DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS TURKEY
Added 3/2/2009
I FOUND THIS FILM TO BE ONE LONG BORE. THE STORYLINE, SUCH AS IT WAS, WAS DISJOINTED AND LOOSELY KNIT TOGETHER IN A FRAGILE AND OFTEN CONFUSING NARRATIVE THAT MADE ME FEEL THE ACTORS THEMSELVES WERE TRYING TO FIND THEIR WAY THROUGH A HEAVY FOG, BUT SEEMINGLY NEVER REALLY ABLE TO GET FROM ONE SCENE TO THE NEXT WITHOUT FURTHER CONFUSING THE PLOT.
THIS FILM TRIES DESPERATELY TO DEVELOP INTO AN ENGAGING AND INTERESTING STORY BUT NEVER HITS THE MARK, FALLING FLAT EVERY TIME AS EACH SCENE CLUMSILY TEETERS ALONG FROM MOMENT TO MOMENT. I FOUND MYSELF EITHER FALLING ASLEEP AS I VIEWED IT OR JUST GETTING FRUSTRATED BY THE FACT THAT THE FILM NEVER REALLY WENT ANYWHERE.
THE DAMNED REMINDED ME OF ONE OF THOSE STAR TREK TV EPISODES WHERE THE CREW OF THE ENTERPRISE WOULD SOMETIMES ENCOUNTER AN ALIEN CIVILIZATION WHO, DESPITE THE PASSAGE OF MANY CENTURIES, NEVER ADVANCE THEMSELVES OR MAKE ANY KIND OF PROGRESS IN ANY AREA OF LIFE, A STAGNANT WORLD, SO TO SPEAK.
THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT OF THE DAMNED, IT WAS A VERY FRUSTRATING AND STAGNANT PLOT. THIS WAS THE FAULT OF THE SCREENWRITER(S) AND, MOST OF ALL, THE DIRECTOR, WHO DEFINATELY DROPPED THE BALL THIS TIME OUT, IN MY OPINION. DIDN'T HE LOOK AT THE RUSHES ON A DAILY BASIS TO SEE WHERE HE WAS HEADED? HIS FILM ENDED UP BEING LIKE A BOAT WITHOUT A RUDDER, UNABLE TO STEER ITSLEF ALONG THE RIGHT PATH, PLOT-WISE. SORRY. I WOULD HAVE GIVEN THIS ZERO STARS IF AMAZON'S RATING SYSTEM WOULD ALLOW IT.
1 out of 4 people found this helpful.
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Gotterdamerung....
Added 12/4/2008
This is one of Visconti's best films, a lurid, complex rumination on family, aristocracy, capitalism, and Nazism. It's probably his heaviest film, filled with sturm und drang. It's not a particularly enjoyable film. Most, if not all, the main characters are greedy, selfish, pervetted, and neurotic, and despite the Nazi takeover of the country, few of them seem too concerned about it, and most of them are jockeying for the Nazi's favour. This film also has one of Visconti's most notorious/famous sequences, the depiction of the Knight of the Long Knives, when the two rival security forces in the Nazis, the SA and the SS, "went" to battle. The SS killed off the SA after a night of debauchery. The sequence goes on for quite some time, and ends in a bloodbath. Although it's not as graphic as today's films, it's still quite powerful and shocking.
All of the performances here are good, especially Dirk Bogarde, Charlotte Rampling, Ingrid Thulin, and Helmut Berger. The film's dialogue is a little clunky at times (it was shot in English, which wasn't Visconti's first language, even though he spoke it rather well), but overall this is a must view film for anyone who loves Visconti. The "Night of the Long Knives" sequence is not in English, but German, so you have to put the English subtitles on in order to follow the dialogue (unless you speak German). It's nice to see the film in an excellent transfer for once. The VHS copies were pretty muddy, screwing up Visconti's excellent mise-en-scene. There isn't much in the way of extras on this DVD other than a short documentary about Visconti shot around the time that the film was made. Visconti is very engaging and fascinating. This film is one of his most famous, one of his more operatic (invoking Wagner), and one of his most controversial and complex. It's not an easy view, but an essential one.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Ambition, greed. double crossing, betrayal and evident thirst of power!
Added 9/4/2008
This sublime masterwork of Visconti explores with careful detail the multiple insights about the fall of a steel empire since Reichstag affair in 1933 and the fatidic "Night of the broken crystals" in 1934.
The fall of the Gods narrates the decay of an aristocratic German family (The Eschenbek) since the Nazism's raise begin. In the middle of this political confusion, there are encountered positions among the members of the family.
So, slow but progressively, the process of deconstruction will undermine the moral basis of this family, in which the unsaid discrepancies will devastatingly emerge until the final solution. One to one of these members is suppressed with leonine ability by a Nazi officer, close friend of the family who induces and makes an astute plan through double crossing, flattering here and there according his own convenience.
Nominated to the Academy Awards as Best Script in 1969, this is one of the most frightening and chilling movies ever made around this spiky issue. It's useless to remark the astonishing illumination and touch of class, distinction and refinement inside this mansion that would seem to run parallel with the moral degradation and the oppressively unbearable atmosphere.
Magisterial script, superb cast, careful customs and brutal realism make of this film one of the most emblematic and monumental achievements of this peerless director.
Don't miss this jewel of the cinema. Running time. 150 min.
1 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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A celluloid monstrosity
Added 8/23/2008
Luchino Visconti's "The Damned" is probably one of worst big budget films of the twentieth century, and certainly one of the most overrated. The script is horrible, the dialogue wooden and canned. With one exception--Helmut Griem, who also happened to be Visconti's real life lover--the acting is awful, with no obvious effort on the players' parts to give depth to their characters. Dirk Bogarde's Friedrich is pure weakling, Ingrid Thulin's Sophie pure conniver (by the way, it breaks my heart that Thulin, who put in so many breathtaking performances in Bergman films, got mixed up in this horrible mess), Rene Koldehoff's Konstantine pure boor. Charlotte Rampling, who's one of our finest actors today, is a novice in this film who hasn't yet mastered her art. Finally, the directing and editing vie with one another for which can be the most horrendous. The SA purge scene drags on and on and on; camera angles obscure or cut faces in two; the post-wedding dance sequence towards the film's end is sleep-inducing. Film students could use "The Damned" as a textbook on how not to make a film.
In addition to its cinematic disasters, the film is so heavy-handed in getting across the wickedness of National Socialism that it defeats its own purpose. As Hannah Arendt pointed out, there was a certain banality to Nazism, an everyday evil that penetrated all aspects of life without necessarily displaying itself as monstrous. Visconti's insistence on parading every conceivable vice across the screen to allegorize Nazism's darkness is not only cartoonish. It utterly fails to express just how damnable--because just business as usual--the Nazi regime actually was.
I've watched this film at least five times over the past thirty years, really wanting to give it a chance to grow on me. But I have to say that I disliked it more each time I viewed it. This will be my last time.
4 out of 7 people found this helpful.
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"Not Subtle"
Added 6/4/2008
Walking home with the friend with whom I first saw this film in the theater, in 1983, I went on and on about how much I enjoyed it. My friend looked at me, said he didn't like it. "It wasn't subtle," he said. But subtelty is not available when it comes to showing Nazism as an evil fungus clinging to the walls of and eventually permeating and destroying an already decadent family. Having some knowledge of the Krupp family history is useful, but the film is just as enjoyable without it. Charlotte Rampling is absolutely gorgeous in the picture.
1 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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