1098 The Damned

[EddieLarkin]

In my discussion with EddieLarkin in the A Hard Day's Night thread was speculating that maybe the DOP was old enough to have been trained to frame the image for academy ratio, and that maybe in some shots but not in others, he did it out of habit or he was simply forgetting that he should be aiming for the wide format. Why is this completely out of the question? If it is indeed true, then I don't think that you could have only ONE artistically legimate version of each movie made in the era when cinemas shifted from academy to wide, simply because some of the film would look as intended in one format while other parts would look as intended in the other format. On the other hand, if legitimate means "signed off by the director or the DOP" then that poses another dilemma, especially when you look at all the Ritrovata restorations which have been approved by directors.

A film made in 1964 is over a decade past the "era when cinemas shifted from academy to wide".

Also, it would presumably be the camera operator's job moreso than the DOP's to ensure footage is being captured in the determined AR (with the AR being marked for him in the viewer). So I'd say yes it would indeed be pretty out of the question for someone to fail so badly at their job in this way. And according to imdb, this particualar camera operator first became one in the widescreen era, so by your logic he should have had no trouble framing for 1.75:1.

[trobrianders]

This notion of one artistic vision perfectly realised in one version of a film is a bit silly I think. I like things the way they are, sort of haphazard, with different forces and circumstances, artistic and commercial, coming into play and determining one outcome or another when the film was originally put together and later when it's released for home video presentation.

The exercise of trying to reproduce more faithfully the movies' theatrical look is just that; an exercise, as dry and academic as it sounds. But worthwhile if one is minded to do it. I'll always appreciate an effort.

If I have a preference for a fuller frame image at the expense of unused screen space, that's just me, and I'm grateful when films like On The Waterfront, Johnny Guitar, Touch of Evil or Shane are released in fuller frame versions. I'm a picture editor and can compensate for some dead space when visualising the composition that's there within the frame. I can't do that if parts of that potential composition aren't there to begin with. Besides which, tops of heads missing are obvious and look clumsy to anyone watching.

If you're still doubting me please actually try watching any of the films I've mentioned in both versions and tell me which you honestly prefer. I have a feeling you might say the fuller frame version even if you weren't expecting that.

[Orlac]

Yeah...no.

[Mr Sausage]

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[Mr Sausage]

You get the feeling Visconti wanted this to be his Buddenbrooks, while at the same time wanting to make something outrageous and decadent for the new era of permissiveness in cinema. The two aims culminate in a serious film that shouldn't be taken seriously. A family saga, and therefore a national saga, in which no one resembles a real human being. A portrait of important times and historical change that's also a soap opera. In theory, this camp sensibility ought to be fun, but the movie is too stodgy and overlong to be sustained on camp alone.

It has a sadly conventional and conservative attitude at times, including making an explicit association between homosexuality and paedophilia in the figure of Martin (odd considering Visconti's own homosexuality). But mostly the film takes an idea the nazis were fond of, that noble family lines with their traditions and values were increasingly degenerating into sickness, decadence, and dissolution, and applies that to the nazis themselves (eg. making all the SA members gay). This kind of cheap point scoring against nazis is always welcome. But where it grates is how it recapitulates the idea that modernity was degenerative and then implies modernity somehow culminated in nazism, tho' the nazis were opposed to modernity and used words like degenerate to libel it. I found a similar discomfort with Visconti's treatment of modernity in Death in Venice, a movie that also seemed to show the old world degenerating into the modern.

I think The Damned stiff and uncomfortable just like Death in Venice. Its outrageousness is dated, its historico-political criticisms thin and often unpersuasive, and its storytelling oddly poor for a movie that depends on such complex plotting. I got a kick out of its knowingly cheap dramatics, but not enough of one to offset my boredom. And I think it's amazing how Visconti was able to assemble such top-shelf European talent and then coach every single one of them into wretched performances.

[therewillbeblus]

Before reading your writeup, I didn't remember much about this film other than I hated it, and your analysis roused my memory as to why. You clarified the problems with Visconti that I've only ever been able to feel, so I appreciate now having textured reason to back up my visceral repulsion

[Matt]

Visconti might have been one of the most self-loathing of homosexuals to ever live, and that’s really saying something. This seems to me most apparent in his films that touch on gayness (Ludwig, Death in Venice, The Damned) where he gets all weird and stiff and awkward about it, and it’s actually these films that I most love among his work. I can’t defend them at all on the basis of positive representation, but the repression they both portray and participate in feels extremely real and recognizable to me.

