a world where anything is possible
by Douglas Messerli
Luchino Visconti,
Enrico Medioli, and Nicola Badalucco (screenplay), Luchino Visconti (director) La
caduta degli dei (Die
Verdammten) (The Damned) / 1969
It may be
tempting to read Luchino Visconti’s important 1969 film The Damned as an historical take on the German, Essen-based Krupp
family and their collaboration with the Nazi’s, and, to a certain extent, one
can track the fall of that family—from the historical events of the burning of
the Reichstag, through the rise of the German SA, The Night of the Long Knives
executed by the SS, and other nightmarish Third Reich events—but in the end,
these and other situations are presented from such an operatic perspective in
Visconti’s film that their veracity must be called into question. Visconti has
always been a master of melodrama, often working with large, operatic gestures
(his Senso, in fact begins with an
opera), and The Damned, with its
numerous early singspiels and cabaret performances (particularly the memorable
drag number of actor Helmut Berger [as Martin Essenbeck] impersonating Marlene
Dietrich) are often outrageously theatrical. Seen through the lens of realism,
in fact, The Damned might seem quite
laughable, but as slightly camp family drama set against the truly ludicrous
would of war time Germany, where, as both the Nazi SS cousin of the Essenbeck
and Sophie Essenbeck declare “anything can happen,” the work ultimately
succeeds in making us realize that, in the most terrifying way, “everything
goes.”
As the family of steel industrialist
Baron Joachim Von Essenbeck gathers to celebrate his birthday, the Reichstag is
set on fire, an event to which various members of the family react differently:
Herbert Thalmann, the firm’s vice president, a virulent anti-Nazi, sees it as a
ploy to destroy any of Hitler’s opponents, particularly those of the left.
Others, such as the Nazi Ashenbach (Helmut Griem), perceive it as a signal that
the left must be crushed. The Baron, although detesting Hitler, argues that in
order to save the firm he must make closer ties with the Nazis, passing the
company on to the control of the totally unscrupulous SA officer Konstantin.
Meanwhile Friedrich Bruckmann, the company foreman (Dirk Bogarde) has fallen in
love with Sophie Von Essenbeck (Ingrid Thulin), the widow of the Baron’s only
son, who died in World War I. In a pact with Sophie to himself gain control of
the company, he kills the Baron, blaming the murder on Herbert, who escapes the
Gestapo forces responding to the family’s calls.
In that very first scene we also encounter
Sophie’s beloved son, Martin, as he performs the Dietrich piece in drag, and
the serious cello playing Günter (Renaud Verley), Konstantin’s
university-educated son. All of them, except perhaps Herbert, are born killers,
each agreeing to manipulate and torture one another in order to gain power and
allow their personal perversions.
For Sophie, perversions include her
passion for Bruckmann and her oedipal love for Martin—and like her father,
desperately desiring power itself. Although we might suspect Martin as having a
gay relationship, in fact, his tawdry affair is with a kind of model (she
describes her job as posing), and, more horribly, he has pedophile obsessions
for the Thalmann’s young daughter and an even younger Jewish girl who lives in
the apartment next to his girlfriend. His relationship with the child ends in
her suicide by hanging.
Although Thalmann, perhaps the only truly
moral figure of the film, escapes, his wife Elizabeth and her two children are
left behind, as she tries to get permission to leave the country. Sophie
finally relents, allowing her to leave, after a dramatic aria-like speech which
demonstrates her delusional vision:
one day to find a Germany which was so dear to your heart. It’s finished,
that Germany, forever. There will be no other Germany but this one,
and you will not be able to escape it, for it will spread before you
know it all over Europe and everywhere!
Although Sophie
pretends to arrange for Elizabeth’s escape, the latter is stopped mid-voyage
and she and her children sent to Dachau concentration camp, where Elizabeth is
killed.

Of all the destroyers in this work, only
Bruckmann—a family outsider—has any conscience about his acts:
Somewhat like Pasolini’s horrific
meditation on Italian Fascism, Salo, or
the 120 Days of Sodom, Visconti’s film functions in terms of circles,
moving vertically closer and closer to the family’s final hell. After dismissing
Bruckmann as a weak Nazi supporter, Aschenbach makes a bargain with Martin to
give him control of the industrial giant. But when Martin confronts Sophie, he
cannot overcome her sexual domination of him, and in retaliation he rapes his
own his own mother, which results in her becoming psychologically unhinged,
remaining an almost catatonic being for the rest of her brief life.
Defeated by his wife’s death and his
daughter’s incarceration, Herbert Thalmann now returns home to turn himself
over the Gestapo in order save his two children. At the ruthless tableside,
over which Visconti’s camera has time and again panned across the faces of
these brutal beasts, Günther—previously the quiet and introspective
one—suddenly spits out his hatred of the whole bunch, a hate so overwhelming
that Aschenbach immediately takes him under his wing as an ally to destroy the
last remnants of the Von Essenbeck estate.
Now a member of the SS, Martin
sadistically gathers together a group of fellow deviants to celebrate Friedrich
Bruckmann’s marriage to his mother. Finally, becoming a Von Essenbeck,
Bruckmann with Sophie retires to their room where her son has handed them
poison so that they might commit suicide. The final image of the film is a
gruesome picture of the two, dead upon their wedding couch. Only the most
sexually twisted and hateful of the family members remain, beings so totally perverted
that they have lost all control. The State can take over the once proud
family-controlled plants.
Thalmann previously expressed to Günther
what has become obvious: the family is not simply a symbol of Germany, but is Germany itself:
It’s all over, Günther. It was everyone’s fault, even mine. It does
no good to raise one’s voice when it’s too late, not even to save
your soul. The fear of a proletariat revolution, which would’ve
thrown the entire country to the left…was too great, and now we
can’t defend it any longer! Nazism, Günther, is our creation. It
was born in our factories, nourished with our money!
Los Angeles,
September 22, 2013
*In
actuality, the attack of the SS and Gestapo upon SA brownshirts was a far more
complex issue, arising from the increasing power of Hitler’s early supporters,
basically street thugs and unemployed individuals who were willing to help him
to his rise. As Hitler became more and more ensconced in German political
systems, however, the SA supporters, challenging both the traditional German Reichswehr, the German military, and the
SS, the rising “Protection Squad,” on which Hitler had increasingly become
dependent for support. Along with the Gestapo, these forces increasingly pushed
Hitler to do something about the unruly and growing force, headed by the
homosexual and quite rebellious Ernst Röhm. As Hitler grew in power, more and
more of his conservative allies—including his Mussolini—railed against the
moral behavior of Röhm and his soldiers.
Finally, on the morning of June 30, 1934
Hitler and his associates flew to Munich the night after another Brownshirt
gathering in the streets. Employing SS soldiers and others, Hitler attacked
Hotel Bad Wiessee, where Röhm and numerous of his followers were spending the
night. There they found SA leader Edmund Heines in bed with an eighteen
year-old SA senior troop leader, shooting them both on the spot. Röhm was
arrested, and later killed. But the raids of the SA followers also allowed
Hitler and others to destroy a great many of their critics and others for whom
they no longer had any need. In short, “The Night of the Long Knives” was not
confined to a single event or even a single enemy, but included a large
slaughter of seemingly dispensable supporters and former critics.
An excellent, thorough review. This movie fascinates me to no end - the complex character interactions, the hypnotic spectacle, the excoriating depiction of Nazi Germany. My biggest complaint is that the last half hour feels like disappointing anticlimax after all that's come before. While I'd argue that The Leopard is a much better film artistically, The Damned is the one I come back to.
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