Movie Review: a look at "The Damned" 1969 film dealing with early Nazi Germany, as directed by Luchino Visconti

There was this movie filmed in 1969 and directed by Italian Neo Realism director Luchino Visconti titled The Damned. 

The movie covers the period in Nazi Germany beginning with the Burning of the Reichstag and concluding with the aftermath of the Night of the Long Knives.

The main character is a whole family instead of one individual person.  In the case of this movie, it's the Essenbeck Family headed by German baron, Joaquim von Essenbeck, a non-Nazi aristocrat who owns the Essenbeck works: an armaments plant.  

In real life, the family that most approached the Essenbecks is the Krupp family.

The inciting event that kicks off the drama is the assassination of Joaquim and the framing of his secretary, Uncle Herbert for that murder. 

His daughter in law, widow to Joaquim's late son now has a suitor of fiance who is eager to take over the family firm and that suitor or fiance is the real assassin of the Baron Joaquim.

Standing in his way to satisfy that ambition is the Baron's son Konstantin who is a member of the Nazi SA or the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party.  

Konstantin has a son named Gunther who has absolutely no interest in the family business and who is obsessed with being a musician playing the cello and he's not good at it. 

Moreover, his father is bitter about his son's interests in the cello and disinterest in the family business.

Then there is Martin, grandson of Joaquim by his daughter in law. He's a sick, pedophile, and cross dresser.

Anyhow the interrelations among the different members and rivals in this dysfunctional family play themselves out in this early Nazi period to the climactic even known as the Night of he Long Knives.

The event in this movie is played out as a massacre as having occurred in the Bad Wiese resort where the SA were gathered for a holiday vacation.  

This portrayal was done for dramatic effect and was inaccurate.

                                                                    

 

 Massacre scene portraying of the Night of the Long Knives

In the history, the victims were all arrested and transported to a prison in Munich and they were mostly shot there.  

Only Kurt von Schliecher, a former chancellor of Germany, was killed in his own home with his wife. Two more men were also killed away from the prison. 

Every other victim with the SA were shot by firing squad inside the prison.

                                                                                                                                              This scene is remarkable in its psychology showing how young Gunther's soul is corrupted spiritually by an SS officer after he realizes that his father, Konstantin, had been one of the victims in the massacre.