The Damned [DVD] [1969]

 

 

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I love this film, but anyone looking for a straightforward story of the rise of the Nazi's in Germany should stop reading now.

The story revolves around the Essenbecks, an all powerful family of German industrialists who murder (often each other) their way to the top of the new order. This is a fable, a cross between a Shakespearean play such as Macbeth or a Greek tragedy upon which this was undoubtedly based and there is enough murder, incest, sexual deviance and matricide to please any fans of those two styles. It is a wonderful macabre film, an often distasteful tormented fantasy that seeks to confront taboo subjects in a surreal and provoking way. Ok, there is a bit of hysteria but then there always is with Visconti and you just have to accept this in order to enjoy a wonderful, high camp masterly colourful ride. True to form it is also extremely anti-capitalist something nearly always at the heart of Visconti's work.


Helmut Berger in his first major role does well as the degenerate son, later performances would be better but given the fact that Visconti humiliated him time and time again in front of the entire cast and often reduced him to tears he gives a good account of a disturbed young man - he also looks fabulous and the camera loves him.

Ingrid Thulin that Bergman discovery is a lovely actress - radiant on screen she handles the role well giving it just the right whiff of depravity. All the other actors are good, Dirk Bogarde has a few scenes of hysteria towards the end which might make a few toes curl but after all, he's just following the wishes of his all powerful director. Costumes and settings are as always with Visconti scrupulously reproduced.

Having said all the above perhaps it's best to forget all the background and politics and messages and just sit back and let this brightly coloured dream wash over you.

"You must realize that today in Germany anything can happen, even the improbable, and it's just the beginning, Frederick. Personal morals are dead. We are an elite society where everything is permissible. These are Hitler's words. My dear Frederick, even you should give them some thought."

Visconti's tale of evil triumphant, The Damned is much better than it's given credit for. Beginning with a birthday party on the night of the burning of the Reichstag, the first of the Nazis many excuses for a little internal and external housekeeping, and using the fall of an aristocratic family of German industrialists who think they can control the Nazi Party for their own advantage to mirror the vicious power struggle between the SS and the SA as the Party corrupts and then destroys those who help it to power, it's certainly sensational - incest, child abuse, rape, murder, transvestism, homosexuality and, in the brutal recreation of the Night of Long Knives, mass murder are all on the menu. Nor are there any really sympathetic characters in this nest of vipers: even Umberto Orsini's sole voice of protest is raised too late to do any good in a family where no-one opposes and no-one stands together as one by one they meet their doom at each others' hands. Even those who actively plot to steal power - Ingrid Thulin's Lady MacBeth figure and Dirk Bogarde's executive desperate to marry into the family and become the heir apparent only to gradually realise that he has accepted a ruthless logic he can never get away from - become victims of their own internecine machinations. Their wedding becomes a macabre union between two of the walking dead, the reception a soulless affair filled with hookers and hangers on that stands as the complete antithesis of the lavish ballroom scene in The Leopard. In this atmosphere of moral decay and corruption, only the emptiest and most amoral can thrive in the form of Helmut Berger's disturbed paedophile, because he alone among them has no delusions of mastery or even thinking for himself: as long as his desires are fed, he's only too happy to be told what to think and what to do. Throughout, Helmut Griem's Mephistophelean SS puppet master never coerces or forces, he merely facilitates as they bring about their own destruction.

A few anachronisms aside, it's a chilling précis of how the ruling class - and by association the German population at large - willingly sold their souls and brought about their own destruction under Hitler, and Warners' DVD offers a good widescreen transfer of the uncut version that restores the extended build-up to the Night of Long Knives cut from the English-language prints, although only in subtitled German. Along with the trailer (which, along with the poster image of Helmut Berger dragged up as Marlene Dietrich, shows just how clueless the studio were how to market the film), the only other extra is a brief promotional featurette about the making of the film from 1969.

The Damned is a long, overblown, spectacular, strange and decadent film. Despite all that, it's very watchable, mainly because of the sheer, majestic beauty of the way it has been filmed. It's hard not to admire the painterly, perfectly composed images, despite the bizarre content of the plot, which centres around the downfall of a family of German industrialists under the Nazis. One scene in particular, when we watch soldiers crossing a scenic lake to bring death and destruction to a party on the shore, combines beauty and impending doom in a very memorable way.

The Damned is a far better film than the more famous Death in Venice because it does in fact have a plot, a sense of drama, and one or two performances which are not completely overdone and hysterical (Helmut Berger excepted).

The DVD print is excellent and this film is a recommended curio for anyone into oddities and good old-fashioned decadence.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Power Struggle
This is a show that would lead you to believe it was based on the Krupp family. They supplied the heavy armor (tanks & guns) for Germany for many years. Read more

Published 5 months ago by C McGhee

5.0 out of 5 stars The Damned
not to be confused with the silly punk group. This is a stunningly complex and shocking film, which will appeal on lots of different levels. I'm going to watch it again....

Published 15 months ago by Mr. Paul L. Brown

4.0 out of 5 stars A Near Miss
I don't think this film entirely comes off - though, given the talent involved, both in front of, and behind, the camera, there's no way it can be without interest... Read more

Published on 2 July 2009 by Wakefield, 2011

3.0 out of 5 stars Damned Good or Damnable ?
It's now some thirty years since I first saw this and after some five viewings I'm as ambivalent about it now as I was then. Read more

Published on 10 April 2009 by Yeoman

3.0 out of 5 stars Historical value only, in more ways than one.
I saw this on release in 1969 (yes I am that old) and remembered it as a controversial film about a real event during the rise of the Nazis. Read more

Published on 2 Feb 2009 by Mr. P. Johnson

2.0 out of 5 stars Film students, but no-one else, should watch this
A grotesque and fascinating melodrama, The Damned hovers somewhere between a bad soap-opera peopled by lizards and a Wagnerian disaster movie. What is Bogarde doing here? Read more

Published on 24 Sep 2007 by Simon Harvey

2.0 out of 5 stars A very poor film
A disappointing film which concentrates on the sexual abnormalities of one member of one family on the rise in Nazi Germany. Read more

Published on 26 Dec 2004 by Not Dr Brodsky

5.0 out of 5 stars It leaves you thoughtfull
Very good film, shows a lot of brilliant actors and lightens some of the areas nobody else does. Visconti does it very well and makes it go beyond the borders. Read more

Published on 13 Jun 2004 by RB

5.0 out of 5 stars The MAIN movie
This is the main movie I ever saw in my life. Changed my view forever. I pray that it will be released as a DVD in the next years. Read more

Published on 1 Feb 2003 by indischgelb2002

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