The Damned

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

The Damned (1969), directed by Luchino Visconti, offers us a sort of A Clockwork Orange situation. Visconti sets the story at the time of the rise of Nazism in Germany. He reveals the amoral actions of a corrupt capitalist family which commits murder, child molestation, and rape. When this type of extreme behavior occurs, it invites fascism. Freedom allows for horrendous behavior to take place. If society opts for totalitarian control, there may be order but at the cost of what makes us human, including our emotions and morality.

The film opens with a shot of the steel mill owned by the Essenbecks, a wealthy family that has endured WWI and the following years of economic depression. The steam and fire remind one of the infernal depictions of Hell.

In contrast to the arduous labor of the mill’s workers, there is the lavish setting of the birthday celebration dinner for the company’s leader, Joachim (Albrecht Schoenhals). Herbert (Umberto Orsini), an anti-Nazi, comments that the more they feed the family members, “the more ravenous they become.” He suggests that these rich people are greedy and never satisfied.

There is a shot of Konstantin (Reinhard Kolldehoff), who is pro Third Reich, looking at himself in the mirror with a picture of Hitler attached to the upper left corner along with a swastika. As I have noted often in this blog, mirrors can reflect the darker, or other side, of an individual’s personality. Visconti continues to use mirrors in the film, implying that many here are among the damned.

Visconti uses zooming in and out closeups which create a feeling of distortion, which reflects the unbalanced world we are viewing. In the car. as Friedrich (Dirk Bogarde) approaches the party, he has a discussion with his friend, Aschenbach (Helmut Griem), which reveals the family’s struggle with disliking Hitler, who is Chancellor at this time, and gaining power, and the desire to maintain their business’s superiority. At the estate house, the pictures of Hitler and of the older patriarchs of Germany stress this division. Aschenbach says to Friedrich that there are no moral dictates now in Hitler’s Germany’s, and anything can happen with an elite in control. As we know, that is frightfully true.

The children who perform for their grandfather suggest that Visconti wants to show how these innocents will be corrupted by the adults. We have contrast again when grandnephew Gunther (Renaud Verley) plays a classical piece of music on the cello and then Joachim’s grandson, Martin (Helmut Berger), performs, in Marlene Dietrich drag, a sing that yearns, ironically, for “a real man” in the traditional sense. Even without the costume, Martin wears thin, raised eyebrows that give him a demonic mask-like look. His outsider appearance does not celebrate crossdressing but instead hides a dark pathology.

A terrorist attack, supposedly by Communists, is reported in the middle of Martin’s performance. Herbert thinks Hitler’s minions set the fire to stoke the feeling that outsiders are attacking German nationalism, which will empower Hitler’s agenda. Herbert fears giving power to an authoritarian, like Hitler, while Aschenbach, who is in Hitler’s SS, or Gestapo, loudly stresses the need to quash those who defy those in power. Instead of Herbert, Joachim abandons his ethical stance, business coming first, and makes Konstantin, a SA member, or “brownshirt,” a Hitler goon, his vice-president to prevent Hitler becoming an enemy of the company.

Friedrich is involved with Sophie (Ingrid Thulin), Martin’s mother, and he admits to her in private that Herbert’s conspiracy theory has merit. Friedrich has ambitions to take over the company, and Sophie says she can manipulate Martin to help. The scene is shot in shadows, echoing the devious scheme they are devising, as is much of the film to suggest the darker side of humanity.

Aschenbach, who is like Iago, manipulating people, says to Friedrich and Sophie that soon all The Reich’s enemies will be reduced “to ashes.” Again, there is the reference to fire, and his words may not only refer to infernal flames but are also a foreshadowing of the ovens at the concentration camps. They plan on murdering the anti-Nazi Joachim with Herbert’s gun. Aschenbach says that any trial of Herbert can be dispensed with, since it would just be a formality. When the lawless are in control, there is no protection by the rule of law. (Aschenbach has a beguiling smile, which reminds one of the line from Hamlet that states one may smile though he may be a “villain.” It shows how the shiny surface may be used to hide the darkness below).

Herbert tells Gunther, Konstantin’s son, bullied by his father, that, “It's all over, Gunther. It was everyone's fault, even mine. It does no good to raise one's voice when it's too late, not even to save your soul. The fear of a proletariat revolution, which would've thrown the entire country to the left... was too great, and now we can't defend it any longer! Nazism, Gunther, is our creation. It was born in our factories, nourished with our money!” Herbert is willing to take the blame for a growing proletariat sentiment that has created the reactionary Nazism. He is admitting that the exploitative capitalists started the problems that Germany now faces. He is contemplating fleeing the country, as so many others did. He escapes as the SS come to arrest him for the murder.

Since Martin has the majority of stock holdings, he, under the influence of his mother, appoints Friedrich in charge of the company, outraging Konstantin. Aschenbach wants to make sure the armaments that the steel factory manufactures do not go to the SA since Hiter now wants his personal SS to replace the brownshirts. He uses his influence on the promoted Friedrich to reach this goal. Amid all the turmoil these people are like the gangsters in The Godfather, where business outweighs all other human concerns.

We hear on the radio how the leaders stoke the nationalistic fervor of the citizens. Books by such writers as Helen Keller and Marcel Proust are burned, suppressing any ideas that may question the words of the authoritarian regime.

