“The Damned” (1969)

The Damned

Grade: A-

Luchino Visconti’s The Damned is a sweeping old-fashioned family epic, like The Godfather and Fanny and Alexander, complete with 45-minute opening sequence and complex family tree. Yet that’s where the comparisons end, as The Damned’s colorful cast of characters is far stranger and darker and detestable. Set in Germany 1934, the film follows the Von Essenbeck industrialist dynasty as it purges itself and consolidates power with the same vitriol and violence as the Nazis during the Night of the Long Knives. Not a single happy moment to be found.

The hauntingly beautiful technicolor and the memorable ensemble, particularly the acting of Helmuts Griem and Berger, make the depressing saga into a mesmerizing picture, but by no means is The Damned an easy watch. In its depiction of pure evil — including incest, pedophilia and homoerotic Nazi orgies — Visconti’s excessively sadistic vision fully earns its X rating: grandiose and operatic and profoundly disturbing in a manner only equaled by Salo and Come and See.