If ever there was a movie that left a nasty taste in the mouth it's this puppy.
Set in pre-WW2 Germany, the movie would seem to be allegory for the moral corruption of Germany during Hitler's rise to power.
The characters are introduced when a wealthy industrialist, Konstantin von Essenbeck, calls his family together for a dinner party. But the family's internal conflicts and ambitions are paralleled with the emerging Nazi Party's internal conflicts and ambitions.
There is almost too much going on in the film and some of it is about as subtle as a whack over the head with a Stormtrooper's truncheon.
Of all the disturbed characters in the film, Helmet Berger's Martin Von Essenbeck is top of the class. His propensity for molesting children is eventually explained as a latent Oedipus complex. He eventually gets that out of his system when he hops into bed with mum played by Ingrid Thulin.
Before that moment of bonding, this film has one of the nastiest scenes you are likely to see in a mainstream movie when Martin molests the child of a poor family. I don't think a filmmaker today would attempt anything like that after all the revelations about child abuse by members of the clergy and other institutions over the intervening decades.
The film includes a couple of the major events in the early days of the Nazis: "Kristallnacht" and the "Night of the Long Knives". The attack by the SS anti-fun police on the Stormtrooper pyjama party at the lakeside resort is more than a touch over-the-top. The scenes of gay partying go on for way too long, and then the following massacre is about as convincing as when "Spats" and his gang are Tommy-gunned from the birthday cake in "Some Like it Hot".
An amazing looking cast though. Dirk Bogarde, Helmut Griem, Helmut Berger, Florinda Bolkan, a young Charlotte Rampling, and one of the most enigmatic stars ever, Ingrid Thulin.
"The Damned", with a typical sounding Maurice Jarre score, has scenes that go from fascinating and arresting to others that are tedious and overwrought, and to one that just shouldn't be there at all.
Set in pre-WW2 Germany, the movie would seem to be allegory for the moral corruption of Germany during Hitler's rise to power.
The characters are introduced when a wealthy industrialist, Konstantin von Essenbeck, calls his family together for a dinner party. But the family's internal conflicts and ambitions are paralleled with the emerging Nazi Party's internal conflicts and ambitions.
There is almost too much going on in the film and some of it is about as subtle as a whack over the head with a Stormtrooper's truncheon.
Of all the disturbed characters in the film, Helmet Berger's Martin Von Essenbeck is top of the class. His propensity for molesting children is eventually explained as a latent Oedipus complex. He eventually gets that out of his system when he hops into bed with mum played by Ingrid Thulin.
Before that moment of bonding, this film has one of the nastiest scenes you are likely to see in a mainstream movie when Martin molests the child of a poor family. I don't think a filmmaker today would attempt anything like that after all the revelations about child abuse by members of the clergy and other institutions over the intervening decades.
The film includes a couple of the major events in the early days of the Nazis: "Kristallnacht" and the "Night of the Long Knives". The attack by the SS anti-fun police on the Stormtrooper pyjama party at the lakeside resort is more than a touch over-the-top. The scenes of gay partying go on for way too long, and then the following massacre is about as convincing as when "Spats" and his gang are Tommy-gunned from the birthday cake in "Some Like it Hot".
An amazing looking cast though. Dirk Bogarde, Helmut Griem, Helmut Berger, Florinda Bolkan, a young Charlotte Rampling, and one of the most enigmatic stars ever, Ingrid Thulin.
"The Damned", with a typical sounding Maurice Jarre score, has scenes that go from fascinating and arresting to others that are tedious and overwrought, and to one that just shouldn't be there at all.