The damned (G̈otterdämmerung) / Warner Bros.-Seven Arts presents ; produced by Ever Haggiag and Alfred Levy ; original story and screenplay by Nicola Badalucco, Enrico Medioli, Luchino Visconti ; Praesidens-Paegaso, Italnoleggio, Eichberg-Film ; directed by Luchino Visconti.
Edition:
DVD edition.
Publisher:
Criterion Collection,
Copyright Date:
2021
Description:
2 videodiscs (157 min.) : sound, color ; 4 3/4 in.
Container of (work): Caduta degli dei (Motion picture). English. Container of (work): Caduta degli dei (Motion picture). Italian.
Notes:
Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin, Helmut Griem, Helmut Berger, Renaud Verley, Charlotte Rampling, Florinda Bolkan, Albrecht Schönhals, Unmberto Orsini, Reinhard Kolldehoff. Originally released as a motion picture in 1969. Includes interview from 1970 with director Luchino Visconti about the film ; archival interviews with actors Helmut Berger, Ingrid Thulin and Charlotte Rampling ; Visconti On Set, a 1969 behind-the-scenes documentary ; new interview with scholar Stefano Albertini about the sexual politics of the film.
Summary:
"The most savagely subversive film by the iconoclastic auteur Luchino Visconti employs the mechanics of deliriously stylized melodrama to portray Nazism's total corruption of the soul. In the wake of Hitler's ascent to power, the wealthy industrialist von Essenbeck family and their associates--including the scheming social climber Friedrich (Dirk Bogarde), the conniving matriarch Sophie (Ingrid Thulin), and the cruelly deviant heir Martin (Helmut Berger, memorably donning Marlene Dietrich-like drag in his breakthrough role)--descend into a self-destructive spiral of decadence, greed, perversion, and all-consuming hatred as they vie for power, over the family business and over one another. The heightened performances and Visconti's luridly expressionistic use of Technicolor conjure a garish world of decaying opulence in which one family's downfall comes to stand for the moral rot of a nation"--Container.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.