Review: Luchino Visconti’s The Damned on Criterion Collection Blu-ray

Luchino Visconti’s unsparing examination of moral depravity has never looked better than it does on the Criterion’s new Blu-ray edition.

The DamnedDecadence and depravity abound in Luchino Visconti’s scathing The Damned, the first in the filmmaker’s so-called German Trilogy, followed by Death in Venice and Ludwig, each of which delineates a different era and style of German psychopathology. The Damned specifically charts the downfall of the von Essenbeck family, steel magnates who have made their vast fortune selling armaments to the German state.

With the rise of Hitler, the family finds itself divided, more or less along generational lines, as to the extent of their dealings with the Nazi party. Patriarch Joachim (Albrecht Schoenhals) is staunchly anti-Hitler, as is his communist-leaning son, Herbert (Umberto Orsini), while family relation Konstanin (Reinhard Kolldehoff) is an ill-mannered officer in the SA brownshirts. Friedrich Bruckmann (Dirk Bogarde) hopes to seize the reins of power by marrying into the family, setting his sights on war widow Sophie (Ingrid Thulin), whose son, Martin (Helmut Berger), prefers to think that family affairs means fiddling about with his eight-year-old niece.

Foreshadowing The Godfather’s wedding opener, Visconti lays out these complex interrelationships and motivations during birthday celebrations for Joachim, taking up almost the first hour of the film on the party and subsequent events. These come to a head with the old man’s murder, an act that’s quickly (and wrongly) blamed on Herbert. By having all this melodrama coincide with the February 1933 Reichstag fire that allowed Hitler to consolidate his power base, Visconti achieves a fascinating blend of fact and fiction. He carries this through to a startling set piece that depicts the June 1934 Night of the Long Knives, when Hitler wholesale slaughtered SA stormtroopers he felt were disloyal, which here provides the opportunity for Friedrich to take out Konstantin with a submachine gun.

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Against such a precise historical backdrop, Visconti stages the family tragedy of the von Essenbeck dynasty in a manner distinctly reminiscent of Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, which was published almost 30 years before Hitler’s rise to power. In keeping with Mann’s decadent aesthetics, the psychology of the von Essenbecks tends toward the aberrant. (The dynamic between Friedrich and Sophie also carries more than a whiff of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.) Cousin Aschenbach (Helmut Griem)—the name itself lifted from Mann’s Death in Venice, next up in the German Trilogy—enjoys pitting family members against each other to maximize his own gain. Brutish Konstantin is equally pleased when running down the artistic aspirations of his son, Günther (Renaud Verley). But at the epicenter of all this moral rot stands Martin, who, before the end of The Damned, racks up an impressive roster of atrocities.

The film’s sexual politics can get a little thorny, especially coming from an openly gay filmmaker. The Damned perpetuates the stereotype about a perverse streak in Nazism linked to homosexuality that can be traced back in popular culture at least to Rossellini’s war films, first and foremost in its portrayal of the SA gathering that precedes the Night of the Long Knives as a riotous gay orgy, replete with copious cross-dressing Aryan types in garters and heels. Admittedly, such notions were in the air at the time, but it seems odd that Visconti, for all his vaunted authenticity, chose not to look beyond the folklore in this regard. Then again, it certainly makes for one exceedingly memorable sequence. Counterbalancing this questionable tendency, Visconti saves all the worst deeds for the decidedly hetero Martin, including pedophilia, incest, and matricide. Ultimately, he turns out to be a real motherfucker.

One aspect of The Damned that doesn’t get as much attention has to do with the influential intersection of art-house and grindhouse. In an era of changing mores (not to mention ratings systems), when a respected filmmaker pushed the envelope in terms of extreme content, there were many others eager to either cash in or (more generously) express themselves along similar lines. Just as Ken Russell’s The Devils launched an entire exploitation film subgenre known as Nunsploitation, Visconti’s film gave rise to Nazisploitation films. Some of these drew a direct line back to Visconti by recycling the film’s cast members, like Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter (Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling) and Tinto Brass’s Salon Kitty (Helmut Berger and Ingrid Thulin). These we might call art-house adjacent. Then there are the spate of real gutbucket exploitation films, with titles like Love Camp 7 and Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS.

The Damned is ultimately an attempt to explore in concrete historical and psychological terms the price of complicity and the results of an untrammeled lust for power. These come together most memorably in the deaths of Friedrich and Sophie on their wedding day, their ghastly suicide reminiscent of the ultimate fate of Hitler and Eva Braun. Cutting from the wide shot that discovers them dead, the camera pans with aching slowness over the bodies arranged in a grotesque parody of the Pietà. For Visconti, as indeed for Mann himself, tragedy is always leavened with a dose of irony, providing the necessary distance that allows for dispassionate appraisal. With Yeats, they tend to cast a cold eye over their creations.

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Image/Sound

The Criterion Collection presents The Damned in a new 2K scan of the original camera negative supervised by the Cineteca di Bologna. The image looks ravishing, with richer colors, cooler flesh tones, and a far greater depth and clarity than the old Warner Bros. DVD. The restoration really brings into sharp focus fine details in the massive sets and intricate costume design, and enhances Luchino Visconti’s expressive use of color, especially for scenes that are tinted with an infernal reddish hue. Both English and Italian LPCM mono tracks are provided, though viewers will likely prefer the former, with most of the lead actors’ voices on hand. Both do full justice to Maurice Jarre’s alternately sweeping and chilling score.

Extras

Criterion provides a slender yet informative roster of bonus features. The interview with Visconti from 1970 quickly turns into a fascinating round-table discussion with many of the audience members chiming in to passionately express their opinions, both pro and con, of the film. There’s a 10-minute archival profile (read: puff piece) on Visconti, with some nice behind-the-scenes footage of The Damned shoot. A 1969 interview with Ingrid Thulin covers her ideas about playing strong women, working with directors like Visconti and Ingmar Bergman, and her ideas about her own psychological makeup. A 1969 interview with Helmut Berger goes into his career before The Damned, being discovered by Visconti, and his thoughts on contemporary cinema. In a 1990 interview, Charlotte Rampling discusses her start in cinema, and working with Dirk Bogarde on both The Damned and the similarly themed The Night Porter. A new interview with Italian cinema expert Stefano Albertini examines Visconti’s German Trilogy, the literary and historical inspirations behind The Damned, and the sexual politics involved in the archetype of the perverse Nazi established in the film. Finally, there’s an incisive foldout essay on The Damned by scholar D.A. Miller.

Overall

Luchino Visconti’s unsparing examination of moral depravity has never looked better than it does on the Criterion Collection’s new Blu-ray edition.

Score: 
 Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin, Helmut Griem, Helmut Berger, Renaud Verley, Umberto Orsini, René Koldehoff, Albrecht Schoenhals, Nora Ricci, Charlotte Rampling, Florinda Bolkan, Irina Wanka  Director: Luchino Visconti  Screenwriter: Nicola Badalucco, Enrico Medioli, Luchino Visconti  Distributor: The Criterion Collection  Running Time: 158 min  Rating: R  Year: 1969  Release Date: September 28, 2021  Buy: Video

Budd Wilkins

Budd Wilkins's writing has appeared in Film Journal International and Video Watchdog. He is a member of the Online Film Critics Society.

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