The Damned (Götterdämmerung) (Italian: La caduta degli dei, lit. 'The Fall of the Gods'; German: Die Verdammten) is a 1969 historical drama film directed by Luchino Visconti, from a screenplay he co-wrote with Nicola Badalucco and Enrico Medioli. It stars Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin, Helmut Berger, Helmut Griem, Umberto Orsini, Charlotte Rampling, Florinda Bolkan, Reinhard Kolldehoff and Albrecht Schönhals in his final film.
Set in 1930s Germany, the film centers on the Essenbecks, a wealthy industrialist family who have begun doing business with the Nazi Party, and whose amoral and unstable heir is embroiled in his family's machinations. The film's story and characters are loosely based on the German Krupp family of steel industrialists from Essen, who became prominent supporters of the Nazi regime beginning in 1931. The Damned is the first part of Visconti's thematic "German Trilogy", followed by Death in Venice (1971).
Principal photography of The Damned took place in locations throughout Italy, West Germany, and Austria. The film opened to widespread critical acclaim, but also faced controversy from ratings boards for its sexual content. In the United States, the film was given an X rating by the MPAA, which was lowered to a more marketable R after 12 minutes of offending footage were cut.
Visconti won the Nastro d'Argento for Best Director, and was nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar with co-writers Nicola Badalucco and Enrico Medioli. Helmut Berger received a Golden Globe nomination for Most Promising Newcomer. The film won the Golden Peacock (Best Film) at the 4th International Film Festival of India.
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Plot
In Germany in early 1933, the Essenbecks are a wealthy and powerful industrialist family who have, reluctantly, begun doing business with the newly elected Nazi government. On the night of the birthday of the family's conservative patriarch, Baron Joachim von Essenbeck, a member of the old German nobility who detests the upstart Adolf Hitler, the family's children have prepared performances. Joachim's grandnephew Günther plays a classical piece on his cello, while his grandson Martin performs a drag performance, which is interrupted by news that the Reichstag is burning. Assuming Hitler will use this incident to seize even greater control, Joachim announces at dinner that he is replacing Herbert Thallman, an outspoken anti-Nazi who is married to Joachim's niece Elizabeth, with his boorish and unscrupulous nephew Konstantin, who is an officer in the SA, as vice president of the family steelworks.
Martin's possessive mother, Sophie, has been in a relationship with Friedrich Bruckmann, an ambitious executive of the steelworks, for some time, but he has not proposed because he worries Joachim would not approve of him as the husband of the widow of Joachim's beloved son. Friedrich is friendly with Aschenbach, an Essenbeck relation who has attained a high position in the SS, and, acting on Aschenbach's suggestions that things would be better for him if the anti-Nazi Joachim were to die, Friedrich kills Joachim and frames Herbert for the crime by using his personal handgun. Herbert narrowly escapes abroad, but, in his haste, is forced to leave behind Elizabeth and their two daughters. Martin inherits the majority of shares in the steelworks, and Sophie manipulates him into placing Friedrich, rather than Konstantin, in charge.
Aschenbach convinces Friedrich and Martin to bar their company from selling weapons to the SA, in hopes of marginalizing the rival group and currying the favor of the army, whose might Hitler will need in order to conquer territories beyond the current German borders. Konstantin discovers that Martin has been sexually abusing his nieces and Lisa Keller, a young Jewish neighbor of Martin's girlfriend who commits suicide, and he uses this information to resume providing the SA with weapons and get Martin to call a meeting to place him in charge of the company. Sophie finds Martin hiding in the attic of the family castle and, mostly for Friedrich's sake, agrees to help free him from Konstantin's blackmail. She meets up with Aschenbach, who reveals that Hitler is planning to purge the SA, as he feels its work securing Nazi power in Germany is done, but its leader, Ernst Röhm, is unlikely to quietly let it take a back seat to the SS and army.
"The German Trilogy"
The Damned has been regarded as the first of Visconti's films described as "The German Trilogy", followed by Death in Venice (1971) and Ludwig (1973), and the character Aschenbach even shares the same name as the protagonist of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. Author Henry Bacon, in his book Visconti: Explorations of Beauty and Decay (1998), specifically categorizes these films together in a chapter titled "Visconti & Germany".
