrid Thulin, having an absolute ball), heiress to a munitions conglomerate. (The von Essenbecks are loosely based on the Krupps, but don't take this as any sort of literal historiography.) Thulin eggs on her lover Bogarde to commit a few politic murders and a frame-up or two so that he can take over the family business, with herself as the power behind the throne. But she doesn't count on the pathology of her grown son from a previous marriage, the hideous little monster Martin (Helmut Berger, acting terribly but it sort of fits in an Udo Kier-sort of way). Martin is your typical Nazi: a closet pedophile, a drug addict, a transvestite, a momma's-boy, a you-name-it. The scenes involving his seduction of a 9- or 10-year-old girl who lives in a shabby apartment complex are some of the most disturbing that you'll ever see in cinema . . . and along those lines, I seriously wonder about the state of mind of some of the commentators here who find this movie to be high camp, to be watched with drinking buddies. If you think molestation is funny, you'd better see a shrink, pal.
Anyway. The plot is so Byzantine that it finally defeats a brief summary. Let it suffice to say that Visconti manages to cram his complicated story neatly within the historical context of the period between the Reichstag Fire and the Night of the Long Knives, thereby maintaining a nutty observance of Classical Unities. All the while, he films the thing in Hammer-horror Pop color, with intense contrast between shadow and light. The first scene, by the way, is a shot of the blasting furnaces of the munitions factory -- a fitting intro to the horrendous vision of depravity which soon follows. Everyone's sweating in this movie: drops of perspiration trickle down temples, and beads of sweat glisten on upper lips throughout, as if the flames of Hell are licking up at the soles of their collective feet. *The Damned* is a feverish masterpiece. You'll never forget it. Highest recommendation.
(A tip for viewing of the DVD: I recommend that you watch the movie with the English subtitles ON. While everyone speaks English in the film, only Bogarde is clearly intelligible. Owing to the complicated plot, you'll need to know what's going on in order to fully appreciate Visconti's thematic design.)
Basically, Visconti is taking on *Macbeth*, here. Dirk Bogarde plays the Macbeth figure, an up-and-coming industrialist who's sleeping with an evil Grande Dame of Nazi finance, Sophie von Essenbeck (Ingrid Thulin, having an absolute ball), heiress to a munitions conglomerate. (The von Essenbecks are loosely based on the Krupps, but don't take this as any sort of literal historiography.) Thulin eggs on her lover Bogarde to commit a few politic murders and a frame-up or two so that he can take over the family business, with herself as the power behind the throne. But she doesn't count on the pathology of her grown son from a previous marriage, the hideous little monster Martin (Helmut Berger, acting terribly but it sort of fits in an Udo Kier-sort of way). Martin is your typical Nazi: a closet pedophile, a drug addict, a transvestite, a momma's-boy, a you-name-it. The scenes involving his seduction of a 9- or 10-year-old girl who lives in a shabby apartment complex are some of the most disturbing that you'll ever see in cinema . . . and along those lines, I seriously wonder about the state of mind of some of the commentators here who find this movie to be high camp, to be watched with drinking buddies. If you think molestation is funny, you'd better see a shrink, pal.
Anyway. The plot is so Byzantine that it finally defeats a brief summary. Let it suffice to say that Visconti manages to cram his complicated story neatly within the historical context of the period between the Reichstag Fire and the Night of the Long Knives, thereby maintaining a nutty observance of Classical Unities. All the while, he films the thing in Hammer-horror Pop color, with intense contrast between shadow and light. The first scene, by the way, is a shot of the blasting furnaces of the munitions factory -- a fitting intro to the horrendous vision of depravity which soon follows. Everyone's sweating in this movie: drops of perspiration trickle down temples, and beads of sweat glisten on upper lips throughout, as if the flames of Hell are licking up at the soles of their collective feet. *The Damned* is a feverish masterpiece. You'll never forget it. Highest recommendation.
(A tip for viewing of the DVD: I recommend that you watch the movie with the English subtitles ON. While everyone speaks English in the film, only Bogarde is clearly intelligible. Owing to the complicated plot, you'll need to know what's going on in order to fully appreciate Visconti's thematic design.)
Visconti masterpiece
kevin-jones28 July 2004
This really is Luchino Visconti's magnum opus - The Damned is an utterly engrossing work of art that grabs you from the start and doesn't relinquish its grip until the final frames. The accents from the international cast takes a little getting used to - the soundtrack is in English (some sync sound, some dubbed) and Dirk Bogarde's refined English accent doesn't really suit the part of a German industrialist at first but once you get used to these incongruities the cast seems perfect! The cinematography is beautiful, capturing the decaying elegance perfectly. The score by Maurice Jarre adds to the atmosphere nicely even if it is a little reminiscent of Dr Zhivago. The film's themes are quite challenging and sometimes uncomfortable to watch but it's always compelling and absorbing even at 2 hours 35 minutes.
Groping for power as well as survival during Nazi Germany's early days.
planktonrules8 August 2016
"The Damned" is pretty much what I expected from a Luchino Visconti epic from the 1960s...it's very long, very slow and very mannered. However, unlike some of his other tediously long films ("The Leopard" and "Death in Venice", it is more watchable...possibly because it's so perverse.
The film is about a rich industrialist family in Nazi Germany during the early years (1933 or so onward towards WWII). At the beginning, they seem relatively normal though over the course of the film, these conniving and avaricious folks sell their souls to the Nazi regime in order to maintain power and financial success. In the process, some get wrapped up in the SA (and are eventually destroyed), rape, incest (multiple times), cross-dressing and more...until by the end of the film most of them are dead and the remaining family member is a soul-less ghoul of a man.
The story is a decent overview of the German industrialists in general. They were an evil lot who profited tremendously from the build up to the war. Plus, unlike most WWII films, you really see nothing of the country except life for this family. So, the persecution of Jews, Hitler's seizing power and much more are only mentioned in the film as opposed to being directly dealt with in the story. This was NOT a bad thing and makes the film very unique. What also is unique is how incredibly perverse everyone is. There is a lot of nudity...some of which is quite incestuous and kinky. So, it's clearly NOT a film to show the kids or your mother or Reverend Jenkins!
