DIRECTOR: Luchino Visconti

BOTTOM LINE:

 Many of the old German families sided with Hitler in the closing days of the Weimar Republic. Luchino Visconti’s “The Damned” centers on the Essenbecks (loosely based on the Krupp family) on the night of the Reichstag fire in early 1933. After a great opening, the film misfires. Part of the reason is that Visconti edits the film around his then-lover Helmut Berger who does his famous Marlene Dietrich impersonation. However, the real destruction came from Hollywood when it lopped off an additional thirty minutes on the film’s American release. As a result, Dirk Bogarde, Charlotte Rampling, and Helmut Griem, despite giving their all, fade in and out of the picture.

POST TITLE: Twenty-Seven Queer Films 1967-1976. Queer Cinema Comes Out 

CATEGORY: My Favorites

SUBCATEGORY: Queer Film

STREAMING: Amazon Prime Video