THE DAMNED (BLU-RAY)

Details

• Release Year: 1969
• Genre: Drama
• Plot: The most savagely subversive film by the iconoclastic auteur Luchino Visconti employs the mechanics of deliriously stylized melodrama to portray Nazism’s total corruption of the soul. In the wake of Hitler’s ascent to power, the wealthy industrialist von Essenbeck family and their associates—including the scheming social climber Friedrich (Dirk Bogarde), the conniving matriarch Sophie (Ingrid Thulin), and the cruelly deviant heir Martin (Helmut Berger, memorably donning Marlene Dietrich–like drag in his breakthrough role)—descend into a self-destructive spiral of decadence, greed, perversion, and all-consuming hatred as they vie for power, over the family business and over one another. The heightened performances and Visconti’s luridly expressionistic use of Technicolor conjure a garish world of decaying opulence in which one family’s downfall comes to stand for the moral rot of a nation.
• Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin, Helmut Griem, Helmut Berger, Renaud Verley, Umberto Orsini, Reinhard Kolldehoff, Albrecht Schoenhals, Florinda Bolkan, Nora Ricci, Charlotte Rampling, Irina Wanka, Karin Mittendorf, Valentina Ricci, Wolfgang Hillinger, Bill Vanders, Howard Nelson Rubien, Werner Hasselmann, Peter Dane, Mark Salvage, Karl-Otto Alberty, John Frederick, Richard Beach, Klaus Höhne, Ernst Kuhr, Peter Brandt, Wolfgang Ehrlich, Ester Carloni, Antonietta Fiorito, Jessica Dublin, Piero Morgia, Judith Burnett, Al Cliver, Giada Desideri, Karl Menzel, Michele Scalera, Luchino Visconti, Nicola Badalucco, Enrico Medioli
• Director: Luchino Visconti
• Runtime: 2:37
• Company: Pegaso Cinematografica, Warner Bros. - 7 Arts
• Media Format: Movie