Another important thing I must mention is the slowness of the film. It is NOT a movie the average person would enjoy and that is a trademark of many of Visconti's later films. This isn't so much a criticism but an observation. I much prefer his earlier work (such as "Rocco and His Brothers") but many seem to like his slow epics. To each his own....but like his other films, "The Damned" might have been better with a bit of editing and tightening up of the story.
The film is about a rich industrialist family in Nazi Germany during the early years (1933 or so onward towards WWII). At the beginning, they seem relatively normal though over the course of the film, these conniving and avaricious folks sell their souls to the Nazi regime in order to maintain power and financial success. In the process, some get wrapped up in the SA (and are eventually destroyed), rape, incest (multiple times), cross-dressing and more...until by the end of the film most of them are dead and the remaining family member is a soul-less ghoul of a man.
The story is a decent overview of the German industrialists in general. They were an evil lot who profited tremendously from the build up to the war. Plus, unlike most WWII films, you really see nothing of the country except life for this family. So, the persecution of Jews, Hitler's seizing power and much more are only mentioned in the film as opposed to being directly dealt with in the story. This was NOT a bad thing and makes the film very unique. What also is unique is how incredibly perverse everyone is. There is a lot of nudity...some of which is quite incestuous and kinky. So, it's clearly NOT a film to show the kids or your mother or Reverend Jenkins!
Another important thing I must mention is the slowness of the film. It is NOT a movie the average person would enjoy and that is a trademark of many of Visconti's later films. This isn't so much a criticism but an observation. I much prefer his earlier work (such as "Rocco and His Brothers") but many seem to like his slow epics. To each his own....but like his other films, "The Damned" might have been better with a bit of editing and tightening up of the story.
A Potpourri of Vestiges Review: Luchino Visconti's haunting tale of moral and social decadence
murtaza_mma18 January 2013
Italian filmmaker Luchino Viconti's 1969 film "The Damned" is a haunting work of art that may quite easily be regarded as one of the boldest and most disturbing works in the whole of cinema. The Damned is a testament to the genius of Visconti who at the height of his power produced cinema that not only transcended the conventional boundaries but also had the courage to tackle themes that even today are considered forbidden. The Damned is often described as hysterical, but what can a movie that's set during the tumultuous phase of Nazi holocaust be anything but hysterical? The movie adorns a stellar international cast (led by Ingrid Thulin and Dirk Bogarde) and it does take sometime to get used to their different accents. A casual viewer can be further unruffled by movie's convoluted plot. But, patience does have its rewards and in this case, tenfold.
Those who have already watched another of Visconti's masterpieces, Death in Venice would be greatly surprised to witness the Italian maestro's range as an auteur. The subtlety and timidness that underline Death in Venice are completely absent here, at least in an explicit sense, and are replaced by the expressions of brusqueness and chutzpah in full effect. Dirk Bogarde plays a Macbeth-like character with religious fervor. While his remarkable performance in Death in Venice is easily his best ever (arguably one of the all time best performances in the history of cinema) his portrayal of an insecure usurper in The Damned is nothing short of outstanding. But, the real star of the show is Ingrid Thulin. Anyone who has seen her in Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light will get the shock of his/her life. As the imperious, glacial, ravishing Sophie Von Essenbeck in The Damned, Thulin is a sight for the sore eyes, an elixir for the perturbed souls, a poltergeist for the envious. Helmut Berger as Sophie's effeminate son Martin Von Essenbeck is equally chilling.
The Damned is replete with homosexuality, incest, gore and endless grotesqueries, and even makes most contemporary holocaust films like Schindler's List and The Pianist appear ridiculously juvenile. The Damned is a profoundly disturbing work of cinema that captures the pervasive insanity of the holocaust days as an irrefutable proof of the diabolical, debasing, animalistic character that defines the dark side of human psyche. The Damned is not meant for the faint-hearted and can only be savored by eschewing bigotry, prejudice, and conservatism.
http://www.apotpourriofvestiges.com/
Those who have already watched another of Visconti's masterpieces, Death in Venice would be greatly surprised to witness the Italian maestro's range as an auteur. The subtlety and timidness that underline Death in Venice are completely absent here, at least in an explicit sense, and are replaced by the expressions of brusqueness and chutzpah in full effect. Dirk Bogarde plays a Macbeth-like character with religious fervor. While his remarkable performance in Death in Venice is easily his best ever (arguably one of the all time best performances in the history of cinema) his portrayal of an insecure usurper in The Damned is nothing short of outstanding. But, the real star of the show is Ingrid Thulin. Anyone who has seen her in Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light will get the shock of his/her life. As the imperious, glacial, ravishing Sophie Von Essenbeck in The Damned, Thulin is a sight for the sore eyes, an elixir for the perturbed souls, a poltergeist for the envious. Helmut Berger as Sophie's effeminate son Martin Von Essenbeck is equally chilling.
The Damned is replete with homosexuality, incest, gore and endless grotesqueries, and even makes most contemporary holocaust films like Schindler's List and The Pianist appear ridiculously juvenile. The Damned is a profoundly disturbing work of cinema that captures the pervasive insanity of the holocaust days as an irrefutable proof of the diabolical, debasing, animalistic character that defines the dark side of human psyche. The Damned is not meant for the faint-hearted and can only be savored by eschewing bigotry, prejudice, and conservatism.
http://www.apotpourriofvestiges.com/
Camp, convoluted and over the top, but actually one of Visconti's most brilliant, compelling stories.
Ben_Cheshire1 August 2004
Warning: Spoilers
The life and activities of a young count (Helmut Berger) of a crumbling industrialist family just before and just after the Nazi Party came to power.
