ElMaruecan82 I remember my first Fellini film was "8½", it was stylishly interesting but after the mess could end, I waited for almost 2 years before watching another Fellini. Now, I'm familiar with his work and I see "8½" with more delighted eyes. So, maybe I need to give "The Damned" the benefit of the doubt out of respect for Visconti's cinematic legacy and watch it again, later … or maybe I should forget about Visconti and review "The Damned" as if it was directed by anyone. I'll do that.And I won't do is to use my cinematic culture as an alibi, I know some hardcore fans will probably tell me that I don't 'get' the film, that it's a sort of cinematic essay about the decay of German society at the dawn of the Nazi rise and that the script embodies the very cynical aspect that allowed the Nazi to take power, this mix of sophisticated ferociousness and cruel degeneracy. Words, words and again, words … These are literal considerations and although they are significant on a pure intellectual basis, they can't distract the eyes and the ears from pure cinematic badness.To make myself even clearer, I'm sure the story looked promising in the paper, I'm sure the treated themes and the artistry used to illustrate them showed a lot of artistic potential, I'm even sure that a film-student can make a 300-page thesis about "The Damned", but we're not reviewing the ideas that motivated the film but how the films did convey them. In fact, I can still use my reference to"8½" because despite all the analysis the film inspired, it was more of a revolution in terms of acting, imagery and pure storytelling, and these are pillars of cinematic quality that cruelly lack in "The Damned".I can close my eyes on slow pacing: it's a 3-hour film that asks for more than one half hour of exposition but nonetheless, it was still difficult to tell who was who or what each character's name was or position in the whole plot. There is the patriarch who owns the steel factory, a man who's supposed to succeed to him, his wife, a Nazi officer, and the film strikes by an abundance of dialog that states the situations in such overly informative ways that it never feels spontaneous or natural, and it's punctuated by boring musical interludes. In "The Godfather", almost all the characters are presented during the first half-hour but it was made in a smoothly directed and never gratuitous way.And even when the first real action starts, the film gets back again to long scenes of pure verbal exchanges, never giving the impression that it's going somewhere. The patriarch is shot in bed and there's no scream, no panic, everything is dealt with perfect composure.. What follows is an incredible series of totally disjointed episodes made of nonsensical sexual perversions, political conspiracy, and long and dull dialogs worsened by a bad dubbing… I understand that it's meant to shock and to disturb, that it contains many incestuous details elements disguised as Shakespearian subtexts, but the film suffers from a strange paradox, it goes in many directions yet it's so desperately static.The plat de resistance of the film is perhaps the only part that grabbed my interest, but then again, it ended in a bloody confusion which in the year of "The Wild Bunch" totally out-dates the film. I still have to figure what was the point with the whole homosexual undertones and the transvestite orgy, but as effective as it could get, it really seemed to belong to another film although it suffers from the same technical flaws. I hate to use such adjectives as 'boring' or 'pretentious' but while I was enthralled to get immersed in what seemed to be an enigmatic family drama with disturbing Freudian undertones, something lacked in the movie, I didn't feel it had a driving force, a character I should hook my mind to, a plot, a directing, a direction."The Damned" failed on both the content and the surface, using artificial artistic licenses to hide a relative poverty in storytelling: what's with all the green lighting, the over-the-top make-up, what's with this horrid casting, and I'm not even talking about the two little girls. How about the length, even the greatest films cut off some good parts, didn't they have any scissors? Were all the scenes that necessary? "The Damned" is a living paradox that takes for granted its attempt to make a family drama rooted on a historical subject, true movie lovers will see a complex masterpiece (while it's just a complicated mess). "The Damned" tries to elevate its feel to epic levels why the actors' performances reduce it to a TV level. It's like the frog that tries to be as big as an ox but bursts in the attempt.And talk about misleading artistic devices, what's with the steel factory in the opening credits? The poster shows the main character disguised as a cabaret singer, it's the most defining shot of the film yet it only lasts two minutes and rarely connects with the rest of the story. All right, he's a transvestite, he also happens to like little girls, all right, it's the perversity of Nazism, but what, when, who, why? It was that picture that grabbed my interest, I had just watched "Cabaret" and I read in Roger Ebert's review that the film explored "some of the same kinky territory celebrated in Visconti's "The Damned.", I immediately wanted to see "The Damned" expecting a richer film. Let's say that "Cabaret" said more in a few glimpses than "The Damned" in a whole plot.I sincerely wanted to give the film a shot, even though Ebert gave it only one star. But "The Damned" if not a dull mess, is a slow descent into a cinematic abyss of nothingness