Martin’s evil nature appears as he plays with the young family girls. We later learn that he most likely molested his young nieces. When he visits the apartment of his girlfriend, Lisa Keller, he ogles the young girl next door as she skips in the street. He gives her a gift when he returns, attempting to groom her. The child realizes it is not appropriate as Martin strokes her arm and puts his head in her lap. She moves away. But Martin persists, later giving her a necklace. She kisses him, probably because her scolding mother has not shown her love. But the guilt she feels after submitting to Martin is so severe that she hangs herself. She is Jewish, so this exploitation of a Jew by a German is symbolic of the Holocaust to come. Martin’s character shows how the worst of humanity rises out of the depths of society as unscrupulous rulers give them free reign.

Intimidation by the powerful causes the college administration to reprimand Gunther because of his communication with the wanted Herbert. The university dean is afraid that the college will be dragged into the persecution that is building in the country.

A chilling scene occurs when Aschenbach shows Sophie the Gestapo's huge room filled with files on German citizens. He says, "These are the most complete archives ever conceived... You see it's not very difficult to enter the lives of people. Every citizen today is potentially one of our informers." The film is saying that when a government dismisses the rights and privacy of citizens, it can gather all the information that exists about people and weaponize it to weed out opponents. Aschenbach said earlier that if a flower, a thing of beauty, was in the way of machinery plowing a field, it must be destroyed. He sees getting rid of people the same way.

Martin is a person of interest in the hanging of the little girl. He hides out in an attic of the family estate. His placement in this Gothic hideaway implies that he is a monster not fit to be part of society.

The local SA has a celebration at a hotel and members voice dissatisfaction with Hitler, probably realizing that their usefulness has been replaced by the Gestapo. They drink and confess their feelings of alienation and loneliness. They eventually have sex with each other. The outward regimentation that was hiding their true selves is literally and figuratively stripped away. It is ironic that they sing extremist songs that demonize “the other” when they, in fact, fit that category. For political reasons and implicitly for their unapproved behavior as dictated by the state, the Gestapo massacres them. Aschenbach makes sure that Friedrich personally kills Konstantin, making the new president of the company pay the price for his business deal with the Third Reich. Visconti, who was gay, depicts those who demonize homosexuality on the surface, and shows victimization of those who hide their sexual preference behind the dictates of society.

Aschenbach uses his knowledge of Martin’s involvement in the death of the girl to recruit him to take down Friedrich because he is becoming independent. As Aschenbach says, he is “beginning to think for himself.” That attitude is not allowed in a totalitarian state. Martin would be next in line to run the company if both Friedrich and Sophie were eliminated. Martin says he “could do anything” with “power.” It is frightening that a psychopath would receive a license to indulge his demented desires.

Friedrich, with the help of Sophie, has attained the position of Baron and so he is her equal and can marry her. At another family dinner Friedrich acts like a dictator himself (once authoritarianism is unleased, it is contagious), ordering those in attendance around. Surprisingly, the exiled Herbert arrives, saying that instead of helping his wife and children escape, Sophie gave them to the authorities, and they went to the concentration camp at Dachau. He knows his gun was used in the murder, but it is obvious he knows that it was Friedrich who committed the crime. His wife perished, and Herbert wants to make a deal, confessing to killing Joachim if they will release his children. Such are the demonic deals made in such an immoral environment.

Martin now carries out Aschenbach’s plan, exposing Friedrich as the killer and his mother as the accomplice. The Gestapo official sees the psychopathic Martin as a good protégé for the Nazi cause, a telling turn that shows where evil gets its army. Martin sits by himself at the head of the empty family table, banging his hand on it, showing his lust for power.

Martin tells his mother that she took everything from him, all power and wealth, and possibly allowing for his proclivities to flourish. He undresses and rips her clothes off. She screams but becomes passive in the sexual assault that Martin executes as retribution. Afterwards she looks at mementos of his childhood, which show an ironic contrast between the innocence of youth and the corruption that followed. Sophie lapses into an almost catatonic state, holding a lock of Martin’s hair she kept when he was young as she reclines on her bed with his drawings as a child, as opposed to him as an adult, at her side. It’s as if that is the way she wants to remember her son, wiping away in her mind what he has become. She is now incapable of helping Friedrich with his defense.

Martin, once just a lone wolf, is now in full Gestapo uniform, showing how the Nazis give official sanction for madness to rule as the state and the psychopath become one. Martin arranges an absurd Nazi wedding, with a huge swastika on display, where Sophie must declare herself belonging to the Aryian race and not subject to any hereditary diseases, which of course, might poison the pure blood of the ruling class. Sophie is so pale she looks already like the ghost she will become. The ceremony is empty of the fervor and passion of the SA gay party. It stands in contrast to that erotic gathering as the Nazis drain all humanity out of lovemaking. Sofie’s wears a fur which depicts two animals kissing, but they are dead. The totalitarian world drains individual intimacy out of humanity for the sake of control. Martin echoes that element as he gives vials of poison To Friedrich and his mother so that they can die instead of having a honeymoon. He then inherits everything, and the Reich can have the power of industry to proceed with its dire plans.

Martin blows out candles as if symbolically extinguishing whatever is left of freedom and gives the bodies of Friedrich and Sophie a Nazi salute, showing how their deaths will lead to the new order. The last shot is the same as the first, with the flames of the factory stressing the hell on earth that has come to pass.