Visconti was not really a realist at heart, but as his works progressed, he revealed a latent theatricality, let's say. A preference for high-emotion performance, dare I say camp. Problem with this is, to play a scene at the highest level of emotion, the actors are so much more vulnerable, and if they aren't 100% in their characters, it looks fake.
So while The Damned is an absolutely fascinating concept and screenplay, its execution suffers from the same artifacts of Visconti's other late works: crazy over-use of the zoom lens and over-the-top performances. But this actually works in the film, which is self-referential and about performance: note the strategic placement of theatrical makeup, lighting, stages, costumes and make-up rooms at various places throughout the film - and Helmut Berger's marvelous Marlene Dietrich impersonation at the beginning.
(SPOILERS: the meaning of the film)
At the centre of The Damned is the fact that the rules of morality are set by the government - so you're only damned if your government considers you so. Another irony that gives the film a livelihood is the fact that the Nazis were such crusaders against immorality (homosexuality, gypsy-ism, Judaism and other things they considered immoral) because they were immoral themselves: its the old homophobic homosexual syndrome.
Its undoubtedly one of his most compelling, fascinating films, and no doubt i'll see it again soon. But note well that its also one of his darkest. The characters are REALLY damned - so be prepared to watch evidence of this. Plus, remember to concentrate like a demon during the first half hour to figure out who is who and who's manipulating who. Even though its in English, i'd put the subtitles on to make sure you've got it down pat exactly what's going on.
4/5
Disclaimer: ABSOLUTELY not for the young or impressionable, since it features scenes of pedophilia, incest, cross-dressing, homosexuality and other forms of what the MPAA politely called "aberrent" sexuality. Also contains a depiction of the Knight of Long Knives (or some such massacre), with ample ketchup.
Visconti was not really a realist at heart, but as his works progressed, he revealed a latent theatricality, let's say. A preference for high-emotion performance, dare I say camp. Problem with this is, to play a scene at the highest level of emotion, the actors are so much more vulnerable, and if they aren't 100% in their characters, it looks fake.
So while The Damned is an absolutely fascinating concept and screenplay, its execution suffers from the same artifacts of Visconti's other late works: crazy over-use of the zoom lens and over-the-top performances. But this actually works in the film, which is self-referential and about performance: note the strategic placement of theatrical makeup, lighting, stages, costumes and make-up rooms at various places throughout the film - and Helmut Berger's marvelous Marlene Dietrich impersonation at the beginning.
(SPOILERS: the meaning of the film)
At the centre of The Damned is the fact that the rules of morality are set by the government - so you're only damned if your government considers you so. Another irony that gives the film a livelihood is the fact that the Nazis were such crusaders against immorality (homosexuality, gypsy-ism, Judaism and other things they considered immoral) because they were immoral themselves: its the old homophobic homosexual syndrome.
Its undoubtedly one of his most compelling, fascinating films, and no doubt i'll see it again soon. But note well that its also one of his darkest. The characters are REALLY damned - so be prepared to watch evidence of this. Plus, remember to concentrate like a demon during the first half hour to figure out who is who and who's manipulating who. Even though its in English, i'd put the subtitles on to make sure you've got it down pat exactly what's going on.
4/5
Disclaimer: ABSOLUTELY not for the young or impressionable, since it features scenes of pedophilia, incest, cross-dressing, homosexuality and other forms of what the MPAA politely called "aberrent" sexuality. Also contains a depiction of the Knight of Long Knives (or some such massacre), with ample ketchup.
The night of the long knives is portrayed in one of the most decadent scenes in film history
frankde-jong2 August 2020
"The damned" is the first film of Visconti's German trilogy. The others are "Death in Venice" (1971) and "Ludwig" (1973).
The theme of "The damned" has much in common with "Il Gattopardo" (1963, Luchino Visconti). In both films the old elite enters into a coalition with a new elite to preserve his position.
There are some differences also. The new elite in "Il Gattopardo" is the old elite in "The damned" (industrialists and traders). In "Il Gattopardo" the conflict between values and pragmatism rages in one person (Prince Don Fabrizio Salina). In "The damned" this conflict divides the members of the family Von Essenbeck.
Last but not least the new elite with which the family Von Essenbeck is dealing (Nazi's) is much more dangerous and destructive then the new elite in "Il Gattopardo". In one of the most decadent scenes in film history the division inside the Von Essenbeck family concides with the purge in which the SS (Schutzstaffel) eliminates the SA (Sturmabteiling) within Nazi Germany (Night of the long knives).
The theme of "The damned" has much in common with "Il Gattopardo" (1963, Luchino Visconti). In both films the old elite enters into a coalition with a new elite to preserve his position.
There are some differences also. The new elite in "Il Gattopardo" is the old elite in "The damned" (industrialists and traders). In "Il Gattopardo" the conflict between values and pragmatism rages in one person (Prince Don Fabrizio Salina). In "The damned" this conflict divides the members of the family Von Essenbeck.
Last but not least the new elite with which the family Von Essenbeck is dealing (Nazi's) is much more dangerous and destructive then the new elite in "Il Gattopardo". In one of the most decadent scenes in film history the division inside the Von Essenbeck family concides with the purge in which the SS (Schutzstaffel) eliminates the SA (Sturmabteiling) within Nazi Germany (Night of the long knives).
Damned, and then some
tomsview26 September 2018
Warning: Spoilers
If ever there was a movie that left a nasty taste in the mouth it's this puppy.
Set in pre-WW2 Germany, the movie would seem to be allegory for the moral corruption of Germany during Hitler's rise to power.
The characters are introduced when a wealthy industrialist, Konstantin von Essenbeck, calls his family together for a dinner party. But the family's internal conflicts and ambitions are paralleled with the emerging Nazi Party's internal conflicts and ambitions.
There is almost too much going on in the film and some of it is about as subtle as a whack over the head with a Stormtrooper's truncheon.
