Luchino Visconti's The Damned (1969) relates the story of a fictional Krupp-like aristocratic German family dynasty, the Essenbecks, that operates their nation's preeminent steelworks and weapons producing plant, at the time of Hitler's struggle to consolidate his power over Germany. The film is known as Götterdämmerung in Europe, taking its name from Wagner's last opera and, true to form, it exhibits a distinctly operatic quality.

Historical Background: Since we know that history tends to repeat itself, it is natural for prudent people to want to better understand how the great tragedies of history came about so we might better anticipate and prevent recurrences. The circumstances in America today partly resemble those that existed in Germany prior to the rise of the Nazis ("moral decay," a political swing to the right, an aggressive military posture, increasing class disparities) but also differ in some significant ways (economic prosperity in America vs. hyperinflation and war debts in Germany, Democratic system of government). Do we need to be worrying that Bush, Chaney, Rumsfeld, et al. pose a threat on the order of magnitude of Hitler's crew? To meaningfully address such questions, it is more important, in my opinion, to examine the time period from 1932 to 1934 than what followed from 1934 to 1945. By the end of 1934, the die was cast, in Germany, and nothing short of a cataclysm would stop Hitler after that point. Visconti's film The Damned relates to that crucial period during which Hitler consolidated his hold on Germany.

A little background will help viewers understand the film's context. One of Hitler's staunchest allies during the early days of the Nazi Party was Ernst Röhm. Röhm was a military man through and through. He had been wounded three times in World War I and, like many Germans, felt betrayed by his country's surrender. After the war, he became part of a paramilitary unit called the Frontbann. He met Hitler and, with him, helped found the Nazi Party. Röhm organized the paramilitary arm of the party out of the "sportabteilung," or sports detachment, and they valiantly defended Hitler during the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. In gratitude, Hitler renamed the group the "strumabteilung," which was abbreviated "SA," with Röhm as their leader. Röhm remained thoroughly loyal to Hitler throughout the years of party growth. He was even more zealous than Hitler, is one respect, advocating the replacement of the Reichswehr (German army) with the SA

The SA, also known as "brownshirts," began as a ragtag group of street thugs, but Röhm trained them systematically, in strict military fashion. The SA participated in numerous street brawls in defense of the Nazi Party. They acquired an image of rowdy hooligans, which was somewhat damaging to the public perception of the Nazis. When Hitler rose to power in January, 1933, in a power-sharing arrangement with Hindenburg, Röhm began insisting that the SA be independent of the Nazi's political wing and on an equal footing. Hitler forbade it and tried replacing Röhm as head of the SA with more malleable leaders, but the brownshirts then became even less manageable. The SA continued to absorb other paramilitary groups and their numbers swelled to two million, which was about twenty times larger than the regular army.

Röhm and the SA were now being viewed as a common threat by Hitler, the German Army High Command, and the Gestapo (SS), under Heinrich Himmler. In the summer of 1934, Hindenburg was ailing and Hitler would soon be taking over as president. Hitler ordered the SA troops to take a month of leave during July. On the night of June 29th and 30th, 1934, the leaders of the SA, including Röhm, had a meeting scheduled at a village inn near Munich. Shortly before 7 a.m., in what became known as "The Night of the Long Knives Massacre," several carloads of SS agents, under commander Sepp Dietrich and with Hitler following behind, drove quietly up to the inn, burst into the rooms where the SA leaders were sleeping, and literally dragged them off to prison. Röhm and his fellow SA commanders were shot the next day. Other SA leaders were rounded up in Berlin. The rank and file of the SA was then absorbed into the SS under Himmler. On the same day, the two highest-ranking anti-Nazi officers of the German Army were also summarily executed, as they answered knocks on their respective doors. Thereafter, every obstacle to total Nazi domination was systematically eliminated.

