Ludwig II

In this last part of his German trilogy, Visconti delves the most into the human psyche, and in particular it's contradictory forces within. On one hand the self-destructive urge for physical pleasure, on the other the spiritual search for the sublime. The Dionysean and the Apollonian. Body and soul.

Ludwig II, aka the "mad" king of Bavaria, is dragged to the limits by these two opposite forces. Losing focus on a vulgar reality, he surrenders to sexual perversion and yet also to a search for artistic purity, eventually leading him to madness, and finally to death. Trying in vein to find the sublime and eternal kingdom of the literary heroes he craves for, his behavior becomes more and more erratic until he is violently dethroned (a recurring theme in Visconti's work: the fall of aristocracy and the rise of bourgeois democracy).

Visconti directs this paradox with a highly elegant style, influenced by the romanticism of painters like Caspar David Friedrich and Frederic Edwin Church. The movie reaches a climax at around the third hour, when Ludwig and his protégé Joseph Kainz travel together through the endless frozen night, so that Ludwig shows Kainz his "real kingdom, the mountains under the moonlight, a world for ourselves, pure and uncontaminated". "Think about your soul, not about your body" Ludwig tells him. This a last hurrah. After Kainz's rejection, Ludwig declines further in decay and resignation.

The events depicting the conspiracy that dethrones him are grotesquely-staged and almost out of sync, emphasizing Ludwig's confusion and ill mental-state. Knowing his downfall is near, he confesses to one of the staff how he believes in the immortality of the soul and God's justice. "I've read many things about materialism", he says, "but it will never satisfy a man, cause he doesn't want to be put in the same level as beasts". That's a rare confession for Visconti.

After he is captured, the film once again alters in style, to a kind of austere chamber-cinema with a funereal feel. Near the end (and his death), Ludwig says to psychiatrist professor Gudden: "There is nothing more beautiful and fascinating than the night. They say the cult of the night, of the moon, is a maternal cult. The cult of sun, of daytime, is a masculine myth, therefore paternal. However the mystery, the greatness of night, for me lie in the infinite sublime kingdom of the heroes, which is also the kingdom of reason. Poor Dr. Gudden, you are forced to study me from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn. But I am an enigma, and I want to be an enigma forever, for the world and for myself".

Just like man. Sublime.

First released in 1972,with a running time of three hours,the movie was a colossal flop and it was sold by auction.It was the eighties before it was re-released as TV series,with a lot of added scenes :the running time was nearing four hours and the restored scenes gave the movie more substance.Now the film is often broadcast as a whole but its length and its very slow pace might repel some people.

It should not be missed though;it is one of Visconti's peaks,and probably the most underrated .In "la caduta dei degli"(1969),history was on the stage ,with the rise of the Nazis:the hero,Martin,(also played by Helmut Berger),was some kind of puppet in the hands of his mother and the Hitlerians.In "Ludwig",he stands alone,it's really the story of a solitary man,trying to establish a lasting relationship with one human being:first, Sophie,Sissy's sister :but it was not to succeed because he treated her like a Wagnerian heroin,or a Sissy ersatz .Sissy (Elisabeth,Empress of Austria)was not fooled:"do you want me to be your impossible love? " she says;of course she knew Ludwig was an invert.Wagner made use of Ludwig because he helped his career,but there was no friendship from him.Ludwig had to content himself with his (male) lovers he used to pick up everywhere around.

As the movie progresses,Ludwig is more and more alone,and his megalomania knows no bound.He makes up for his sad destiny with his extravagant castles,but politically he was still aware.He first refused to raise troops during the 1870 war and reluctantly did because of the Prussian' s pression;that might be the reason why,when you come to Bavaria today,the people there do not accept the fact Ludwig ended his life as an insane.

Helmut Berger was to make another movie with Visconti(gruppo di famiglia in un interno,1975),then his career quickly waned after Visconti's death;it was really too bad,because he had shown he could be an impressive actor.Romy Schneider portrayed Sissy for the fourth time(after the famous mushy trilogy "Sissi" "Sissi die junge Kaiserin" "Sissi ,Schicksal einer Kaiserin",which Schneider hated,),but this time in a historically accurate way.She acted as though she had got a score to settle with this character.(hear her lines about her husband and her family:it's a far cry from the Ernst Marischka's trilogy)

As a deeply interest on European's history, I'd already knew about this mad king of the Bavaria a long time ago, Ludwig just came at my hands this years and was too long, then I had decided spent the last friday night watching this restored Visconti's masterpiece, what a great movie indeed, but the cut off version stayed lame and was a flop at release time, assembled again it's was the closest that they could get as early Visconti's concept, the king Ludwig was presented as a lunatic man for arts, sponsored the financial excesses of Richard Wagner, and drained the already rundown Bavaria's treasury on those useless Castles which he dares to build in exchange of the penury of his people, also Visconti alludes the decaying process of a King who wasn't linked with reality at all, he living in a parallel world as screened, plus Visconti was visionary when cast Helmut Berger whose had an extremely sameness with the real Ludwig, what a lucky, just mourns a small appearance of Sissi (Romy Schneider) on the plot for obvious reasons, furthermore exposes the odd Ludwig's weakness as his shy behavior and how he handles with your latent homosexuality as well, the history as a whole teach us that the ordinary statesmen rarely go down in history, instead those mad rulers that through their wacky minds were often recalled, aside be too long more than four hours the picture doesn't tired me, due so valuable asset to understand the German merger and how it really did happens, it gave me priceless clues for whom Germany deserves his unification, apart the Ludwig the mad the movie brings to light the German's history!!