Of all the disturbed characters in the film, Helmet Berger's Martin Von Essenbeck is top of the class. His propensity for molesting children is eventually explained as a latent Oedipus complex. He eventually gets that out of his system when he hops into bed with mum played by Ingrid Thulin.
Before that moment of bonding, this film has one of the nastiest scenes you are likely to see in a mainstream movie when Martin molests the child of a poor family. I don't think a filmmaker today would attempt anything like that after all the revelations about child abuse by members of the clergy and other institutions over the intervening decades.
The film includes a couple of the major events in the early days of the Nazis: "Kristallnacht" and the "Night of the Long Knives". The attack by the SS anti-fun police on the Stormtrooper pyjama party at the lakeside resort is more than a touch over-the-top. The scenes of gay partying go on for way too long, and then the following massacre is about as convincing as when "Spats" and his gang are Tommy-gunned from the birthday cake in "Some Like it Hot".
An amazing looking cast though. Dirk Bogarde, Helmut Griem, Helmut Berger, Florinda Bolkan, a young Charlotte Rampling, and one of the most enigmatic stars ever, Ingrid Thulin.
"The Damned", with a typical sounding Maurice Jarre score, has scenes that go from fascinating and arresting to others that are tedious and overwrought, and to one that just shouldn't be there at all.
Set in pre-WW2 Germany, the movie would seem to be allegory for the moral corruption of Germany during Hitler's rise to power.
The characters are introduced when a wealthy industrialist, Konstantin von Essenbeck, calls his family together for a dinner party. But the family's internal conflicts and ambitions are paralleled with the emerging Nazi Party's internal conflicts and ambitions.
There is almost too much going on in the film and some of it is about as subtle as a whack over the head with a Stormtrooper's truncheon.
Of all the disturbed characters in the film, Helmet Berger's Martin Von Essenbeck is top of the class. His propensity for molesting children is eventually explained as a latent Oedipus complex. He eventually gets that out of his system when he hops into bed with mum played by Ingrid Thulin.
Before that moment of bonding, this film has one of the nastiest scenes you are likely to see in a mainstream movie when Martin molests the child of a poor family. I don't think a filmmaker today would attempt anything like that after all the revelations about child abuse by members of the clergy and other institutions over the intervening decades.
The film includes a couple of the major events in the early days of the Nazis: "Kristallnacht" and the "Night of the Long Knives". The attack by the SS anti-fun police on the Stormtrooper pyjama party at the lakeside resort is more than a touch over-the-top. The scenes of gay partying go on for way too long, and then the following massacre is about as convincing as when "Spats" and his gang are Tommy-gunned from the birthday cake in "Some Like it Hot".
An amazing looking cast though. Dirk Bogarde, Helmut Griem, Helmut Berger, Florinda Bolkan, a young Charlotte Rampling, and one of the most enigmatic stars ever, Ingrid Thulin.
"The Damned", with a typical sounding Maurice Jarre score, has scenes that go from fascinating and arresting to others that are tedious and overwrought, and to one that just shouldn't be there at all.
A Ingrid Thulin Masterpiece
legwarmers198011 February 2006
Caduta degli dei, La is one of the most shocking movies in screen history. I truthfully don't believe this film could be made today, it's just too perverted.
Swedish actress Ingrid Thulin of Wild Strawberries fame is fantastic as a ruthless countess who will do anything, and I mean anything to achieve her desires for power. About 44 years old in 1969, Thulin presents a sexy and dangerous screen aura. She's blonde, lanky, and uses her stunning exotic looks and fit body to get what she wants.
This film is very demented, but it's symbolic of the fall of normality in Germany as the Nazi Party gains power. Scenes of gay orgies, nude men, gay cross dressers, and child molestation leave a bitter taste in your mouth. However, Ingrid Thulin's scene in which her sexually mixed-up son strips before her and then tears off her top is even further over the top. Thulin plays the part to perfection and as she lays half-naked in bed both crying tears of agony and moans in excitement, it's an outstanding symbolic scene of the damnation that over-took Germany.
Ingrid Thulin's greatest and most controversial scene role.
Swedish actress Ingrid Thulin of Wild Strawberries fame is fantastic as a ruthless countess who will do anything, and I mean anything to achieve her desires for power. About 44 years old in 1969, Thulin presents a sexy and dangerous screen aura. She's blonde, lanky, and uses her stunning exotic looks and fit body to get what she wants.
This film is very demented, but it's symbolic of the fall of normality in Germany as the Nazi Party gains power. Scenes of gay orgies, nude men, gay cross dressers, and child molestation leave a bitter taste in your mouth. However, Ingrid Thulin's scene in which her sexually mixed-up son strips before her and then tears off her top is even further over the top. Thulin plays the part to perfection and as she lays half-naked in bed both crying tears of agony and moans in excitement, it's an outstanding symbolic scene of the damnation that over-took Germany.
Ingrid Thulin's greatest and most controversial scene role.
tragedy of a wealthy family
v-5628929 February 2020
Money and power often attracts evil ambitions and cruel intentions. Once the family members started the play, it was hard to stop and you never know how it will end up. Especial of the political background leading to WWII. In a Godfather like plot, the stories, plans and alliencies start to twist and interwine together. The movie was a bit too long. Some scenes could have been ommitted..
Not a good allegory or melodrama either
petrelet18 March 2015
Sorry to go all contrarian here, but I think the story and screenplay (yes, I noticed it got an Oscar nomination, and for that matter that Fassbinder said this film did for cinema what Shakespeare did for the stage) are just wrongheaded, whether you consider the film as a family melodrama or as some sort of historical allegory about Nazism or a philosophical parable. The actors do their best with it, and the visual imagery is skillfully done, but they can't make a good movie out of this piece of cloth. Really, I think this.
(This review is based on the US English-dubbed DVD, so it's conceivable that I'm missing something that was in the original. But I'd have to be shown.)
