The Damned

Luchino Visconti's epic of decadence, set in Germany during 1933 and 1934, parallels the end of a family of industrialists with the rise of Nazism. The films opens with an extravagant dinner celebrating the retirement of the family patriarch, Baron Joachim von Essenbeck, the magnate of a huge steel enterprise, and his appointment of an outsider, Friedrich Bruckmann (Dirk Bogarde) as temporary head. While at first all seems very respectable and bourgeois, the gathering turns strange when Joachim's grandson, Martin (Helmut Berger) delivers his rendition of Marlene Dietrich's "Falling in Love Again" dressed in drag. Before the party is over, it is announced that the R...