Note: Since The Damned has only been out on Blu-Ray for a few weeks, I will try and keep this as light on spoilers as I can.
Hello everyone, the Classic Film Kid is back with another review of a recent Blu-Ray release of a forgotten gem, in this case, 1969’s The Damned, an English-language Italian film directed by Luchino Visconti. The film depicts a family of wealthy German industrialists who begin doing business with the Nazi Party just as they start rising to power, leading to relationships and the family morals crumbling as the Nazi’s assert their dominance over the German people.
I was interested in watching this film when I got the Blu-Ray for it, as not only am I a massive watcher of film and TV (who would have guessed), but I am also fascinated by history, especially 20th century Germany, and I have been for a while now. It’s one of the courses I’ve been taking at college, and so I was interested to see what extra insight this film could offer me into Nazi Germany, and how they not only affected the lives of the poor and the minorities, but the rich in society too.
Considering this is quite an old film with a lot of information to find about it, I did a bit of research. Now I’m sure that those who are aficionados about films like this will know that this is the first film in Visconti’s German trilogy, followed by 1971’s Death In Venice and 1973’s Ludwig. After watching this film and the occasional clip or two of the others, they all share very similar attributes: big sets, slow pace, but a lot of imagery and camerawork that lingers and stays with you. This is true for me, as while I have problems with The Damned and things that didn’t sit right with me, I appreciated a lot of what Visconti was doing.
The first twenty minutes or so, are concentrated on the family in the mansion, was a fantastic setup. The family is celebrating the birthday of their patriarch, who opposes the Nazi Party and so naturally isn’t too happy when this birthday celebration is on the same night as the infamous Reichstag Fire, an event that propelled Hitler to pass an act that would let him control all of Parliament. There’s some other stuff that happens after that, but as I said, I do want to keep this light on spoilers, and what happens after is one of the most important moments in the film, so I’ll leave it there.
I think the film’s initial idea of having a family adapting to this changing political landscape was a clever one. We’ve seen countless documentaries and biopics over the years about the rise of the Nazi Party, but this film focuses on how the people of Germany reacted, and how it altered their lives for better or, for the most part, worse. The family is politically divided with the old generation despising the new administration and the younger generations admiring the Nazi’s to a point where they’re striking business deals with them. Although you’ve only known the family for a short time, you feel locked into their situation and have a sense of all of them as characters.
It’s genius in the way that we finally see the way that the family trying to adapt to the Nazi regime has backfired – they’re now depressed, morally corrupt and have seen everything that they worked so hard for shatter.
It was after this opening that I lost my way with The Damned, as all of the Nazi interaction and historical contexts got pushed to the side, and it essentially became a domestic drama. Now this domestic drama wasn’t bad by any means, but it felt sluggish – I’d be lying if I said my attention didn’t wane a bit during some of the slower moments. Plot points generally involved financial issues, one character is quite androgynous and we see him struggling with his desires, but overall I don’t think there was quite enough to keep me invested in this part of the film – as I said in the beginning, I’m watching this as someone invested in Nazi German history, so to see it as just a backdrop for a good stretch was a little disheartening.
That said, there were a few standout moments in this portion of the film that do help elevate it, along with some genuinely gorgeous camerawork. The film’s also really good in not just explicitly telling you what’s happening either – there’s a lot of visual storytelling and long shots that are dialogue free that are there to help you process things that you’ve just seen. It was quite jarring, though, to have sections that are quite flat and slow juxtaposed five minutes later with scenes that are really captivating as you slowly see the family unravel. They can also be interpreted as being calm before the storm because good God the last half hour of this movie is bleak, but more on that later.
The next act of the film should put someone like me at ease, as not only do we shift back to focusing more on the Nazis, but a character from earlier on in the film returns and we get to see the Night Of The Long Knives. Now, you’d think this bit would be right up my street, and I did enjoy it – there was a great build of both the setting and the tension and the actual purge itself was suitably hard to watch – but even then this takes up a full twenty-minute stretch of the film, with having just the one character from the family present. Therefore, it can’t help but feel a bit out of place and obligatory, like the filmmakers saying “This is one of the key events of the Nazis coming to power, so we need to do this whether we want to or not.” However, it’s the culmination of this film where everything comes to fruition that you realise just where the film has been heading for the last two hours – and it’s one of the darkest and most hopeless endings to a film I’ve ever seen.
It’s genius in the way that we finally see the way that the family trying to adapt to the Nazi regime has backfired – they’re now depressed, morally corrupt and have seen everything that they worked so hard for shatter. I watched this with my dad and there was a few moments in this home stretch of the film where both of us audibly gasped – seeing everything that happens almost feels like you’re getting the wind knocked out of you, but in a good way because you’re having a full emotional reaction to what you’re seeing. It’s messed up, difficult to watch and I wouldn’t necessarily want to watch it again at least not for a while, but I’m glad I have as I think the ending had to be as dark and as brutal for it was for the journey that the characters and the viewer have been on to feel complete.
The Damned is not a flawless film by any means, but it is a very interesting and thought-provoking watch. For every slow scene or boring plot point, other moments grab you and make you extremely invested in what’s going on. As I said earlier, certain aspects of this film, even if it’s a shot or a small dialogue exchange, are lingering with me. I’d be interested in watching this film a few years down the road and seeing how it hits then.
I’ll give Luchino Visconti’s The Damned a 7/10.
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