Fantastic!

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Exploring the roots of the Nazi-Fascism rise in Germany of 1930's, Luchino Visconti and his "La Caduta Degli Dei" ("The Damned"), the first of the German trilogy ("Ludwig" and "Death in Venice" completing it) , is an impressive and carefully constructed epic about an aristocrat family's destruction, shattered with perversions, with a repulsive hunger for power in a society that changed its values like someone who changes his clothes.The von Essenbeck family story starts in 1933, during the Reichstag fire which happened on the same day as the birthday of Essenbeck's patriarch Josef (Albrecht Schoenhals), owner of a powerful weapon industry. After some deliberation and after this new happening in the country Josef decides to step away from his duties as president of the company, passing it to one of his relatives, Konstantin (René Koldehoff). From this point on all we're going to see a battle for power that slowly destroys each member of the Essenebck family. Murder, betrayal, fight for a higher status in this new Germany and other things will be decisive to unscrupulous people like Martin (Helmut Berger, great actor), one of the troubled and young members of this aristocratic family, and the one who'll be decisive in the way things move in the country and with his mother (Ingrid Thulin) and her husband Frederick Bruckmann (Dirk Bogarde), who are also trying to make their way in the family business, helped by Aschenbach (Helmut Griem), who carefully builds the web of deceptions in this game, joining one side at one time, then the other in a more appropriate time, depending of the circumstances.This year, it appeared in my hands a book of the script from this film plus an interview with the creators of it where they justify the film and the things they wanted to evocate with it by dealing with the seeds of Nazism and the way this was spread on a fragile Germany. What I saw in there was amazing, the thoughtful interviews and the greatly written script (drastically reduced in the filmed version). But what I've seen in the completed cinematic form was a little bit confusing, with few unexplained things (the presentation of the characters weren't so good just like the one of the written work, just an example) but a majestous work of art and history. Its grandiosity was beyond anything I've seen in a while, here's a spectacular tragedy of limitless dimensions that even if part of it is not real just looks and sounds a lot real to many of us. It's an accomplished and tragic epic full of blood, perversions, twisted personalities, insanity, greed, lust and other torments of the body and soul.For all I've seen and all the relevant things it had to show and say, I consider "La Caduta Degli Dei" a very good film on the pre WWII subject with outstanding acting by the cast, impressive art direction and impeccable costumes. A story to be seen multiple times to be fully comprehended and absorbed. 9/10

**SPOILERS** With the National Socialist, or Nazi, party taking over Germany the head of the powerful Essenbeck Iron and Steel Works Baron Joachim Essenbeck, Albrecht Schoenhais, is forced to throw his lot in with the Hitler regime which is against his better judgment. Joachim a member of the old Prussian Aristocrats feels that Hitler and his fellow Nazis are nothing but a bunch of low class peasants stock whom he has,by always exploiting them in his factories, nothing but scorn and contempt for.As thing turn out Baron Joachim is murdered in his sleep with his #1 man in running his steel industry Herbert Thallman, Omberto Orsini, framed for for the crime. This sparks a power struggle between Baron Joachim's nephew Konstantin, Reinhard Kolidehoff, and the power crazed vice president of Essenbeck Iron & Steel Works Fredrick Bruckmann, Dirk Bogarde. While all this is going on Baron Joachim's somewhat strange grandson Martin, Helmut Berger, with the help of distant Essenbeck relative, and now Nazi SS officer, Aschenbach-Helmut Griem-makes a power move on both Konstantin and Fredrick to take over the family business.It's really Ascenbach who's the brains behind the hostile takeover of the Essenbeck Industries by him using both Martin and Fredrick to do all his dirty work. Konstantin who got involved with the Nazi SA, because of the good times they were always having, ended up at getting killed during the infamous Night of the Long Knives-June 30-July 1 1934-together with some 100 top SA men as well as their leader Ernst Rohm. Getting caught with their guard as well as pants down the SA boys ended up getting massacred by the Nazi SS who, on Hitlers orders, did them in because they were a thorn in the butt as well as bitter rivals of the German Army and its General Staff. It was the German Army that Hitler needed to gain complete control, at the time he was only the German Chancellor not Fuhrer, of the country.Fredrick who took part, as an Nazi SS officer, in the slaughter of SA men, that included Konstantin, himself ended up on the short end of the stick with both Martin and Aschenbeck setting him up for the kill, by having him stripped of all rank and power, later in the movie. We see in the film La Caduta Degli Die-or "The Damned" in English-just how far people will go to both get and stay in power both in politics and industry. Even though Martin was nothing close to a die in the wool Nazi he used the hated Nazis whom he, like the rest of his Aristocrat family, had nothing but contempt for his own greedy and selfish gains. In that the vast majority of the members of the Nazi Party were made up of-unlike Martin and those that he associated with-people of the lowest social and educated classes. Still it was the Nazis who, by wiping out all those who stood in his way, that Martin gave his unbinding and unconditional loyalty to. A loyalty that in the end lead to the total destruction of his country and even worse the destruction of the Essenbeck Iron & Steel Works which Martin worked, by blackmail murder and even incest, so hard to gain control of..

The great Luchino Visconti concocts a stunning banquet of horrors with some of his favorite gourmet dishes: the corruption and decadence of the upper classes, incest, mamma's boys and monstrous/fascinating mothers. The setting this time is National Socialist Germany where the perversions find their perfect home. There is, however, a slight but disturbing enjoyment of the whole putrid thing. Visconti's extraordinary attention to detail requires more than a couple of viewings. Ingrid Thulin's hairstyles are a masterpiece on their own. After Ingman Bergman, Visconti gives her her most showy role. She's a pervert's mother if I ever saw one. Magnificent in her over the top understatement. Creepy Helmut Berger is perfect here. Even his real voice adds to the luridness of his character. In "Ludwig" he was dubbed by Giancarlo Giannini transforming his third rate talent into something,seemingly, transcendental. Dirk Bogarde, Charlotte Rampling, Umberto Orsini plus the gorgeous Renaud Verley and Florinda Bolkan contribute considerably to the rigid and humorless vision of one of the greatest aesthetes the movies have ever known.

I saw this movie like a tale about the power of helplessness. Like a corruption's foretaste. Luchino Visconti , in all his films, is only a witness. He describes, looks and confirms. His nostalgic search is form to define his interior world. "Fall of gods" is the description of crisis. A slice of hypocrisy and strange fight for preserve any illusion. The instincts dance and the colors of last ash. To have, to survive, to can. The Nazi era is a pretext. Like Pasolini, Visconti is interested to define the real filling. To present not a wrong world's faces but his last essence. The power is only the skin of fear. The words are feathers of a deep lie. A movie about a huge low spirits and about the impossibility of revenge. A play with a single character: mildness of death.