Visconti's earlier films had analyzed Italian society during the Risorgimento and post-WWII periods. Peter Bondanella's Italian Cinema (2002) depicts the trilogy as a move to take a broader view of European politics and culture. He says that, stylistically, "they emphasize lavish sets and costumes, sensuous lighting, painstakingly slow camerawork, and a penchant for imagery reflecting subjective states or symbolic values."
Production
The film was shot on location in West Germany and Austria, and at Cinecittà Studios in Rome. Locations included Düsseldorf, Essen, and Unterach am Attersee - the latter doubling for Bad Wiessee. The scenes of the Essenbeck steelworks were shot in Terni, Italy.
The Damned was the breakthrough film for Helmut Berger, who is given an "Introducing" credit, even though he had already appeared in Visconti's segment of the anthology film The Witches. At the time, Berger was in a romantic relationship with Visconti. Dirk Bogarde later expressed disappointment with Visconti for sacrificing his character's development to place a greater focus on Berger's Martin. In his memoirs, Bogarde specifically cites a long scene showing Friedrich becoming overwhelmed with guilt after murdering Joachim, which was filmed, but cut.
Composer Maurice Jarre was hired by the producers without the knowledge of Visconti, who originally wanted the film scored entirely with pre-existing classical music by Mahler and Wagner. Visconti reportedly was dissatisfied with the composer's efforts, which he compared disparagingly to Jarre's work on Doctor Zhivago, but was forced to use the music due to contractual obligations.
In Visconti's preferred, primarily English-language version of the film, most of the cast members provide their own voices, but Umberto Orsini is dubbed by an uncredited actor, due to his accent.
Nazi war criminal Karl Hass appeared in the film as an extra. Hass was a perpetrator of the Ardeatine massacre, but was not charged or convicted until 1998, allegedly due to his work as an American agent against the Soviet Union in the 1950s. It's unknown if the filmmakers were aware of Hass' identity when he appeared in the film, though some sources suggest he was employed as a technical advisor. Hass did appear as an extra in several other Italian films during the 1960s and '70s, including two about the Ardeatine massacre.
Reception
The Damned was released to worldwide acclaim. It was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 42nd Academy Awards, and was named one of the Top Foreign Films of 1969 by the National Board of Review. Among the international cast, Helmut Berger was singled out for his performance as Martin, a vicious sexual deviant who uses his amoral appetites to achieve his own twisted ends. The film was the tenth-most popular release at the French box office in 1970.
Retrospectively, the film has appeared on such critics' lists as The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and Halliwell's Top 1000: The Ultimate Movie Countdown. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 83% of 18 critics' reviews are positive.
The film's entry in the Lexikon des Internationalen Films praises its presentation of the connection between "moral decadence, sexual neurosis, aestheticist death wish, narcissist self-centeredness and political opportunism", but comments that this effect is weakened somewhat by the film's "decorative circuitousness and artificial stylisation".
Filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder called The Damned his favorite film. He said it is "perhaps the greatest film, the film that I think means as much to the history of film as Shakespeare to the history of theater".
Censorship and ratings
After the first screening of the film, 12 minutes were cut, including the scene where Lisa hangs herself after being molested. For the initial American release, much of the Bad Wiessee/Night of the Long Knives sequence was cut.
In 1969, the film was given an "X" rating by the MPAA due to a nude incest scene. Warner Bros. submitted the film for re-classification in 1979, and the rating was changed to "R". This uncut but re-rated version was released on DVD in 2004
The film was shown on CBS late night television on Monday, Feb. 28, 1972. It was heavily edited by 25 minutes, so much that one executive reportedly joked it should be retitled The Darned. Even with the cuts for television, affiliate stations in Baltimore and Washington D.C. refused to carry the broadcast. Technically, it was the first X-rated film to be shown on American network television.
Home media
The film was released on DVD by Warner Home Video in 2004.
A 2K restoration of the film by the Cineteca di Bologna and Institut Lumière was released on Blu-ray and DVD by The Criterion Collection on 28 September 2021. All of the previously censored footage was restored to the film for both of these home video releases.
