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Feature Film produced in 1969 by Luchino Visconti
In the early days of Nazi Germany, a powerful noble family must adjust to life under the new dictatorship regime. The transition from democracy to dictatorship is thus dramatized through the lives of the family which also owns a powerful German industrial firm. Through such characters as a German Baron, a child molester, a Nazi Storm Trooper, an innocent man framed for murder, and a Captain in the German SS, "Damned" thus shows how so called "German Upper Class Nobility" first resented Adolf Hitler, then accepted him, and at last embraced him.
Reproduced from the original post, on The Internet Movie Database, by permission of the post author
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Historical Background
A good understanding of the historical setting of The Damned is very important to gain a fuller understanding of what Visconti was trying to achieve. The Damned is an attempt to cinematically and aesthetically explore the processes of history from a Gramscian Marxist perspective modelled upon the fate of the Essenbeck family at the time of the Nazi take-over of power in Germany. It is a representation which examines the failures of Liberalism which in The Leopard had been represented as something historically progressive again through the fortunes of one family.
The Essenbeck family around which The Damned is centred can be understood as a metaphor for German society as a whole between the time of the Reichstag fire of February 1933 and the 'Night of the Long Knives in June 1934. The period covered by the film starts about three weeks after Hitler's invitation to become Chancellor by Hindenburg at the behest of von Papen at the end of January 1933. Von Papen had wrongly 'guaranteed' to Hindenburg that Hitler and the Nazis were controllable. The Essenbeck family has been understood in two main ways by critics. Either they represent key conflicting currents and strands of the Weimar German elites, or, the emphasis has argued that the family is torn apart by the pressures of Nazism.
The film is very precise in the historical moment that it has chosen to represent. Nowell-Smith (2003) notes that the film operates on three levels using history, drama and myth. Nevertheless Nowell-Smith's critical comments, like those of Bacon (1998), do not exam the history of Germany at this time in depth. The historical specificity of this period is not included in their respective bibliographies. Instead they choose to focus upon the literary and the critical influences within the film. This article provides a closer analysis of the historical background and processes which Visconti intended to represent.
The Reichstag Fire
The first section of The Damned shows events leading up to, during and after an important family dinner celebrating the birthday of the head of the Essenbeck family. The Essenbecks are loosely modelled upon the Krupp family who owned a vast industrial enterprise based upon steel. The dinner is taking place on the night of the Reichstag fire. The fire it is widely regarded as a pretext - twice underlined by the film's dialogue - for the Nazis to severely repress the Communists in particular in the remaining days coming up to the last 'free' election of the Weimar Republic' in March 1933.
Correctly from an historical perspective, Visconti takes the night of the Reichstag fire as an historical turning-point marking the beginning of the final collapse of Germany into its path of damnation. The first dialogue of Aschenbach ( the SS officer) and Friedrich (Dirk Bogarde) gives rise to a hint of something about to happen, in the entrance hall Aschenbach even more strongly signals that on this night in particular it will be important for Bogarde to act. It is clear that Aschenbach is in possession of some a priori knowledge. This is an invitation to murder Joachim the head of the family and the steel company. The prizes for Bogarde are Sophie and effective control of the company. The time for personal morality is dead states Aschenbach. The question at this stage is will Bogarde accept this Faustian pact?
In the film the Reichstag Fire is announced by Konstantin the coarse and vulgar SA member of the family who is father of Gunther the cello playing cultural opposite of Konstantin. Konstantin also announces that the 'culprit' a 'communist' has already been captured. In reality the culprit was captured on the site of the Reichstag trying to set alight curtains as he moved through the building. In reality the culprit, Van den Lubbe, was not a communist. He was an unemployed, fairly deranged anarchist with a bad visual impairment. Several years previously he had been flung out of the Dutch communist party for promoting arson and other acts of sabotage. (Evans R :2003). As yet there is no precise historical evidence to definitively link the fire to a piece of agent provocatuerism on the part of the Nazis and thus no full historical consensus as to who was behind the fire. After the fire the Nazis immediately arrested hundreds of Communists in Berlin and this carried on in the following days and weeks. It effectively ensured that the Communists couldn't make an effective election campaign. Cleverly by not banning the Communists outright Hitler ensured that their votes were unlikely to be transferred to the Social Democrats. This fire effectively sealed the fate of Germany as Hitler was able to dominate the Reichstag and change the constitution. This was a fact which Visconti was well aware of.
