Ludwig ou le crépuscule des dieux

For many many years I wanted to see this movie, a film you never get to see on TV or at a Visconti retrospective at the NFT or one of the Curzon cinemas here in London. Perhaps it is so because this film has been so much underrated by critics and public that it drags far behind the director's most famous and praised works (The Leopard, Rocco, La Terra Trema, etc).

I read in a biography of the director that "Ludwig" was a mammoth project that took four production companies from different countries to put up the budget, it obsessed and consumed Visconti to the the extent of almost killing him when he suffered a stroke as a result of long working hours and too much mental strain, went well over schedule and budget and finally was taken away from the author's hands by the producers and butchered and re-edited in order to make it shorter, simpler and more viably commercial. The result was a mess almost half of the length of the original and with a lot of key scenes missing, presenting an inconsistent story full of plot holes and with characters appearing now and then from nowhere. It took several years after Visconti's death for his usual collaborators (d'Amico, Nanuzzi) to gather the missing sequences and re-edit the film into a cut as close to Visconti's idea as it could be. The result is a a DVD edition of 228 minutes. This movie, visually speaking, is with "Death in Venice" probably Visconti's most beautiful,lavish and rich in colours and small details. As to the story, I agree with other viewers on the fact that it is a bit too overlong and it drags at places and some sequences could have been shorter without the plot missing anything. But then it seems like Visconti deliberately wanted to give it that sedate pacing in order to suit the dreamlike mental state of the protagonist during his reclusion in his castles and his lapses into his own fantasy world. In order to understand better Ludwig's personality I read one of his many biographies after watching the movie for the first time, and then I watched it again, and I could appreciate better Visconti's approach to the character. I think this is a movie worth of its director, and even with its flaws and extreme length it deserves better criticism and appreciation than it unfairly got since it first came out in 1972.

Helmut Berger is quite good here and has a remarkable resemblance to the real Ludwig, Romy Schneider is as beautiful as ever and the real Bavarian locations are breathtaking. The night sequence with Ludwig and Elizabeth riding in the snowy forest in the moonlight is one of the most beautiful and romantic I have ever seen in film. The cinematography alone makes "Ludwig" worth watching if you like beautiful things.

Hopefully this movie has gained some appreciation and seems to be getting better reviews nowadays that it did in the past. Many call it Visconti's lost masterpiece. Although I don't think it is one of his greatest works thematically speaking, it surely stands among the most beautiful and lyrical and it is one of my favourite choices for a long winter evening.

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)

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.

I don't know whether to give it a "7" or an "8" so I gave it the benefit of the doubt and scored it "8". VERY nice film, though somewhat longish, about a very artistic, but also paranoid ruler of the 19th century. The period settings seemed, to me anyway, authentic. For example, it shows the interior glass lamps of the 1860s burning to produced light; then showing how by the late 1880s these lamps being the electric lamps that we today are familiar with. Ludwig II was an early advocate of the use of electricity; which was a new technology in his day and age. Other settings are definitely authentic to that day and age, and it is interesting to see how people did things in the 19th century. Having said that; it is unfortunate that medical technology was not then near as advanced as today. Ludwig could certainly have been treated successfully for his paranoia with some drugs that we have today; but were not available then.

Helmet Burger is simply speaking, Ludwig. He very closely physically resembles the historical figure, and I have no doubt that his behavior does also. One gets the nagging impression that Helmut Berger was the reincarnation of Ludwig!! Romy Schneider reprized her role as Empress Elizabeth of Austria; at first with some trepidation then with tremendous enthusiasm. By the time filming ended she certainly felt that her portrayal as a more mature Sissy was the ideal role for her. In fact, the only picture of herself in costume that she displayed in her apartment was of the role she played in this movie.

The major problem with this movie, and the reason why this film was never popular in the United States, is that you have to know quite a lot of European 19th century history to really appreciate it. Until the advent of DVDs; which gave one the opportunity to play and replay this movie at will, and of on-line encyclopedias that allowed one to do some quick historical research- most of the movie was probably unfathomable to most Americans. Today, with the tools that I mentioned this movie can be appreciated by the average viewer. Watch out for the language problem in this movie; it is certainly a little disconcerting at first as this movie has German actors, in roles set in Germany, speaking not German, but rather Italian!

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.