Let me get it out of the way first that this film appears to me to be really a bad portrayal of LGBT people, beginning with the famous drag scene acted by Helmut Berger -- which in this film warns the viewer to watch out for Martin Essenbeck, because any man perverted enough to dress up as Marlene Dietrich is perverted enough for any crime, without distinction of age, gender, or relationship -- and leading on to the rather fanciful reimagination of the Night of the Long Knives with rooms full of naked young men getting shot down. Yes, I KNOW that Visconti was gay himself and that Berger is bi, so maybe I, a straight amateur, have no right to criticize here. Maybe this is some sort of satirical subversive reappropriation of the view that gays were to blame for the Third Reich (which you can hear from some voices on the right wing today). I cringed, but I am leaving this factor out of consideration in my rating.
Let's start, then, with the allegory idea. Blurbs here and there say that this film is an allegory of the rise and fall of Nazism, but it isn't. The action starts a month after Hitler's swearing-in, on February 27, 1933, the night of the Reichstag fire, and it closes not too long after the SA purge on June 30, 1934. This is a period in which Nazism consolidated its victory, after its rise; its fall was not even on the horizon yet, and that's true in the film as well.
For an allegory to work, it requires some kind of knowledgeable approach to the subject matter and some kind of apparent argument to make, picture to portray, or other reason to exist. There is supposed to be some kind of correspondence between the characters in the allegory and whatever concepts or entities they are supposed to represent.
How does that work in "The Damned"? To begin with, the context of Nazism is shut completely out of the movie. You hear nothing about the depression; the Communists are mentioned in a word and then dropped. You hardly even see the steel works. The whole enterprise is just a MacGuffin, something for everyone to fight over.
We are shown a family with several different approaches to the Nazi victory of 1933. Joachim, the patriarch, is willing to make a grudging compromise; Konstantin, the son, is a thuggish SA man (a rich baron would have cut an odd figure as an SA leader, but I digress); Sophie, the widowed daughter-in-law, and Friedrich, the works manager and her lover, want to use the Nazis for their own power; Herbert, the son-in-law, resists in words. Aschenbach, the Mephistophelean SS man, plays with them all, and none of the above family members are entirely successful; scum is rising to the top, and it's hard to be the kind of absolutely depraved scum that Aschenbach is looking for. The idea that it would be useful, even to the Nazis, for the manager of a steel works to know something, about, you know, management or steel - this doesn't arise.
If there is an allegory here, it is not a very useful one. It's not about how the Nazis rose (or fell). It doesn't account for Aschenbach. He can have come from Hell or outer space, as far as we know. It doesn't say what if anything to do about Nazis either. It's about who (within this tiny sliver of the privileged) ends up winning the competition organized by Aschenbach to prove oneself most reliable by being the most depraved and the closest to a mathematical human zero.
And all it tells us is that Nazism was a bad thing - watch out for it. True enough, but I don't think it's particularly enlightening about it otherwise.
The film works even less well as a melodrama. The screenplay requires the actors to bellow and snarl lines at each other about their feelings and intentions which are worthy of telenovelas, but it has none of the virtues of a telenovela screenplay. It has no sympathetic or compelling central characters. The central characters are all horrible, and the non-horrible ones are all peripheral. There are no coherent plans that any of them are pursuing that get anywhere. Ashenbach doesn't count, as he has no personal life and is more of a force field than a character.
The best gloss I can put on this is that it is really an existential parable, which is not really about Nazism at all, but about Evil, which if you save your soul it kills you, or if you try to sell it your soul it cheats you and kills you anyway; the only way to survive is to have no soul in the first place. But then there you are with no soul. It's a bleak world-view and not terribly adaptive, but the movie has a right to it, I guess. But I think Nazism was just too horrible and real a thing to be used as just a prop in this kind of exercise.
(This review is based on the US English-dubbed DVD, so it's conceivable that I'm missing something that was in the original. But I'd have to be shown.)
Let me get it out of the way first that this film appears to me to be really a bad portrayal of LGBT people, beginning with the famous drag scene acted by Helmut Berger -- which in this film warns the viewer to watch out for Martin Essenbeck, because any man perverted enough to dress up as Marlene Dietrich is perverted enough for any crime, without distinction of age, gender, or relationship -- and leading on to the rather fanciful reimagination of the Night of the Long Knives with rooms full of naked young men getting shot down. Yes, I KNOW that Visconti was gay himself and that Berger is bi, so maybe I, a straight amateur, have no right to criticize here. Maybe this is some sort of satirical subversive reappropriation of the view that gays were to blame for the Third Reich (which you can hear from some voices on the right wing today). I cringed, but I am leaving this factor out of consideration in my rating.
Let's start, then, with the allegory idea. Blurbs here and there say that this film is an allegory of the rise and fall of Nazism, but it isn't. The action starts a month after Hitler's swearing-in, on February 27, 1933, the night of the Reichstag fire, and it closes not too long after the SA purge on June 30, 1934. This is a period in which Nazism consolidated its victory, after its rise; its fall was not even on the horizon yet, and that's true in the film as well.
For an allegory to work, it requires some kind of knowledgeable approach to the subject matter and some kind of apparent argument to make, picture to portray, or other reason to exist. There is supposed to be some kind of correspondence between the characters in the allegory and whatever concepts or entities they are supposed to represent.
How does that work in "The Damned"? To begin with, the context of Nazism is shut completely out of the movie. You hear nothing about the depression; the Communists are mentioned in a word and then dropped. You hardly even see the steel works. The whole enterprise is just a MacGuffin, something for everyone to fight over.
We are shown a family with several different approaches to the Nazi victory of 1933. Joachim, the patriarch, is willing to make a grudging compromise; Konstantin, the son, is a thuggish SA man (a rich baron would have cut an odd figure as an SA leader, but I digress); Sophie, the widowed daughter-in-law, and Friedrich, the works manager and her lover, want to use the Nazis for their own power; Herbert, the son-in-law, resists in words. Aschenbach, the Mephistophelean SS man, plays with them all, and none of the above family members are entirely successful; scum is rising to the top, and it's hard to be the kind of absolutely depraved scum that Aschenbach is looking for. The idea that it would be useful, even to the Nazis, for the manager of a steel works to know something, about, you know, management or steel - this doesn't arise.