I find myself bored by most of his “good” post-neorealism movies, even when they hang on the charm of stunning (in terms of both looks and skill) performers like Delon, Mastroianni, and Lancaster. It’s only when things start to get arch, emotionally distant, and perverted that my antennae start twitching.

Even so, this film is a mess. A truly groundbreaking Europudding production with an all-star international cast, nothing interesting to say, at least an hour too long, and obscenely lavish production values. A colossal waste of time, talent, and resources like only the Italian film industry of the 1960s (or Marvel) could produce.

But again, I love it the way that one thinks E.T. is cute actually or one cherishes a hideous and gaudy vintage glass Christmas ornament. It’s camp of the highest order, meant to be taken deadly seriously as such and not funny in the least.

[But let me quickly plug Bellissima, a Visconti film (his best?) that works on all levels: broad comedy, heart-tugging neorealism, overcooked melodrama, incisive class commentary. The perfect portrait of a stage mother, played on a razor’s edge by Anna Magnani.]

[Mr Sausage]

It’s funny to be reminded of Visconti’s neo-realism background, because here’s a movie that ostensibly revolves around a steel factory in which the actual factory and its workers are completely absent from the movie. It’s the most important thing in the movie to these characters and it is completely detached from the world of the movie, like it has no reality of its own.

The movie as a whole is like that. It’s about some of the most notorious and momentous parts of history, and it barely feels like it’s attached to any reality. It’s off in its own little world. The nods to history seem weightless and detached. Even the nazi uniforms and paraphernalia come to seem like costumes and set dressings in a weird ritual. The movie is entirely self-involved.

[accatone]

It’s funny to be reminded of Visconti’s neo-realism background, because here’s a movie that ostensibly revolves around a steel factory in which the actual factory and its workers are completely absent from the movie. It’s the most important thing in the movie to these characters and it is completely detached from the world of the movie, like it has no reality of its own.

The movie as a whole is like that. It’s about some of the most notorious and momentous parts of history, and it barely feels like it’s attached to any reality. It’s off in its own little world. The nods to history seem weightless and detached. Even the nazi uniforms and paraphernalia come to seem like costumes and set dressings in a weird ritual. The movie is entirely self-involved.

I'am pretty sure you know that this is the whole point of the given mise en scene, right? The out of this world Haute Bourgeoisie with their huge villas close to the actual factories (check out the actual Villa Hügel from the Krupps, its awesome –). This does of course not make the movie better or worse. I can see that from a todays standpoint it looks ridicoulus, but maybe it took something like this (setting, decorations, acting) in the 60s/70s to draw a broader, mainstream attention to this? Romy Schneider, Berger, Ludwig et al., this thing was huge at the time.

[ford]

I’d been wanting to see this for years and was only somewhat disappointed when I watched the new Criterion Blu-ray. It’s an extremely unpleasant and lurid film. But accomplishes what, I think, Visconti set out to do. Personally, I prefer it to NOVECENTO which, for me, was far too moralistic. (Bertollucci’s brand of Marxism isn’t as sophisticated as he thinks it is.)

The Night of the Long Knives sequence is clearly the centerpiece of the film and there Visconti’s firing on all cylinders. I’m struggling to think of a cinematic massacre as brilliantly and brutally staged.

I do think he got lost in the Martin character — apparently the critical consensus.

[domino harvey]

I’m struggling to think of a cinematic massacre as brilliantly and brutally staged.

La Reine Margot wins this

[DarkImbecile]

La Reine Margot wins this

I‘d never heard of this, but I already love the poster:

SpoilerShow

[Mr Sausage]

It’s funny to be reminded of Visconti’s neo-realism background, because here’s a movie that ostensibly revolves around a steel factory in which the actual factory and its workers are completely absent from the movie. It’s the most important thing in the movie to these characters and it is completely detached from the world of the movie, like it has no reality of its own.

The movie as a whole is like that. It’s about some of the most notorious and momentous parts of history, and it barely feels like it’s attached to any reality. It’s off in its own little world. The nods to history seem weightless and detached. Even the nazi uniforms and paraphernalia come to seem like costumes and set dressings in a weird ritual. The movie is entirely self-involved.

I'am pretty sure you know that this is the whole point of the given mise en scene, right? The out of this world Haute Bourgeoisie with their huge villas close to the actual factories (check out the actual Villa Hügel from the Krupps, its awesome –). This does of course not make the movie better or worse. I can see that from a todays standpoint it looks ridicoulus, but maybe it took something like this (setting, decorations, acting) in the 60s/70s to draw a broader, mainstream attention to this? Romy Schneider, Berger, Ludwig et al., this thing was huge at the time.