tieman64 Luchino Visconti's "The Damned" looks at the role industrial capitalism had on the madness infecting 1930's Germany. One of the director's best films, it revolves around the Essenbecks, an aristocratic family whose massive wealth and high status depend on a steel works factory. The family head, Baron Joachim von Essenbeck, detests the National Socialists, but nevertheless allies his company with them. His son is already a Nazi member and another Essenbeck woman already has a Nazi lover, so why not side with them? After all, with the German Revolution crushed, this seems to be the way the winds of Germany are blowing.As a communist sympathiser this of course repulses the Baron (the Nazis set about eradicating all communists, Marxists, worker movements and, contrary to their name, weren't remotely socialist), but he must act to protect his wealth, and so reluctantly aligns his company's future to the fortunes of the Nazis, his factories reordered such that they do whatever is necessary to assist the German war machine. As the film progresses, however, the Baron's steel works will be slowly appropriated by the Nazis from within, both the Baron and his son will die and all remaining Essenbecks will be systematically replaced by Nazi figureheads.Visconti was himself a communist and aristocrat (Renoir and Pasolini, whom Visconti admired, were also communists), and so his film is primarily concerned with examining the relationships between Naziism and capitalism, and aligning the excesses of both. This project sometimes tips into sensationalism; Visconti has the Baron's son rape his cousin and then his mother, and the film quite shamelessly dips into homosexuality, drug use, incest and paedophilia.But such morbid topics were common in Italian cinema at the time ("Seven Beauties", "The Conformist" etc), most notably by the great provocateur Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pasolini maintained that consumer capitalism was worse than fascism because fascism's oppressions operated openly, its very "visibility" offering something to struggle against. But capitalism, Pasolini believed, was far more insidious. It was invisible, able to disavow its failings, and created a society in which citizens were willing participants in their own consented exploitation.So Pasolini's solution was simply to destroy the traditional family unit. Throw everything vile and debased at it. Why? Because the backbone of capitalism was, at the time, deemed to be traditional family, which itself rested on patriarchal values. Destroy the family, liberate it from itself, from its restrictions, and you win. Of course history has shown such thinking to be severely wrong. Today capitalism both sells conservatism and "empowers" the family to lovingly destroy itself, willingly.But many Italian films of the late 1960s and early 70s which dealt with fascism followed a similar trend, mostly due to the writings of Wilhelm Reich in his book, "The Mass Psychology of Fascism". These films, like Reich, link various sexual and physical dysfunctions to the very anxieties of fascism. Think Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Conformist", in which fascism is nurtured through the anchoring of sexual inhibition in the authoritarian miniature state of the family. The belief was that fascist anxiety stems from these suppressions, which ultimately results in a form of paralysis in which the subject is adjusted to all authoritarian orders and so willingly submits in spite of his degradation.But Visconti takes a slightly different approach. Nazis, especially during this era, were typically portrayed as being either the "id unchained" or perpetually repressed. Most of "The Damned" itself conforms to these trends. Here, when the "masculine ideal" of Nazi Germany comes under threat (by feminism, the literary and artistic Avant-Garde, socialism and sexual deviancy etc), we see it resorting to the fascist repression made possible by violent father figures (Hitler etc), all of whom repress sexual excess and transfer it instead to a kind of violent machismo.Visconti, however, was also influenced by Lukacs, a Marxist theorist who argued against modernism. And so Visconti also portrays the aristocracy and bourgeoisie (ie Old Germany) in various states of decline as they