If there is an allegory here, it is not a very useful one. It's not about how the Nazis rose (or fell). It doesn't account for Aschenbach. He can have come from Hell or outer space, as far as we know. It doesn't say what if anything to do about Nazis either. It's about who (within this tiny sliver of the privileged) ends up winning the competition organized by Aschenbach to prove oneself most reliable by being the most depraved and the closest to a mathematical human zero.
And all it tells us is that Nazism was a bad thing - watch out for it. True enough, but I don't think it's particularly enlightening about it otherwise.
The film works even less well as a melodrama. The screenplay requires the actors to bellow and snarl lines at each other about their feelings and intentions which are worthy of telenovelas, but it has none of the virtues of a telenovela screenplay. It has no sympathetic or compelling central characters. The central characters are all horrible, and the non-horrible ones are all peripheral. There are no coherent plans that any of them are pursuing that get anywhere. Ashenbach doesn't count, as he has no personal life and is more of a force field than a character.
The best gloss I can put on this is that it is really an existential parable, which is not really about Nazism at all, but about Evil, which if you save your soul it kills you, or if you try to sell it your soul it cheats you and kills you anyway; the only way to survive is to have no soul in the first place. But then there you are with no soul. It's a bleak world-view and not terribly adaptive, but the movie has a right to it, I guess. But I think Nazism was just too horrible and real a thing to be used as just a prop in this kind of exercise.
Masterpiece
llareggub6 August 2006
Most of the previous reviews noted the link in this sumptuous piece of high camp with Hamlet, but only one noted the secondary English title was a direct reference to Wagner's Twilight of the Gods. Presenting the rise of Nazism as a camp Wagnerian Soap Opera was what Visconti was after, I think. He succeeds brilliantly. Yes, it is distasteful in it's perversions, but Nazism was pretty distasteful in it's reality, and perverted too. I am not gay, but the Night of the Long Knives is one of the most memorable bits of cinematography I have seen- a cross dressing SA thug by the Wannansee having a premonition of doom at the hands of the SS- go figure! Thulin and Rampling are superb, Bogarde believable (in an utterly unbelievable role), and Berger chews the carpet in a way that gives overacting a good name. Not to be missed.
Fearless
rewolfson14 April 2020
Before watching The Damned, ask yourself, "what do I think cinema is?" There are great films that are perfect in composition and symmetry that are ultimately audience friendly. This isn't. It is, however, absolutely fearless. It challenges you.
Those who do not want to consider art mirroring life, but instead want to be fed a concoction, will not like it. Many who fancy themselves connoisseurs sit in harsh judgment, comparing it to other auteur films. But The Damned is so historically brutal, it is beyond comparison.
The film vividly captures the moral decay and depravity of the rise of the Third Reich and there is nothing, repeat: nothing, remotely redeeming about that. Conversely, there is a terrible, disturbing and morbidly fascinating anti-beauty to see it on screen.
It is as much an historic cautionary tale as a modern warning. Those who judge it harshly do not consider its truth: it reflects the greed and lust for power that propels humanity not only to war, but to more the gradual punishments of pandemics and submerged cities. The only film that remotely approaches it, albeit from a different but equally terrifying perspective is Dr. Strangelove, a film I watch every Halloween to be truly frightened. Strangelove asks "what if?". There is no "what if" to the rise of the Third Reich. We cannot hide that it happened, nor should we forget that it was defeated. It is the knowledge that what we see on the screen was defeated that makes us able to watch it, to witness it, to own it, to claim it, and to remember, "it is only a film" Heaven help us if we ever forget.
To make a film of this power required total confidence in the director's palette. Visconti shows it here. The Damned is a bitter pill, not for many, but for those able to look honestly in its mirror.
It is superlative film making of rarely equaled brilliance.
More hysterically accurate than historically accurate. A fascinating, melodramatic look at one family's fortunes under Hitler.
Infofreak15 January 2003
Several times watching 'The Damned' I had to pinch myself. Director Visconti is generally well respected as a serious film maker, but this?! I don't see how anyone can take this one at all seriously! It is sensationalistic, sleazy, melodramatic and trashy. It is also wonderfully entertaining. As an attempt to understand 1930s Germany and the rise of Nazism it's a joke, but as pure camp it is a classic. To keep your head straight regarding the various characters and who is using, manipulating, and betraying who you almost need graph paper. Even the blurb on the back of the old VHS tape I watched got the plot wrong, confusing one character for another. Anyway, there's mainly four major players to focus on. Dirk Bogarde ('The Servant') plays the ambitious Bruckmann who is the lover of Baroness von Essenback ('Salon Kitty's Ingrid Thulin), part of a wealthy family of industrialists. Bruckmann's cousin Aschenbach ('Cabaret's Helmut Griem), an SS officer, has plenty of his own schemes, ultimately wishing to get control of the von Essenback empire, either directly or indirectly. Finally there is the Baroness' son Martin, initially an effete type, but who eventually turns into the biggest monster of them all. Martin is played by cult legend Helmut Berger ('Salon Kitty', 'Mad Dog', 'Faceless'). The credits bill him as "introducing", and while 'The Damned' isn't actually his film debut it does make a hell of an introduction to this compelling actor! We first see him in full drag performing a song, then we soon discover he is involved in an incestuous relationship with his mother, also appears to be gay, AND has a perverted fixation on little girls. Yes, he is one mixed up crazy cat! Berger's performance in this movie is sensational and the main reason to watch this epic. The other leads are all very good, and there are also some memorable bits by the supporting cast, which includes Charlotte Rampling ('Zardoz'), who plays a von Essenbeck associate who unfortunately gets in their way with disastrous results. 'The Damned' is pure camp all the way, but I couldn't stop watching it. Forget your preconceptions, accept it for what it actually is, and you will find yourself hooked!