Gleichschaltung
The subsequent implosion of the Essenbeck family aesthetically parallels and represents through metaphor the collapse of liberal institutions in Germany as the Nazis pursued their policy of 'Gleichschaltung' or 'co-ordination'. After the full accession to power by Hitler in March 1933 and the take-over of the constitutional institutions by a carefully contrived fait accompli the SA were in the forefront of the fight against the Communists, Social Democrats and Trade Unionists who tried in the early days to offer some resistance to Hitler. They also played an integral role in the harassment of Jews, informally before April 1st 1933, and in an organised way afterwards starting with a boycott of Jewish businesses on this date. It also involved the taking over of the political institutions of Germany at local and regional level once total control at the centre had been achieved
Night of the Long Knives
The second single major historical event represented by The Damned is the infamous 'Night of the Long Knives' which took place at the end of June 1934.. This was when the SS (Black-shirts) massacred the leadership of Eric Rohm's SA (The Brownshirts). It was a crucial moment in Hitler's rise to absolute power. The Brownshirts represented a mobster populist element upon which the Nazi party was based. This populist element represented the so-called 'socialist' element of the 'NSDP'. This populist element was unsympathetic towards large capitalist organisations seeing them as exploitative of the 'little man' and the petit-bourgeoisie. Throughout 1934 there was an increasing tendency towards a 'second revolution' encouraged by the leadership of the SA. If Hitler was to take the final step to absolute power then he needed to purge his party of these elements and reconfigure the basic ethos of his party. The leader of the SA Eric Rohm had a strong personal power base and had been a colleague of Hitler's since the beginnings of the Nazi party. He had been a member of the paramilitary Freikorps before that. The 'Night of the Long Knives' also saw the murder of other leading figures of potential opposition such as von Schleicher who had been the Conservative Chancellor before Hitler was manipulated into power by von Papen. It is also important to note that the German army colluded in the 'Night of the Long Knives' through von Reichenau for Hitler was dependent upon the army to execute his dreams of Lebensraum or expansion in the East as well as being dependent upon the good will of the most powerful elites in his early years of power.
The Full Consolidation of Hitler's Power
The Damned takes the viewer to the end of the period of Nazi 'co-ordination'. In reality this is finally finished by the 1934 Nuremberg rally. Infamously this rally saw the making and release of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. The rally was a follow up to the 'Night of the Long Knives' designed to impress upon both Party and people the notion of the Fuhrerprinzip in which Hitler had become the people. For both public and Nazi consumption the film successfully promotes aesthetically the notion of Volksgemeinschaft showing that Germany was now united as a people through blood and place cutting across class, on its path to a golden future.
Riefenstahl also featured the German Army as well as the SA and other Nazi organisations. The presence of the German Army and its leader von Blomberg at the 1934 Nuremberg rally was immensely important for Hitler. The Nazis were reliant upon the army to achieve his long-term aims of 'Lebensraum' or colonial expansion mainly directed towards the east. By 1936 Hitler against the desires and advice of most capitalists and his economics minister and governor of the central bank Schacht was determined to pursue economic policies of rearmament. These were being carried out with the express intention of preparing Germany for a total war in which it could survive for up to 15 years (Overy, R. 1995)
Visconti represents this final closure of German society through the family members. Martin the heir to the steelworks finally deals brutally with his mother and her lover and vice-president of the steelworks Friedrich Bruckmann (Dirk Bogarde). Because they were only out for themselves and not the greater good of Germany. Martin was encouraged to do this. He had been incorporated into the SS, blackmailed by Aschenbach because he was a pedophile. The character of Gunther appears to represent the cultural compromises which many liberals made towards Nazism. Initially only concerned with culture and disliking the extreme 'Philistinism' of his SA father Gunther now recognises that Hitler's Germany has a place for him. Visconti thus successfully represents this idea of Volksgeneinschaft aesthetically within the context of the film. In Viscontian and Gramscian terms it is a counter-progressive hegemony which is thus established in Germany. As can now be seen the film's representation of history itself is therefore a fundamental factor within the film.
LITERATURE
- Bacon, Henry. 1998. Visconti: Explorations of Beauty and Decay. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
- Bondanella, Peter. 3rd edition. 2002. Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present. New York and London: Continuum
- Cesarani, David.2004. Eichman : His Life and Crimes. Heinemann .
- Clark, Martin. 1984. Modern Italy 1871-1982. London: Longman
- Evans, Richard J. 2003. The Coming of the Third Reich. London: Penguin / Allen Lane
- Fischer, Klaus P. 1995. Nazi Germany a New History. London: Constable
- Johnson, Eric. 2002. The Nazi Terror: Gestapo, Jews and Ordinary Germans. London: John Murray
- Mommsen, Hans. 2003. Alternatives to Hitler. London: I. B. Tauris
- Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. 2003 3rd edition. Luchino Visconti. London: British Film Institute
- Overy, R. D. 1995. War and Economy in the Third Reich. Oxford: Oxford University Press
- Taylor, Richard. 1998. Film Propaganda Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. London: I. B. Tauris
- Wheal, Donald James and Shaw Warren. 1997. The Penguin Dictionary of the Third Reich. London Penguin