Less than a century after Italian unification, national democracy had already begun to rot. 

Luchino Visconti’s “The Damned” depicts the sagging structure of a society with an extravagant facade, built around a frame than could never sustain its weight of its own decadence. 

“The Damned” is a thinly veiled allegory about a true life German industrial family that supplied the Nazis with steel in order to retain and grow their social standing. Which - was never questionable at the outset. These were never back room dealings to parlay mediocrity into affluence, but parlour exchanges where power begat more power. 

“Damned” is a dramatic departure in style by Visconti. The soapy camp and glamor from “Sandra” and “The Leopard” re-emerge. But…

The Damned is crazy, disturbing and heart-wrenching. As a grim insight into the 1930s Germany where nazis had just took over power, Luchino Visconti opted for a microscopic approach, reflecting the madness of the German society as a whole, through the entry point of a high class German family, where family members are vying for power and control even at the cost of each other's life, and the end result is one of the most devastating and memorable accounts of nazism you would ever see.

What sets The Damned apart is its abundant elements of sexual perversions, exclusively from the character of Martin, played by a dangerously magnificent Helmut Berger, whose ocean-blue eyes and deceivingly boyish frailty Visconti never skipped…

"Today in Germany anything can happen."

I must confess to feeling slightly underwhelmed by Luchino Visconti's The Damned (known as Götterdämmerung throughout Europe), though the film definitely has much to recommend it. Two obvious factors stand out when trying to pinpoint the nature of my relative disappointment: 1) my preexistent relationship with Visconti (having seen Rocco and His Brothers, Le Notti Bianche, The Leopard and Death in Venice) has been a thoroughly positive one and 2) Rainer Werner Fassbinder cited The Damned as his favorite film ever made. As such I think I entered the film with unrealizable expectations.

Co-written by Visconti with Nicola Badalucco and Enrico Medioli, the sprawling narrative tracks the demise of German aristocracy and the consolidation of…

DAS IST NOT EINE BOOBY!

Calling this Days of Our Lives but with Nazis is probably understating the incredible film making on display here. Sure its pure melodrama but goddamn if it isn't the most beautiful looking episode of Dark Shadows I've ever seen. It's a slow film but I think that's very much on purpose to make you really feel the slow doldrum collapse of these awful peoples lives. I've never been one to view a film being slow, long, or boring as necessarily negative qualities in a movie anyway. I loved the few parts when the film gets really gay and personally I would have liked just a little bit of exploitation scuz, just a bump to tide…

An absolutely filthy perversion of Visconti's usual deliberately hollow opulence, here stressing that the Nazis' buzzkill puritanism only applied to the masses while the rich and party elite were left to keep pursuing the absolute depths of depravity. Of course, the escalating mania of both the country at large and the unchecked id of these aristocrats means that eventually they turn on each other, playing the kind of palace intrigue games of ruthless social climbing that filled time at court in the imperial era. Visconti's lavish sets and pulsing color makes the demented family dynamics of incest and betrayal that much more perverse, making a microcosm of Nazi insanity that inevitably encroaches upon the Essenbecks' bubble when their own connected…

Luchino Visconti's subversive film The Damned depicts National Socialism in a microcosm; here in the form of the wealthy von Essenbeck family during the rise of the Nazi's in 1930's Germany. The family at the centre is used as a mirror to a nation in moral decline; a time where morality plays second fiddle to political power. A situation where decadance, perversion and depravity can flourish under a feeble excuse for a political ideology which favours the so-called elite echelons of society. Visconti beautifully juxtaposes the melodrama between various family members and their maneuvering for power against historical events such as Nazi book burning and The Reichstag fire. The film makes its points quietly but with a real cutting edge.…

“Don’t have any illusions; this war has just begun!”

A subversive juxtaposition of decadence and hedonistic amoralism, The Damned is a study of corruption—moral, ideological, political, sexual, familial and industrial corruption set amidst the rise of the nazi party in Germany in the 1930s. Visconti exposes the greed and corruption of an opportunistic ruling class family in a time of political upheval and budding fascism, and he does this primarily through the character of Martin (Helmut Berger). It’s no coincidence that Berger was a muse for Visconti in the back nine of his career, and his admiration of Berger’s beauty and outward innocence is eschewed here. Just as Visconti shows the underlying evil of the decorative decor and pristine outward presentation…

Showcasing a Germans family ascent to power during the era of the nazis and the siding with the nazis and the normalcy such a event seems to have on their day to day lives while at the same times they decent into madness. The family slowly devolve into maliciousness towards each other while the surroundings suffocate themes and exhibit self doubt within themselves. 

Every actor in this does a great job having a great international cast but my favourite is dirk bogarde but that’s down to his brilliant skills as a actor he feels underrated in modern times I wish he got more recognition. Just every cast member in this really shines.

I also love how the pacing of this…

Sorry, I know many consider this a great film by but I found it to be a provocative mess. Yes, there's some excellent camerawork, a star-studded international cast and a compelling score by Maurice Jarre. Also, a sumptous production with perfect 1930s period sets, costumes and details. But the characters were all so depraved and/or evil from the outset and the story so melodramatic and over-the-top that I couldn't really feel engaged in the plot except to see what outrageous development and double-cross Visconti would reveal next.

We follow the Von Essenbecks, a wealthy and very screwed-up German family that made its fortune by manufacturing munitions and weapons of war, as they make an unholy alliance with the ascendant National…