The Damned, written by Nicola
Badalucco, Enrico Medioli, Luchino Visconti and directed by the latter
The Damned is an
acclaimed film, nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Story and
Screenplay Based on Material Not Previously Published or Produced, a golden
Globe and it won various important prizes.
This motion picture is included
on The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made list:
The director is the genius Luchino Visconti,
the author of such films, masterpieces as:
Death in Venice, The Innocent, the Leopard, La Terra Trema, Ossessione,
Rocco and his Brothers
Like the other motion pictures produced
by Luchino Visconti, The Damned has beautiful, lavish scenes, where the
settings are mesmerizing, even if the subject is tragic and the protagonists
are mostly despicable Nazis and their sympathizers.
Audiences witness the rise and fall
of a rich, old family- Von Essenback- that is now faced with destitution and
eventually elimination.
It could be argued whether the major
role in all this rests with the ascension of the fascists, which is presented
in the feature, or the failures, shortcomings, flaws, atrocious inclinations of
members of the family.
There is a psychology study, called
The Milgram Experiment on Obedience to Authority which researched the response
that people have when they are asked by an authoritative figure to perform
abominable acts, such as applying electrical shocks to participants in the
study, up to and beyond the point where severe pain is inflicted and death can
result- even past the 250 volt threshold.
Robert Cialdini, the magnificent
professor and author of the quintessential Influence: The Psychology of
Persuasion, has identified six important principles, one of which is respect
for authority, that leads people to respect the drivers of luxurious car models
more than the rest, buy products endorsed by “authority” figures, even when
these are just actors, with no expertise in the field they promote.
This principle explains in- perhaps
very large part- the reason why the Germans, Italians and others have marched
along with the Third Reich and other respective abusive, totalitarian regimes
and did not question what the authorities demanded of them and ultimately the
many horrors committed.
Baron Joachim Von Essenbeck
organizes a special dinner and he has a speech in which he emphasizes the
history of their big company, the fact that they kept their pride in the most
difficult moments of the past, but now, given the situation he has to announce
some decisions.
The patriarch of the family is sure
that he needs at the helm of the firm, Konstantin Von Essenbeck, also a baron,
who has good relations with the new leaders, those who will gain the power and
will influence the fate of the industry, keeping it flourishing or sending it
to the ground.
What follows is a clash between
different personalities and more important, ideologies, exposing the difference
between humanity, eternal values like kindness, temperance, modesty,
forgiveness, fairness, citizenship, self-regulation, bravery, perspective and
the fascist modus operandi, their mass killings, racism and oppression of
minorities, other races and finally their inhumanity.
As one man has to run and leave the
country, others decide to collaborate, only to be eliminated in turn by the infighting
between various, opposing factions in the army and the rising Nazi units.
There are various excesses, from the
calamitous ones committed by the rising clique around the lunatic Adolf Hitler,
whose adepts kill children, old people, men and women only because they belong
to a race that is actually superior to the self-promoted Arian group.
In one scene, there is debauchery
and excessive drinking at a party, where participants misbehave, but the punishment
they get for that is mass killing, with new units of what would be the SS,
Gestapo and other infamous factions of the Hitler regime, machine-gunning all
the men at the party- more than one hundred of them.
Dirk Bogarde- an outstanding,
magnificent actor- plays Friedrich Bruckmann, husband of Baroness Sophie Von
Essenbeck, and involved in the machinations and the dispute over the leadership
of the company, which is also desired by Konstantin Von Essenback, who is part
of one of the army factions.
Charlotte Rampling- who is such a
confirmed, well established cinema star and classic- has one of the early roles
of her career as Elisabeth Thallman, wife of the departed man, who has to come
back to try and save his children from the death trap of the camp at Dachau,
where the fascists had sent them.
The Oedipus Complex is present here
as well, Sophie Von Essenbeck is faced by her son, who is torn apart,
psychologically and physically traumatized by the ordeal that Germany and their
family is going through, and apparently she is made to have sex with him, in
what is anyway a provoking, challenging scene.
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