are infected and dominated by the future (Nazism). Visconti's Nazis - the new order - are themselves emblematic of the transmutation of every (sexual) impulse into predation (figured most obviously in the paedophilia of the Baron's son and the raping of his own mother), the drive for power, and finally the death wish (in the Freduain sense; desire cloaks death).This is made most clearest during a scene in which SS troops raid what is essentially a Socialist Alliance "homosexual sex party" and execute everyone present. Here, Nazism's dream of a classless state is revealed to be false. The sexual self (ie, the totally liberated moment or movement) is always contained and then destroyed by the demands of power (be it feudal, capitalist, monarchist etc), an act which itself serves as a metaphor for Hitler's annihilation of certain factions to please others, be they the SS, the military or the Prussian ruling class. So unlike Bertolucci and Passolini, it's not only a case of fascism spiralling out of the authoritarian family, but of fascism legitimising a kind of private deviancy (always aligned with predatory power) inside the family whilst publicly crushing all similar displays. In this way Visconti sets up a weird tension, the SS son molesting children and raping his mother behind closed doors whilst SS gangs brazenly kill SA officials, Jews and homosexuals in public.Beyond this you have the usual pros and cons of Visconti, "The Damned" too reliant on dialogue, boardroom discussions and the format of the nineteenth century novel. Like most of Visconti's films it observes as powerful "families" jostle for position, the "old order" trying to guarantee its future but failing to be absorbed into the "new consensus". Unlike these films, its tone is haunting and nightmarish.8.5/10 - See "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis".

preppy-3 **SPOILERS THROUGHOUT** The movie takes place in 1933 to 34 Germany. It's about a rich, wealthy family (the Essenbecks) who are destroyed by the Nazis coming into power. It basically focuses on Martin (Helmut Berger) who turns into a cold-blooded killer. Along the way there's murder, incest, cross dressing, pedophilia, suicide, rape, a gay orgy and mass murder! To be truthful none of it is really explicit--for instance the gay orgy scene only shows some casual male nudity and has NO sexual content at all! I'm surprised this got an X rating even back in 1969. BTW it's since been lowered to an R with no cuts. The film is beautiful to watch--director Luchino Visconti made films that were gorgeous to watch and dealt with adult subject matter. ("The Conformist" is another one like this) Each shot is like a beautiful painting. It's totally at odds with the subject matter which I think is the point. In the 2004 DVD release the colors are rich and the print is in perfect condition. The acting is great all around but the best performances come from Dirk Bogarde, Charlotte Rampling, Ingrid Thulin and especially Helmut Berger.The film isn't perfect. It's way too long at 157 minutes and you sort of become numb at all the back stabbing and evil happening. Martin's rape of his mom should be shocking but it comes near the end after two hours of evil and it sort of doesn't shock you. Also Thulin's appearance at the wedding at the end was a bit too much. Still this is a beautiful and fascinating film. If you see this on DVD I suggest you turn on the English subtitling. All the actors speak English but the heavy accents make some of their dialogue impossible to figure out.

JoeytheBrit Visconti's bizarre examination of a powerful and wealthy family whose downfall both parallels the rise and foreshadows the fall of the Third Reich is never less than entertaining, it has to be said. Certainly not to the tastes of all, it seems to revel in the decadence and debauchery it portrays in much the same way a tabloid paper feels it has to publish dozens of photographs of the pornography it pretends to condemn. Look how depraved these incestuous cross-dressing Nazis were; apart from one pious voice the whole nation, it seems, is condemned with one broad stroke and we are given no contrast against which to compare such depravity.The characters of the Von Essenbach family are each representative of a facet of 30s German character, all joined in a desire for power or the need to be protected beneath its wing, prone to making strident and unyielding demands and dismissing the rights of those who stand in their way. This leaves us with a morally repugnant lot, none of whom we can empathise with, and also tempts the cast to overact at times. Ingrid Thulin is particularly guilty, and even the usually laconic Dirk Bogarde becomes overwrought at times.For all these faults, the film is shamelessly entertaining and fascinating to watch. It plays like a Shakespearian tragedy at times, and you feel compelled to see it through to the end just to find out the fate of each character.