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, including depictions of homosexuality, pedophilia, rape, and incest. 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.
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,[b] and, acting on Aschenbach's suggestions that things would be better for him if the anti-Nazi Joachim were to die, Friederich 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 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.
Many high-ranking members of the SA, including Konstantin, gather at a hotel in Bad Wiessee. They have a drunken celebration, and the evening ends with the officers engaging in gay sex with one another. At dawn, the hotel is stormed by SS troops, who slaughter the SA members. Konstantin is personally executed by Friedrich, whom Aschenbach brought along to make him do his own dirty work.
Friedrich is now in control of the steelworks, and Sophie even gets Aschenbach to arrange a decree that gives him her father-in-law's last name and royal title of Baron so they will be able to marry as equals. He is affected by all of his newfound power, and Aschenbach begins to feel that he is not displaying the appropriate subservience to National Socialism, so Aschenbach offers to help Martin destroy Sophie and Friedrich. Martin accepts, as he is bitter that his mother has used him to benefit Friedrich and herself.
During a family dinner, Friedrich announces that Aschenbach, Günther, and Martin must submit themselves to his will and whims, since he is now the head of the family. Herbert surprises everyone when he enters and reveals that, although Sophie had supposedly made arrangements for Elizabeth and her daughters to join Herbert in exile, they were really arrested and sent to Dachau, where Elizabeth died. Now a broken man, Herbert has returned to confess to murdering Joachim, in exchange for the release of his daughters. Günther, upset by this news, is enraged when Martin reveals that Friedrich killed Konstantin, and Aschenbach is able to use his hate to radicalize him to the Nazi cause.
Martin sexually assaults his mother, and she falls into a catatonic state. Without her help to strategize against Aschenbach and Martin, Friedrich is lost. Martin, who is now part of the SS, gets Friedrich and Sophie to go through the motions of getting married before ordering them to take cyanide capsules, which they willingly consume, killing them both. He inherits control of the steelworks, and the Essenbeck empire, therefore, comes under Nazi control.
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."[6]
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 Gustav Mahler and Richard 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 thick Italian accent.
Censorship and ratings
Reinhard Kolldehoff in the controversial "Night of the Long Knives" sequence, which was cut from the US release version.
After the first screening of the film, 12 minutes were cut, including the scene where Lisa hangs herself after being molested.[4] 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.[4] Warner Bros. submitted the film for re-classification before releasing it on DVD in 2004, and the rating was changed to "R".
The film was shown on CBS television late at night in the early 1970s. It had to be so heavily edited that one executive reportedly joked it should be retitled The Darned, but, technically, it was the first X-rated film to be shown on American network television.
Reception
The Damned was released to worldwide acclaim.[7] 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.[8]
Retrospectively, the film has appeared on such critics' lists as The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made[9] and Halliwell's Top 1000: The Ultimate Movie Countdown.[10]
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".[11]
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".[12]
^The Italian title La caduta degli dei is the conventional translation of the term Götterdämmerung (with its Wagnerian association), but for the German version, the title Die Verdammten ("The Damned") was chosen. All versions, however, use Götterdämmerung as a subtitle.
^Aschenbach's SS rank is anachronistic, as the "Hauptsturmführer" rank did not exist until late 1934—after the film's events—when it replaced the equivalent rank of Sturmhauptfuhrer.
References
^"The Damned (X)". British Board of Film Classification. 19 September 1969. Retrieved 3 June 2013.