The Story: The viewer's first challenge, with this film, is keeping the characters straight, since a slew of them are introduced early on. The head of the Essenbeck family is the aging Baron Joachim Von Essenbeck (Albrecht Schoenhals). The opening segment of the film shows various members of the Essenbeck family gathering to celebrate Joachim's birthday. He apparently had three children. The eldest son was killed in World War I, heroically, but left behind the widow, Sophie (Ingrid Thulin), and son Martin (Helmut Berger), who live at the Essenbeck estate. Martin, as the eldest son of the eldest son of the Baron, is the major heir and will someday control the majority of the stock in the steelworks and associated industries. Martin is a bit "peculiar." As part of the birthday celebration for his grandfather, Martin dresses up in drag, with a blond wig, silk hat and long black silk stockings and does a pretty convincing imitation of Marlene Dietrich, from The Blue Angel (1930). The cover of the DVD features a picture of this scene, with the teaser, "He was soon to become the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany." He, of course, looks every bit a she.

The Baron's second son is Baron Konstantin Von Essenbeck (René Kolldehoff), a rugged, big-chinned, gruff man and supporter of Röhm and the SA. He is the company's current President and runs the day-to-day operations. Konstantin has a son named Gunther (Renaud Verley), who is educated, cultured, and sensitive. Gunther attends school, plays the cello, and hates his father. Konstantin knows that Gunther hates him and doesn't really care. He only wants to toughen the kid up and turn him into a ruthless executive, in the family tradition. Gunther's political sympathies lie close to those of his uncle, Herbert Thallman (Umberto Orsini), a communist firmly opposed to the Nazis. Herbert is married to the Baron's third child, Elisabeth. The Thallman's have two daughters, Thilde and Erika, one a preteen and the other perhaps eight. Herbert is bitterly outspoken in his opposition to the Nazis.

On the edges of the family are two additional figures that play a significant role in the story. Aschenbach (Helmut Griem) is a full-fledged Nazi official and cousin of Konstantin. He is determined to get the steelworks aligned behind Hitler and the Nazis, come hell or high water. The aging Baron has little use for Hitler although his distaste for the man is based only on Hitler's lack of refinement and breeding. The Baron is pragmatic, however, and announces during his birthday celebration that he has decided to remove Herbert as Vice President and replace him with Frederick Bruckmann (Dick Bogarde), a longtime executive in the company and Nazi supporter, though Bruckmann is unrelated to the Essenbecks. As the Baron explains, the company needs a person in a visible position who has ties with the Chancellor. Bruckmann is allied with Achenbach, whose ultimate objective is complete control of the company for Hitler. Bruckmann is also courting the widow, Sophie Essenbeck, and is already her lover. The ruthless Sophie encourages Bruckmann to "go the limit" in seizing control of the steelworks.

As the party proceeds, news arrives of the burning of the Reichstag, which was organized by the Nazis but blamed on the Communists. The SS arrive at the estate to arrest Herbert Thallman, as one of the communist leaders. He manages to escape through a window, but is induced by Bruckmann to leave his pistol behind, as it would be folly to be caught with it. Later that night, Bruckmann uses the pistol to dispatch the senior Baron Essenbeck, thus providing a convenient means for the Nazis to lay the blame on Herbert.

Though Martin is nominally the heir to the majority of shares in the company, he has no business acumen and even less common sense. His own mother is contemptuous of him and wants the control of the company in the hands of her lover rather than her son. After the Baron's demise, Bruckmann and Konstantin struggle for control of the company. Martin, manipulated by his mother, initially sides with her lover, Bruckmann, but, later, Konstantin finds a means to blackmail Martin. Among Martin's seemingly endless peculiarities (besides cross-dressing) is a penchant for a Jewish mistress, Olga (Florinda Bolkan), and, far worse, when she's out, her little girl, Lisa (Irina Wanka), who is about seven or eight. Martin brings toys in his effort to seduce Lisa, including, ironically, a Trojan horse. Martin has his way with the girl and Lisa later hangs herself. The police report on the matter conveniently finds itself in the hands of Konstantin.

Meanwhile, Elisabeth Thallman wants to leave Germany with her children. Instead, they get shipped off to prison to pressure Herbert to return to Germany, where he will be arrested and, undoubtedly, executed. Herbert does ultimately return, making the supreme sacrifice, surrendering himself so that his children, at least, can survive. Elizabeth has already been killed in the meantime.

