Les Damnés

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!

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.

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.

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.

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