The Damned

Heretical Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti (The Leopard, Ossessione) uses the play’s plot to savagely skewer Nazism in this equally subversive and cutting Technicolor vision. As Hitler ascends, the wealthy industrialist Von Essenbeck family spirals downward, a machiavellian fight for power ensues, and the family’s dirty, decadent wealth comes to represent the moral decay of an entire nation. Dirk Bogarde’s Nazi-collaborating industrialist borrows heavily from Macbeth in the midst of this chilling historical family drama.

35mm collection print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.