In his masterpiece, The Leopard (1963), director Luchino Visconti used Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel of the same name to explore the dissolution of Italy’s past via the collapse of one noble family. Starring Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon, The Leopard is a sumptuous and sweeping picture, a melancholy meditation on endings and the inevitable change that comes as a country pulls away from an antiquated form of governing and into something more modern.
Visconti would later turn a similar eye to the 1930s as the Nazi Party wrested away power, paving the way for Adolf Hitler to rule Germany. But while an air of resigned sadness hangs over The Leopard, Visconti is less sympathetic to his characters in The Damned (1969). Tracing the downfall of the von Essenbecks, a family of steel magnates now manufacturing and selling weapons to the Nazis, Visconti uses The Damned to document the profligacy and debauchery that set the stage for Hitler’s rise.
The film begins at the birthday celebration of family patriarch Joachim (Albrecht Schoenhals). Much of Joachim’s family is on-hand for the feast, which includes a multi-course dinner and even some live music courtesy of the younger von Essenebecks. The family is at odds though. Joachim hates Hitler, as does his son, Herbert (Umberto Orsini), who is a Communist. Not everyone agrees; Joachim’s boorish nephew, Konstantin (Reinhold Koldehoff) is a member of SA brownshirts and wants to take control of the steel company. But Joachim has split the company in his will with Konstantin getting the company but with grandson Martin (Helmut Berger), receiving enough stocks to control the direction of things.
We first see Martin, son of Sophie (Ingrid Thulin) and Joachim’s son who was killed during World War I, performing in drag as Marlene Dietrich during the party. There is something off about Martin and we soon hear him molesting one of Herbert’s young daughters during a game of hide and seek. Martin isn’t particularly interested in the company, but he is thrust into the intrigue upon the arrival of Friedrich Bruckmann (Dirk Bogarde), Sophie’s secret lover who has designs on capturing the steel company for himself.
This is a twisty plot with lots of characters and Visconti takes his time making all the relationships clear. As the party unfolds, we learn of a dastardly plan hatched by Friedrich and his friend, Wolf von Aschenbach (Helmut Griem), a duplicitous Nazi who will help expediate the family’s downfall. Setting the party on February 27, 1933 is auspicious since this is the date the German Reichstag burned down, the event Hitler used to consolidate power by convincing President Paul von Hindenburg to suspend many constitutional rights such as freedoms of speech and the press and the right to assemble. The night ends with Friedrich and Wolf murdering Joachim and pinning the killing on Herbert.
As the remaining von Essenbecks scramble to gain control of the steel company, Visconti focuses on Martin and his aberrant behavior. Other films have posited repressed homosexuality as a key ingredient in the rise of Nazism, but the openly gay Visconti instead presents us with Martin as the perfect Nazi, a pedophiliac mother’s boy who literally ends up fucking his own mother.
The key scene in The Damned is modeled on truth, the massacre known as the Night of Long Knives. In late June 1934, a group of SA brownshirts gathered in Bad Wiessee, sent by Hitler for a holiday. Shot before Visconti even had completed the shooting script for the film, the dreamlike sequence may feel separate from the rest of the picture, but its historical gravitas informs what is happening inside Manse von Essenbeck. The men arrive at the rustic town to swim naked, sing and drink. They all get wasted. Some dress in drag and dance. Then they pair off and stagger away, presumably to fuck. But then a cadre of SS troops arrive and slaughter the SA members, allowing Friedrich the chance to kill Konstantin with a gun made by von Essenbeck steel.
As Martin gains more power, he pushes aside his corrupt proclivities and takes his place in the Nazi Party. The film ends like it begins – at a party. But Friedrich and Sophie’s wedding is no celebration. The guests turn it into a bacchanal, but in contrast to the SA fantasia, this is an orgy condoned by the SS, one where bodies are going through the motions with no passion or feeling. Martin, egged on by Wolf, then commits an act that frees him both from Sophie and his own desires. Martin is finally stripped bare, the former pervert made clean. The perfect Nazi.
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