The Damned (1969)

Marlene at home A most excellent and well produced (by Luchino Visconti) film about the relationship between a wealthy industrialist and his family, and the rising Nazi party in 1930's Germany.

Dirk Bogarde and many very excellent actors bring the turbulent atmosphere of the times to life.

There are two travesty sequences; a Marlene Dietrich impersonation at the beginning of the film, by a younger (but grown-up) son, Martin (Helmut Berger) during family entertainments; the words of the song include reference to falling in love with a man. As the family is of the most conservative kind, this was not a well-judged choice.


A cancan among the Sturmabteilung Much later in the film, just before the Night of the Long Knives, the S.A. are getting generally drunk and there is a male cancan ... I don't think Himmler would have approved.

The film is really an Italian film, La Caduta degli dei.

HF 1999


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