Sophie reassures Martin that she will take care of the blackmail problem. She meets with Aschenbach, who agrees that something will need to be done about Konstantin, but Aschenbach also privately concludes that Sophie and Frederick are too "independent" for his liking. Konstantin is among the SA revelers gathered together at Wiessee on June 29th, 1934, for what Visconti depicts as much more a night of debauchery (mainly homosexual) than a political gathering. The SS arrive and dispatch the SA leaders and their male prostitutes in a hail of machine gun fire. Bruckmann himself is there to deliver the coup de grace to his rival Konstantin.

In his next move, Aschenbach turns to Martin and draws out the young man's repressed hatred for his mother and her lover. It's not a difficult task, since Sophie has never demonstrated so much as an ounce of maternal concern or love for her son. Aschenbach props up Martin's courage for the effort to destroy his closest enemies. Martin rapes his mother as manifestation of his newfound power over her. Later, decked out in full Nazi regalia, Martin completes the destruction of Sophie and Frederick by forcing them to consume poison immediately after their marriage.

Themes: This film doesn't so much have a theme as a vitriolic condemnation of the well-heeled aristocracy that stood by while Nazism and Fascism engulfed Germany and Italy respectively. Visconti's outburst is vicious and bilious, possibly from a sense of personal betrayal (since he was born into the nobility), but his polemic is otherwise ineffective. He has created a fictional link between personal perversity and political perversity that can only serve to mislead viewers wanting to better understand how men like Hitler and Mussolini could have been permitted to gain control over their respective countries.

Visconti appears determined to conclude that only Martin was perverse enough, in the end, to serve fully the requirements of the Nazis. He alone could be counted on not to think independently. What were Martin's qualifications for such service to the Nazis? Well, he was politically naïve, lacked acumen of any kind, enjoyed cross-dressing, and engaged in pedophilia. Still, that's not quite enough. Visconti adds the final qualification: Martin rapes his own mother, making him the proverbial mother-f*****. Instead of an insightul deconstruction of how and why the German industrialists cooperated in the rise of Hitler, Visconti has given us just a fanciful construction out of his imagination. Visconti succeeds in hurling every conceivable epithet at the wealthy Nazi collaborators while teaching us absolutely nothing about the genuine antecedents of catastrophe.

By Visconti's logic, Bill Clinton, who was "perverse" enough to take fellatio from an intern in the White House, ought to have been viewed as a greater threat to world stability than the pleasant and mostly respectable Monsieurs Bush and Chaney, however much warmongering they might engage in. In my personal judgment, there is no consistent correlation between personal or sexual perversity, on the one hand, and political menace, on the other. To imply otherwise is counter-educational because it furthers the already dangerous tendency of voters to support candidates based on superficial considerations, like pleasing countenance, good-old-boy personality, and being a good family man with a photogenic family, rather than substantive political positions or philosophies.

Production Values: Visconti's screenplay is largely fictional, though several real events of the Third Reich are integrated into the plot, including the burning of the Reichstag, the burning of the books, and the Night of the Long Knives Massacre. Otherwise, most of the action takes place in the banquet hall and bedchambers of the Ruhr Valhalla estate of the Essenbecks. The film is apparently intended as social parable, depicting spectacular corruption among the German industrial aristocracy to illustrate their moral degeneracy, which, in turn, allowed their support for the Nazis.

The film opens with a magnificent shot of the orange flames emanating from a blast furnace at a steel plant, underscoring immediately the basis of the power of the Essenbeck family. Visconti's camerawork has its clever moments, such as when he focuses in close-up on one character in a conversation before pulling back to reveal the other participant. On the other hand, Visconti's penchant for zoom-ins, as though to add weight to a shot, is excessive and annoying. The color scheme is rich and the contrast intensive between light and shadows, also seemingly designed to add import to the film's horrors. Almost every close-up shows beads of sweat on the brows or running down the cheeks of the characters. These techniques are more mawkish than effective. Some viewers relate to this film as high camp rather than serious movie fare, precisely because of the extent to which Visconti has over-dramatized his story.

