The Damned (Criterion Collection) (1969) on Blu-ray

Actor: Helmut Berger, Charlotte Rampling, Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin, Helmut Griem
Director: Luchino Visconti
Genre: Drama
Year: 1969
Studio: Criterion Collection
Length: 157 Min
Released: 9/28/2021
Rating: Not Rated (MPAA Rating)
Format: Blu-ray
Misc/Special Features: NTSC, New 2K digital restoration by the Cineteca di Bologna and Institut Lumière, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Alternate Italian-language soundtrack
Interview from 1970 with director Luchino Visconti about the film
Archival interviews with actors Helmut Berger, Ingrid Thulin, and Charlotte Rampling
Visconti: Man of Two Worlds, a 1969 behind-the-scenes documentary
New interview with scholar Stefano Albertini about the sexual politics of the film
New English subtitle translation and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by scholar D. A. Miller"
Criterion Collection Presents: The DAMNED
Language: English
Subtitles : N/A

DESCRIPTION:

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 incestuous matriarch Sophie (Ingrid Thulin), and the perversely cruel heir Martin (Helmut Berger, memorably donning 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.