MartinHafer "The Damned" is pretty much what I expected from a Luchino Visconti epic from the 1960s...it's very long, very slow and very mannered. However, unlike some of his other tediously long films ("The Leopard" and "Death in Venice", it is more watchable...possibly because it's so perverse.The film is about a rich industrialist family in Nazi Germany during the early years (1933 or so onward towards WWII). At the beginning, they seem relatively normal though over the course of the film, these conniving and avaricious folks sell their souls to the Nazi regime in order to maintain power and financial success. In the process, some get wrapped up in the SA (and are eventually destroyed), rape, incest (multiple times), cross-dressing and more...until by the end of the film most of them are dead and the remaining family member is a soul-less ghoul of a man.The story is a decent overview of the German industrialists in general. They were an evil lot who profited tremendously from the build up to the war. Plus, unlike most WWII films, you really see nothing of the country except life for this family. So, the persecution of Jews, Hitler's seizing power and much more are only mentioned in the film as opposed to being directly dealt with in the story. This was NOT a bad thing and makes the film very unique. What also is unique is how incredibly perverse everyone is. There is a lot of nudity...some of which is quite incestuous and kinky. So, it's clearly NOT a film to show the kids or your mother or Reverend Jenkins!Another important thing I must mention is the slowness of the film. It is NOT a movie the average person would enjoy and that is a trademark of many of Visconti's later films. This isn't so much a criticism but an observation. I much prefer his earlier work (such as "Rocco and His Brothers") but many seem to like his slow epics. To each his own....but like his other films, "The Damned" might have been better with a bit of editing and tightening up of the story.

cynthiahost Because of the incest and child molestation and violence it was given an x rating.Then it became the first X rated movie to premiere on t.v in the c.b.s. late show movie on Thursday back in 1973.the next day it drew protest and offense against it being broad cast on public commercial t.v.The movie had no real sex in it.It really p.g.I under stand the story now.A family all owns a steel mill under the third Reich.They are all trying to kill each other so that the other can take control.This is like Dynasty and Falcon crest.Yes Zarah Leander voice make an appearance in the film.I'm wondering if they paid her for it.I don't know if she would have want to remember the bad old days.But it was a sixties modern song ,not in sync with the thirties.It's Gross Pa.Pa's birthday.The head of the steel industry, played by Albrecht Schoenhals, who was originally a doctor and later became a top male lead of German and Austrian films of the thirties and forties,who was older already.One of his grand sons Martin ,played by helmet Burger is doing a Marlene Dietrich drag act, give you the impression that he is gay ! Wrong!He an effeminate heterosexual male who is a pedophile and is emotionally molest by his mother ,played by Ingrid Thulin.One of the magnates sons Baron Konstatin , played by Reinhard Kolldehoff, who is rough macho and mean and wants his son Gunther,played by Renaud Verley , to quit school and work at the steel mill.It turn out that he's the closet queen, the baron .It seems that Luciano was suggesting that because of Roamer , most of the male members of the Nazi party was gay.Well some one kills grandpa so that the relative can take over his job.They accuse a cousin ,Herbert ,played by UmBerto Orsini, so he takes off.The baron goes of to his gay camp on the lake , oh really!,Where he and his throw buddies are surprised attack orchestrated by another cousin Aschnebach,who is member of the S.a., with the aid of dirk, to eliminate another family member taking over the steel company.Martin little girl friend has gotten syphilis from him and she ends up killing her self.Ashnebach black male Martin to give up the stock in the company,but, his Mother played by Ingrid Thulin stops that as she actually has control rove the steel company , she persuade Aschneback ,played by Helmret Griem,who was also chosen to show up in another same type of movie in 1972 Cabaret,almost in the same role Well it is finally revealed who killed Gross Papa.It was martin ,he put Gunther up to it.Now more macho Martin want the job. He ends up raping his mother for revenge He end up joining the guard and pushing his parents to a Nazi wedding,that they end up kill themselves.Imagine if they did a night time weakly t,v show based on this movie," Meet the Essenbecks.Of course they have to change it a bit.It would of been like Hogans Heroes dramatic style.Great Entertainment. 01/04/13

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

Rodrigo Amaro Exploring the roots of the Nazi-Fascism rise in Germany of 1930's, Luchino Visconti and his "La Caduta Degli Dei" ("The Damned"), the first of the German trilogy ("Ludwig" and "Death in Venice" completing it) , is an impressive and carefully constructed epic about an aristocrat family's destruction, shattered with perversions, with a repulsive hunger for power in a society that changed its values like someone who changes his clothes.The von Essenbeck family story starts in 1933, during the Reichstag fire which happened on the same day as the birthday of Essenbeck's patriarch Josef (Albrecht Schoenhals), owner of a powerful weapon industry. After some deliberation and after this new happening in the country Josef decides to step away from his duties as president of the company, passing it to one of his relatives, Konstantin (René Koldehoff). From this point on all we're going to see a battle for power that slowly destroys each member of the Essenebck family. Murder, betrayal, fight for a higher status in this new Germany and other things will be decisive to unscrupulous people like Martin (Helmut Berger, great actor), one of the troubled and young members of this aristocratic family, and the one who'll be decisive in the way things move in the country and with his mother (Ingrid Thulin) and her husband Frederick Bruckmann (Dirk Bogarde), who are also trying to make their way in the family business, helped by Aschenbach (Helmut Griem), who carefully builds the web of deceptions in this game, joining one side at one time, then the other in a more appropriate time, depending of the circumstances.This year, it appeared in my hands a book of the script from this film plus an interview with the creators of it where they justify the film and the things they wanted to evocate with it by dealing with the seeds of Nazism and the way this was spread on a fragile Germany. What I saw in there was amazing, the thoughtful interviews and the greatly written script (drastically reduced in the filmed version). But what I've seen in the completed cinematic form was a little bit confusing, with few unexplained things (the presentation of the characters weren't so good just like the one of the written work, just an example) but a majestous work of art and history. Its grandiosity was beyond anything I've seen in a while, here's a spectacular tragedy of limitless dimensions that even if part of it is not real just looks and sounds a lot real to many of us. It's an accomplished and tragic epic full of blood, perversions, twisted personalities, insanity, greed, lust and other torments of the body and soul.For all I've seen and all the relevant things it had to show and say, I consider "La Caduta Degli Dei" a very good film on the pre WWII subject with outstanding acting by the cast, impressive art direction and impeccable costumes. A story to be seen multiple times to be fully comprehended and absorbed. 9/10