Seems like the style gets away from Visconti, actually. What started as showing the old aristocracy as out of touch ended as a private universe delighting in its own rituals. Even the film’s admirers have to admit that the historico-political content is not really where the film’s investing its energy.

[domino harvey]

La Reine Margot wins this

I‘d never heard of this, but I already love the poster:

SpoilerShow

It's 69% off in KL's latest sale

[DarkImbecile]

I bought it yesterday!

[Orlac]

And Umberto Orsini, the only Italian member of the main cast, was dubbed with a British accent in the English-language version (to better match his co-stars).

I think I've heard that dubber on the Jess Franco/Harry Alan Towers films like THE BLOODY JUDGE and COUNT DRACULA. Quite of weird they dubbed him with a British accent when nearly everyone but Bogarde and Rampling are speaking with German accents.

[Matt]

I’ve had this in my kevyip (‘unwatched pile’ for the kids out there) for more than two years and only got around to watching it last night. It was the longest, least pleasant, extras-laden disc in the pile, so I wasn’t eager to have to drop 4 hours on it. 15 minutes in, I couldn’t remember why I had ever claimed to like this film or why I defended it. Then things start to happen, both historically relevant and within this insular little family, the moral rot of everyone involved begins to be more apparent, and I remembered why I like it (because it’s so relentlessly unpleasant). It’s like a very long episode of “Survivor: Third Reich” where the worst person wins.

Is Charlotte Rampling’s Elisabeth the only sympathetic character in this? I think so, and she vanishes after about 20 minutes, an off-screen victim of her poisonous family’s machinations. This time around, though, I did appreciate Ingrid Thulin’s performance much more. I’m sure she made a significant contribution to making this Fassbinder’s (allegedly) favorite film, and I’m surprised they never worked together.

I love how sweaty everyone is here. It adds to the almost tactile rankness of the film. However, I do wish someone would have confiscated the zoom lenses from the production. It gets a little much, but then that’s the point, right? Too much.

Regarding Helmut Berger’s Martin:

SpoilerShow

Are we meant to think the little Jewish girl he molested hung herself? I thought it was pretty clear that he kills her because he hears she was “delirious” and he was afraid she might expose him.

It’s hard to take this seriously as a world cinema classic, despite the acclaim it received in its day. It’s so clearly the big-budget progenitor of a long line of Nazisploitation films, you half expect someone like Sybil Danning or Dianne Thorne to show up. But I guess that’s what Helmut Berger is there for, bless his beautiful hide.

[The Curious Sofa]

I only watched this for the first time last year and thought it was irredeemably and hilariously awful. It's a defining example of camp as failed art, in its tone-deafness only rivalled by the career of Florence Foster Jenkins. In combination with Death in Venice, Visconti takes the crown as the ultimate self-loathing queen among film directors.

SpoilerShow

I got the idea that the little girl hanged herself and it seems, so does every source I've come across referring to the scene. It struck me as highly unlikely for a child that young to commit suicide, especially by hanging. However you look at it, why is a character so clearly coded as gay, molesting little girls? It's all very confused in a way where fascism gets lazily conflated with sexual perversion, which doesn't differentiate between performing in drag and rape.

[Jonathan S]

I absolutely agree, though for me Dirk Bogarde - another self-loathing (and self-aggrandising) queen - is another factor in my dislike of both films.

[Matt]

I almost think that Martin is not meant to be coded as gay so much as he is just completely amoral and, as they used to say, polymorphously perverse. I think the introductory drag act is meant to shock his family more than anything else, and you can see his mother’s pride and delight in it behind the curtain, a literal stage mother. He wants attention, even if it’s negative.

SpoilerShow

Or maybe he’ll gay-coded in a sort of Tennessee Williams way in that he molests a little girl, has a prostitute for a lover, and rapes/commits incest with his mother, and all of these could be stand-ins for males. I think Visconti was terrified of depicting homosexuality directly.

The implied homosexuality is much more blatant in the SA massacre scene where we see men in bed with each other, strolling around in lingerie and lolling around together, and eventually in a pile of machine-gunned naked bodies as if an orgy had been violently interrupted.

But regarding the little girl: I would have to watch the scene again, but I think the shots and cuts are: 1. Martin overhears in his room about her delirium and panics, 2. enters her room and sees her “sick” in bed, 3. he crawls toward the corner of the room, 4. we see her body hanging by her knit scarf. This implies to me that he killed her so she wouldn’t inform on him and perhaps Visconti shied away from actually depicting child murder. Maybe that was still a step too far in 1969.

Funny how a few years later, John Waters made Pink Flamingos, another film about a competition to be “the filthiest person alive. Good, if exhausting, double feature potential here.