DIRECTOR: Luchino Visconti
The old German industrial dynasties that helped usher Hitler to power provide the backdrop for Luchino Visconti’s The Damned (Götterdämmerung), a fevered chronicle of the Essenbecks—thinly veiled stand‑ins for the Krupp family. The story begins on the night of the Reichstag fire in 1933, when the family patriarch, Baron Joachim von Essenbeck (Albrecht Schoenhals), is murdered during a gathering meant to project unity. His death ignites a ruthless struggle for control of the steel empire just as the Nazi state consolidates its own power.
The major power players are Friedrich Bruckmann (Dirk Bogarde), an ambitious manager aligned with rising Nazi forces, Sophie von Essenbeck (Ingrid Thulin), the Baron’s calculating daughter‑in‑law and mother of Martin von Essenbeck (Helmut Berger), the mentally unstable heir whose perversity knows no bounds. The epitome of decadence and moral corruption, Martin is not only in an incestuous relationship with his mother, but he is in political alignment with the Nazi regime, and, although his sexual proclivities are never entirely clear, he makes a fantastic Marlene Dietrich imitation in Drag, so label him queer. Completing the list are Konstantin von Essenbeck (Reinhard Kolldehoff), an SA (a stormtrooper or brownshirt) leader pushing for violent ascendancy, Aschenbach (Helmut Griem), an SS officer who quietly engineers the destruction of the Essenbeck family from within and, finally, Herbert Thallman (Umberto Orsini), the only anti-Nazi in the bunch who is framed by the others for Baron Joachim’s murder.
By the end, the dynasty has devoured itself—Visconti’s operatic metaphor for the implosion of Germany’s aristocratic class under fascism.
After its grand, operatic opening, however, the film falters in part because Visconti shaped the narrative around Helmut Berger—his lover at the time—whose celebrated impersonation of Marlene Dietrich had become a sensation. Its American release suffered an additional blow when twelve minutes of screen time were excised to reduce the MPAA rating from X to R, blunting the film’s sexual and political edge.
However, even in the completely restored version we see today, around the 120-minute mark, you begin to feel the film lose its sense of gravity as it hurries towards its culmination in the Night of the Long Knives and the SS’s annihilation of the SA. It isn’t so much that the purge of the SA becomes the final stage in the Essenbecks’ self‑destruction, it’s that Visconti’s supposed magnum opus has spun out of control.
The original screenplay—by Nicola Badalucco, Enrico Medioli, and Visconti—received an Academy Award nomination. It was the only time that Visconti was honored by AMPAS. The cast also includes Charlotte Rampling, whose performance as the unfortunate Elisabeth Thallman, Herbert’s wife, is the only one in the film that resonates.
Visconti suffered a major stroke in 1972 while completing post‑production on Ludwig (1973), his vast meditation on the gay—and ultimately mad—nineteenth‑century king of Bavaria. Starring Helmut Berger in the second of his three leading roles for the maestro (after The Damned and before Conversation Piece in 1974), the film was brutally reduced for its American release: cut from 238 minutes to 177, with virtually all queer material excised. That bowdlerized version is the one I saw many years ago, so I will not attempt a summary or critique of Ludwig based on that travesty.
Berger’s association with Visconti began in 1967, when the director spotted him among the extras on the anthology film The Witches and gave him a small role, billing him under his birth name, Helmut Steinberger.
Visconti’s final two films—Conversation Piece and The Innocent (1976)—are largely devoid of explicit gay themes, though some viewers detect a flicker of erotic tension between the Professor (Burt Lancaster) and Konrad (Berger) in the former. To my eye, their bond has always read more as a fraught father‑son dynamic than a submerged romance.
The full 157-minute restored version is now available from the Criterion Collection (both directly and through Barnes and Noble) in both BLU-RAY (1 Disc) and DVD (2 Discs) formats, with some extra goodies on the BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION. However, many, myself included, have been disappointed by the quality of the transfer, with several scenes suffering from faded colors and others from muffled sound.
The restored version is not available for streaming.
THE DAMNED IS PREDOMINANTLY IN ENGLISH WITH A FEW GERMAN SENTENCES SPOKEN TOWARD THE END OF THE MOVIE. THE GERMAN IS NOT SUBTITLED.