Resume:

First watch: 2020 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 9

This long and lavish biopic of the mad Mittel European monarch is both Luchino Visconti's grandest and - oddly enough - his most intimate and personal film. Visconti's autobiography in all but name, it tells the story of a cultured aristocrat who ruins himself through an obsessive love of art, luxury and handsome young men. The film paints King Ludwig as a well-meaning but hapless victim of his grasping courtiers, artists and lovers. If Visconti himself was an arch-manipulator and a bit of a sadist, well...Ludwig is one of those films where life and art never do quite match up.

Most revealing is its portrayal of the aging king's obsession with a pretty but none-too-talented actor, Joseph Kainz. It is tempting to view their romance as a mirror of Visconti's own passion for the exquisite Helmut Berger, who - a twist within a twist - actually stars as King Ludwig in this film. In the roles he played without Visconti as his Svengali, Berger is barely competent. In Ludwig (as in The Damned) he gives a staggering performance, ranging from fresh-faced idealism to homoerotic heartbreak to bloated waste.

Shot just after the collapse of Visconti's long-cherished film of Proust, Ludwig is rich in characters who reflect (whether consciously or not) the gilded Belle Epoque monsters that haunt the pages of A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu. As the Empress Elisabeth of Austria, poor Ludwig's magnetic but manipulative cousin, Romy Schneider might just as well be playing the Duchesse de Guermantes. The opportunistic composer Richard Wagner (Trevor Howard) and his scheming wife Cosima (Silvana Mangano) stand in as the vulgar social-climbing Verdurins. The king himself is a kindred spirit of the Baron de Charlus - a doomed aesthete who refined tastes are at odds with his sordid love-life.

With its majestic cast and flawless photography and design, Ludwig has all the makings of a screen masterpiece. Alas, it falters badly in its last hour - which depicts the bourgeois conspiracy that topples Ludwig from his throne. Perhaps Visconti (who identified so closely with the mad monarch) could not face up to the waning of his own powers. He suffered a crippling stroke after finishing this film, and would never again attempt work on such a scale. Ludwig stands as a flawed testament - as a portrait of one enigma by another.

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I have not seen the highly edited 180 minute version of Ludwig, available in the US. However, I am lucky enough to have seen the full 4 hour and 7 minute version available on DVD in Germany. Alas, there are no English subtitles or soundtracks, but my mother is fluent in German and so I was able to get a line by line translation!

And my GOD, was it worth it. Although I felt it was a little slow in places, I was utterly drawn in to Ludwig's world as the film progressed. I can't speak for the US video version, but the full cut is divided into 5 parts. As each part comes and goes, we are steadily immersed into the world of Ludwig II (Helmut Berger in compelling form once more, as he was in Visconti's The Damned [1969]). Ludwig has often been dismissed as "mad", but this film really lets you identify and understand the tormented man's life. One cannot help being on the verge of tears in sympathy towards the end of Part IV, when Ludwig is hiding in his absurdly decadent and expensive castle and Elisabeth (Romy Schnieder) tries to visit him. Wagner's Tristan und Isolde blazes on the soundtrack and he cannot bear to be seen by her in his state. He cries out her name repeatedly and sinks down on the ground. Some people have criticised Berger for being too melodramatic (Helmut 'Ham'-Berger one review once said), but he is perfect in this role. Not only does he strongly resemble the original Ludwig, but his acting is spot-on for capturing Ludwig's romantic and highly emotional personality.

This film deals with many themes that Visconti continually returned to in his career. It was made after his planned film based on Proust's epic masterpiece 'In Search of Lost Time' fell through (and what wouldn't I give for Visconti to have made that film!!) and might be seen to contain similar themes. There is decadence, decay, decline, homosexuality, and music. Not only is this film a fine study of historical events (the 'wars of Unification' in 1866 and 1870-1), but also of art and music (Ludwig's relationship with Wagner and the influence of Wagnerian art on his life), and of Ludwig's own highly-strung personality.

In short, this is yet another Visconti masterpiece. It's a CRIME that no-one has given this film a DVD release in its restored (or even any other) form in the US or the UK. The film was also filmed in English, but no English soundtrack is available on the German DVD, or subtitles. Again, this is another example of Visconti's work being overlooked and ignored - the sound quality is also not what it could be (the sound quality on the German track being DIABOLICAL, as opposed to the good Italian track). This film TRULY deserves a proper DVD release - music, direction, acting, and script are superb and this film deserves a far wider audience than it is allowed to receive. At least the German DVD is in the correct aspect ratio (2.35 : 1) as this film deserves to be seen in it's full glory (sets - most the real locations - and costumes are utterly stunning). I urge anyone who reads this to see Ludwig - even if one must resort to a horribly cut VHS version (how can you loose a whole HOUR from this film?!!). This is another Visconti masterpiece and cries out for a better and more widely available DVD release.