Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Cristal The movie really just wants to entertain people.

jonathanruano "The Damned" is a masterfully horrific film about the decline of a family of wealthy steel magnates – the Essenbecks – in Nazi Germany. Director Luchino Visconti's main interest in making this film is in showing how evil corrupts Friedrich (Dirk Bogarde), Martin Essenbeck (Helmut Berger), and his mother (Ingrid Thulin). "The Damned" features a number of horrors, including brutal murders, a molested child driven to suicide, and a brutal rape. There is almost a temptation to criticize these scenes for displaying unmotivated violence. Yet Visconti does have a reason for presenting "The Damned" in this way. He wants to depict Nazism as decadent, narcissistic, and erotic. The ideas of Wilhelm Reich are also at play here. Martin is a repressed homosexual transformed into a pliant drug addict by his mother. The film's message appears to be that Martin's repression of his homosexuality leads him to embrace Nazism and become an SS officer. Yet Nazism does not contain Martin's uncontrolled sexual impulses, but merely perverts them. Martin becomes a sadistic brute who sexually molests a young girl. He seeks emotional and even sexual comfort in the bosom of the state, which he subconsciously equates with his mother. This strange association explains why Martin, in true Reichian fashion, brutally rapes his mother.Martin is not the only character to fall from grace. Friedrich's (Dirk Bogarde) ambition to become the president of the Essenbeck steel works and marry into the Essenbeck family leads him to form an unholy alliance with a number of unscrupulous Nazis, including Aschenbach (Herbert Griem) whose idea of socializing is to pontificate on the virtues of the Nazi ideology. This Faustian pact with the Nazis turns out to be a big mistake, opening the door for the Nazification of the steel company and the moral corruption of key members of the Essenbeck family. Then there is the mother (Ingrid Thulin) who feeds Martin's addiction to drugs and plans to marry Friedrich. Visconti's message here seems to be that Friedrich and the mother are not only unpleasant, but that their continued descent into evil results in their own destruction. Friedrich is already showing regret about his collusion with the Nazis in a very awkward love scene with the mother, but by then it is too late.Like all of his films, Visconti shows himself to be a master of cinematography. The camera moves skillfully along with the characters. The images are deliberately grim, suggesting evil and darkness at every corner and sometimes even a manic insanity. "The Damned" is not a masterpiece, but it is engrossing.

Cristian The movies have used as central topic the second world war, because it had all lot of things that tell, and, as a friend of mine said one time, it can be applied to the worldwide present. "La Caduta degli dei", or the famous English title "The Damned", join this group of movies (Others that belongs to this long list can be "Pink Floyd: The Wall", "Das Boot", "Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma", Roman Polanki's "The Pianist", "The Downfall", "Cabaret", "The Bridge on the river Kwai", "The Longest Day" and of course "Shindler's List"). "La Caduta degli dei" talk about the Von Essenbecks, a family where just one can have all the power. A family that going to fall in the total decadence and selfish. A "damned" family. The factor that produces all this power is a factory of metals. The principal own of this factor is the old Joachim, who begins the indecision of uniting to the Nazi regime. Since here begin a fight of hypocrisy for power until find the total decadence.Since the presentation of that selfish boy in clothes of women (Remembers me a lot of Bob Fosse's "Cabaret" where talk about of the Nazi Germany and it counts with Helmut Griem too) to the depressive wedding, "La Caduta degli dei" is a decadent story of not more than selfishness. Althoug that have some technical errors, it intention is clear and is told in a perfect depressive way. Luchino Visconti's "La Caduta degli dei" is definitely a good movie, with outstanding performances of Ingrid Thulin (As that interested and horrible mother) , Helmut Berger, Dirk Bogarde, Helmut Griem, Renaud Verley, Umberto Orsini and Charlotte Rampling (My God, is the first that i see her... she is beautiful, i think that Anouk Aimée was the woman that heads my list, but this one win her... what a woman!!!)."La Caduta degli dei" is a perfect movie of decadence and selfishness (I think that i made that thing of repetition, repetition, repetition... but its necessary) with and outstanding direction (I love that notable camera approaches, are magnificent and at the same time, give to the movie that saddest touch) and unforgettable performances. Is an undeniably important movie in the history of movies.*Sorry for the mistakes... well, if there any

lionelduffy Visconti's epic allegory of a wealthy murdered German patriarch, his family and their uneasy relationship with the Third Reich is wonderfully well-intentioned, magnificently overblown and almost a masterpiece. Where Kurasawa adapts Shakespearean themes and transposes their themes as far-reaching and relevant to different worlds, Visconti takes elements of Macbeth and Hamlet bludgeoning them into his tale of a dynasty seemingly aware of drastically uncertain times and powerless to do anything but react in outlandishly vicious and self-protective defence. The storyline embracing full-blown homosexual orgy, incest, transvestism, and paedophelia as portrayal of Nazi depravity is never subtle but always magnetic. A piece so verbose is of course massively flawed. The dialogue, although delivered in English is at times illegible and the discrepancy between actors enjoying themselves (a resurgent Ingrid Thulin, an ecstatically hammy Dietrich-impersonating Helmut Berger) and actors sweating and morose in their discomfort (a visibly hard-working Dirk Bogarte) is noticeable. Visconti's zoom lenght shots to portray (very obvious) evil have long been rendered obsolete by television and simply add to the general sense of chaos.In truth however it remarkably adds to the joyous uncertainty of events and as the movie sinks almost overwhelmed to its conclusion, it ultimately survives for its hypnotic splendour.

Armand I saw this movie like a tale about the power of helplessness. Like a corruption's foretaste. Luchino Visconti , in all his films, is only a witness. He describes, looks and confirms. His nostalgic search is form to define his interior world. "Fall of gods" is the description of crisis. A slice of hypocrisy and strange fight for preserve any illusion. The instincts dance and the colors of last ash. To have, to survive, to can. The Nazi era is a pretext. Like Pasolini, Visconti is interested to define the real filling. To present not a wrong world's faces but his last essence. The power is only the skin of fear. The words are feathers of a deep lie. A movie about a huge low spirits and about the impossibility of revenge. A play with a single character: mildness of death.