It is hard to gauge the quality of the performances because the film's style is so blatantly melodramatic that the efforts of the cast are misplaced. The performances remind me of the kind we've seen, over the years, on nighttime soaps such as Dallas or Dynasty. The dialogue lacks any semblance of credibility and the dubbing is just awful as well. Consider these three examples of stilted dialog:

Aschenbach: "Every German citizen today is potentially one of our informers. The collective thinking of our people is now complicity."

Martin Von Essenbeck [to an eight-year old girl]: "Did somebody hit you? Your mother? Does she do it often, on your little tiny ass?"

Baron Joachim Von Essenbeck: "Complicity grows. I've accepted the ruthless logic and I shall never get away from it."

This is simply not the dialog of realistic people. Most evil people don't view themselves as evil. Instead, they have long since rationalized why their evil activities are righteous and wise. Visconti gives us only caricatures. Certainly there is plenty of talent in this cast, but the performances are so terribly over-the-top as to be absurd. Ingrid Thulin gives an exquisite soap opera style performance as Sophie, if you like that sort of thing. She had a proud history of superlative work in such films as Wild Strawberries (1957), The Magician (1958), La Guerre est Finie (1966), The Hour of the Wolf (1968), and Cries and Whispers (1972). Dirk Bogard is way too melodramatic and unrestrained as Frederick Bruckmann and his classic English accent is misplaced. His other work includes roles in Quartet (1949), Doctor in the House (1954), King and Country (1964), Accident (1967), Death in Venice (1971), Providence (1977), and A Bridge Too Far (1977). Helmut Berger does a pretty decent job as the terribly perverse Martin. His resume included roles in The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1971) and The Romantic Englishwoman (1975). Helmut Griem, who gets nothing but twaddle to spout, also appeared in Carbaret (1972). René (Reinhard) Rolldehoff's performance as Konstantin is another one totally off the radar screen of reality. His other work included The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960) and The Romantic Englishwoman (1975). Umberto Orsini gives a bellicose performance, hamstrung by unwieldy platitudes.

Deficiencies: Foremost among the many deficiencies of this film are the characterizations. There's no psychological credibility for most of the main characters. People as demonic as these folks could not have existed as a family for decades only to suddenly self-destruct in the course of a few weeks in 1933/4. No adequate basis is provided for the massive transformation that afflicts Martin, for example. The dubbing of the English dialog is so poor that you'll probably be best served, should you watch this film, by turning the English subtitles on.

The emphasis on sexual perversity, including pedophilia and incest, comes entirely from Visconti's own imagination and bears no genuine relation to the political subject matter. I very much doubt, for example, that a single one of the German industrialists that contributed to or acquiesced to the rise of Hitler ever raped his own mother. I also doubt that the political gathering at which the Night of the Long Knives Massacre took place was the kind of homosexual orgy that Visconti has depicted. Visconti seems to want to infer that the massacre was an example of the Nazi intolerance for homosexuality whereas the reality is that the motivations were entirely political. The SA was the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, so Visconti's take on the organization would require one to conclude that homosexuality was rampant among the Nazis.

Bottom-Line: The Damned is little more than a garish soap-opera that clumsily mixes sexual perversity with the politically tragic ascension of Hitler. It's a heavy-handed outburst, on Visconti's part, ineffectively rendered with poor camera technique, appallingly melodramatic performances, and absurd and poorly dubbed dialog. One reviewer with a contrary opinion states that The Damned propels Visconti "into the pantheon of great directors." Thanks to some of his other work (Rocco and His Brothers (1960), The Leopard (1963), Death in Venice (1971)), Visconti belongs in that pantheon, but The Damned, in my opinion, can only be enjoyed as an example of high camp, for its ability to invoke peels of disdainful laughter by its melodramatic excess. I give it two stars rather than one only because it tackles a time and place in history, however poorly, that is badly in need of better understanding. The Damned is in English, with optional subtitles in English, French, or Spanish. The running time is 157 minutes.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age