Disappointing and Twisted View of the Ascension of the Third Reich
claudio_carvalho20 June 2009
In the 30's, while Germany sees the ascension of the Third Reich that destroys their opponents, the powerful and dysfunctional Von Essenbeck family deteriorates after the murder of the patriarch and baron of steel mills.
I am a great fan of Luchino Visconti, and I have seen at least thirteen of his movies. "La Caduta Degli Dei" has not been released in Brazil on VHS or DVD, and years ago I had not the chance to watch it in a movie theater. Yesterday I found an imported VHS and today I have just had a great disappointment, since I really did not like this long movie. I do not know how accurate the historical events might be, but I found it a twisted and messy view of the ascension of the Third Reich, with incest, pedophilia, orgy, rape, mass murder and many other sins. The set decoration and costumes are amazing, like in most of Visconti's movies; the soundtrack is wonderful; and the international cast is fantastic. Unfortunately, the screenplay does not work very well and I do not recommend this feature. My vote is six.
Title (Brazil): "Os Deuses Malditos" ("The Damned Gods")
I am a great fan of Luchino Visconti, and I have seen at least thirteen of his movies. "La Caduta Degli Dei" has not been released in Brazil on VHS or DVD, and years ago I had not the chance to watch it in a movie theater. Yesterday I found an imported VHS and today I have just had a great disappointment, since I really did not like this long movie. I do not know how accurate the historical events might be, but I found it a twisted and messy view of the ascension of the Third Reich, with incest, pedophilia, orgy, rape, mass murder and many other sins. The set decoration and costumes are amazing, like in most of Visconti's movies; the soundtrack is wonderful; and the international cast is fantastic. Unfortunately, the screenplay does not work very well and I do not recommend this feature. My vote is six.
Title (Brazil): "Os Deuses Malditos" ("The Damned Gods")
Luchino goes slumming
JoeytheBrit10 August 2007
Visconti's bizarre examination of a powerful and wealthy family whose downfall both parallels the rise and foreshadows the fall of the Third Reich is never less than entertaining, it has to be said. Certainly not to the tastes of all, it seems to revel in the decadence and debauchery it portrays in much the same way a tabloid paper feels it has to publish dozens of photographs of the pornography it pretends to condemn. Look how depraved these incestuous cross-dressing Nazis were; apart from one pious voice the whole nation, it seems, is condemned with one broad stroke and we are given no contrast against which to compare such depravity.
The characters of the Von Essenbach family are each representative of a facet of 30s German character, all joined in a desire for power or the need to be protected beneath its wing, prone to making strident and unyielding demands and dismissing the rights of those who stand in their way. This leaves us with a morally repugnant lot, none of whom we can empathise with, and also tempts the cast to overact at times. Ingrid Thulin is particularly guilty, and even the usually laconic Dirk Bogarde becomes overwrought at times.
For all these faults, the film is shamelessly entertaining and fascinating to watch. It plays like a Shakespearian tragedy at times, and you feel compelled to see it through to the end just to find out the fate of each character.
The characters of the Von Essenbach family are each representative of a facet of 30s German character, all joined in a desire for power or the need to be protected beneath its wing, prone to making strident and unyielding demands and dismissing the rights of those who stand in their way. This leaves us with a morally repugnant lot, none of whom we can empathise with, and also tempts the cast to overact at times. Ingrid Thulin is particularly guilty, and even the usually laconic Dirk Bogarde becomes overwrought at times.
For all these faults, the film is shamelessly entertaining and fascinating to watch. It plays like a Shakespearian tragedy at times, and you feel compelled to see it through to the end just to find out the fate of each character.
A Twisted Masterpiece...
Honus19 September 2003
Visconti outdid himself on this one! In 'The Damned' we take a long look into the dark world of a perverted German family during Hitler's rise to power. Little bit of everything in this one; treachery, murder, incest, molestation... nothing pretty here, but a fantastic story. Well told and nicely photographed, The Damned is not for the squeamish, but very much worth a look.
Decline and fall.
brogmiller31 July 2022
For this viewer at any rate Luchino Visconti reached his peak as a director with 'Il Gattopardo' and while it is only natural for creative artistes to change their style with the passing years one cannot help but feel that his later films do not represent a change for the better.
What is most apparent in the first of his so-called 'German trilogy' is its sheer vulgarity and irredeemable tastelessness. Some might say that he has succeeded in showing the narcissistic and homo-erotic elements of Nazism but he has indulged himself to such an extent that the depiction of the Night of the Long Knives has simply become an excuse for displaying good looking young hunks in their birthday suits. In fact the film contains so much camp homosexual iconography that one critic has suggested an alternative title of 'Boys in the Bund.' This could be seen as the film that finally enabled its director to emerge from the closet. His 'protégé' Helmut Berger chillingly portrays one of the most sickeningly degenerate characters ever committed to celluloid but of course to a dedicated Marxist such as Visconti only a Fascist could be capable of such depravity.
Although Dirk Bogarde's role was severely cut so as to accommodate Visconti's obsession with Herr Berger, he still registers strongly and there is a mesmerising performance by the superlative Ingrid Thulin. This film also marks the final appearance of veteran Albrecht Schoenhals, an extremely interesting individual who bravely refused the title role in the infamous 'Jew Suss', the playing of which was to prove a poisoned chalice for Ferdinand Marian.
By all accounts Visconti's opus was greatly admired by Rainer Werner Fassbinder which comes as no surprise.
What is most apparent in the first of his so-called 'German trilogy' is its sheer vulgarity and irredeemable tastelessness. Some might say that he has succeeded in showing the narcissistic and homo-erotic elements of Nazism but he has indulged himself to such an extent that the depiction of the Night of the Long Knives has simply become an excuse for displaying good looking young hunks in their birthday suits. In fact the film contains so much camp homosexual iconography that one critic has suggested an alternative title of 'Boys in the Bund.' This could be seen as the film that finally enabled its director to emerge from the closet. His 'protégé' Helmut Berger chillingly portrays one of the most sickeningly degenerate characters ever committed to celluloid but of course to a dedicated Marxist such as Visconti only a Fascist could be capable of such depravity.
Although Dirk Bogarde's role was severely cut so as to accommodate Visconti's obsession with Herr Berger, he still registers strongly and there is a mesmerising performance by the superlative Ingrid Thulin. This film also marks the final appearance of veteran Albrecht Schoenhals, an extremely interesting individual who bravely refused the title role in the infamous 'Jew Suss', the playing of which was to prove a poisoned chalice for Ferdinand Marian.
By all accounts Visconti's opus was greatly admired by Rainer Werner Fassbinder which comes as no surprise.
Hard to believe this was X rated originally
preppy-326 April 2009
Warning: Spoilers
**SPOILERS THROUGHOUT** The movie takes place in 1933 to 34 Germany. It's about a rich, wealthy family (the Essenbecks) who are destroyed by the Nazis coming into power. It basically focuses on Martin (Helmut Berger) who turns into a cold-blooded killer. Along the way there's murder, incest, cross dressing, pedophilia, suicide, rape, a gay orgy and mass murder! To be truthful none of it is really explicit--for instance the gay orgy scene only shows some casual male nudity and has NO sexual content at all! I'm surprised this got an X rating even back in 1969. BTW it's since been lowered to an R with no cuts. The film is beautiful to watch--director Luchino Visconti made films that were gorgeous to watch and dealt with adult subject matter. ("The Conformist" is another one like this) Each shot is like a beautiful painting. It's totally at odds with the subject matter which I think is the point. In the 2004 DVD release the colors are rich and the print is in perfect condition. The acting is great all around but the best performances come from Dirk Bogarde, Charlotte Rampling, Ingrid Thulin and especially Helmut Berger.
The film isn't perfect. It's way too long at 157 minutes and you sort of become numb at all the back stabbing and evil happening. Martin's rape of his mom should be shocking but it comes near the end after two hours of evil and it sort of doesn't shock you. Also Thulin's appearance at the wedding at the end was a bit too much. Still this is a beautiful and fascinating film. If you see this on DVD I suggest you turn on the English subtitling. All the actors speak English but the heavy accents make some of their dialogue impossible to figure out.
The film isn't perfect. It's way too long at 157 minutes and you sort of become numb at all the back stabbing and evil happening. Martin's rape of his mom should be shocking but it comes near the end after two hours of evil and it sort of doesn't shock you. Also Thulin's appearance at the wedding at the end was a bit too much. Still this is a beautiful and fascinating film. If you see this on DVD I suggest you turn on the English subtitling. All the actors speak English but the heavy accents make some of their dialogue impossible to figure out.
the damned
mossgrymk9 October 2023
Somewhere between the Von Trapps and the Von Essenbecks lies the truth about the aristocratic German family in the Nazi era. And somewhere between Hannah Arendt's Banality Of Evil and Luchino Visconti's steamy shower of self indulgence that is this film lies the full horror of National Socialism. In other words, it is very difficult to take this overwrought stuff seriously and once you start laughing at it, as I did somewhere around the sight of the Von Essenbach patriarch's blood stained corpse lying theatrically in his bed, it is just a hop, skip and a lurch to the land of Camp which is where this curiosity belongs. And, as we all know, Camp and Greatness inhabit different countries. Give it a generous B minus for the magnificent set piece of The Night Of The Long Knives, one of the few times Visconti's camera and Germany's 1930s zeitgeist merge, the frightening performance of Ingrid Thulin, and the memorably tortured visage of Helmut Berger.
PS...Unlike the previous reviewer I cannot say for certain that I will never see it again. I am, after all, a Dodger fan and, thus, have a high degree of masochism.
PS...Unlike the previous reviewer I cannot say for certain that I will never see it again. I am, after all, a Dodger fan and, thus, have a high degree of masochism.
What went wrong?
pfgpowell-118 May 2008
Warning: Spoilers
Anyone coming to The Damned cold who didn't know that the film was made by Luchino Visconti would write it off as a TV movie which would be lucky to get much exposure on TV. At its best it is bad, and at times it is quite simply awful. And this from a director who has, at times, been lauded as one of the world's best. So what went wrong? Well, I don't know. It is quite in explicable. The acting is bad, the dialogue often truly awful and the direction is flat and uninspired. At times the film is lifeless. On paper it will have looked quite promising: show how a ruthless employee in league with the boss's daughter-in-law schemes and murders his way to the top of German steel company. Set it all in the Thirties as the Nazis are consolidating their grip on power to reflect the nature of the regime. Nothing wrong with that, except that the moral - goodness, weren't the Nazis quite awful - is about as unoriginal as you might get. But something, many things, went wrong in the realisation: the collection of English, German and I don't know from where else actors does not work (and I for one have never bought that Dirk Bogarde is even half as good as everyone else likes to say. The man is often a ham). They seem to be acting in different films. It occurred to me that were the actors all Italian, the direction might have just about worked - no, I'm clutching at straws. The dialogue is often so utterly banal and 'audience informing' that it could have been written by bad student director. I'll give just one very telling example of how ill-conceived it all is, how wrong-headed: yes, the Nazis were thugs as the well-documented Night of the Long Knives murderously demonstrated. But Hitler and the rest of his gang were essentially lower-class mediocrities who gained power through a bizarre set of circumstances. And they had a dog-in-the-manger attitude to German nobility, high finance and industrial grandees. So when the authorities come to arrest Herbert, they would not arrive in a battalion of gun-toting, steel-helmeted, black-uniformed soldiers, banging on the door to be let in - especially so early on in the regime when their grip on power was still untested and shaky. That whole scene can serve to sum up just how bad this film is. This gets one star out of ten only because the system doesn't allow for awarding no stars.
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