Except for swoony-gross tracking shots on blood-stained boy limbs to rub his Thanatos fetish in the audience's faces, The Damned is minor and often leaden Visconti. Not his fault that I've seen this material done better in later films.
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 19 April 2021 21:32 (three years ago) link
After The Leopard, his better films were the intimate ones. I don't know where Ludwig fits in that evaluation; it's an intimate film that happens to go on for four hours in the gaudiest locations imaginable.
― Halfway there but for you, Monday, 19 April 2021 21:54 (three years ago) link
Well, Death in Venice worked.
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 19 April 2021 22:06 (three years ago) link
That's intimate inasmuch as it's about the observations of one character, not a social panoply like The Leopard or The Damned.
― Halfway there but for you, Tuesday, 20 April 2021 00:20 (three years ago) link
The Damned was Fassbinder's favorite film, I'll have to find his quote on it, basically "everything true and evil and wrong and beautiful and filthy, can be found in The Damned." I agree with you Alfred, I found it too campy and, if only because it isn't in widescreen, its form is at odds with its content. A world away from the sublime aesthetics of his next film, Death in Venice, even down to the title cards!
― flappy bird, Tuesday, 20 April 2021 01:45 (three years ago) link
That's what I mean: Fassbinder did this soak-in-it decadence better, whereas Visconti's let's say doctrinal purity didn't produce sufficiently fraught results.
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 20 April 2021 01:48 (three years ago) link
I like The Dammed precisely because it's campy, it's not something you think Visconti had it in him. It's a more worthwhile watch than Death in Venice.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 20 April 2021 11:03 (three years ago) link
RIP Austrian bisexual actor Helmut Berger who has died at 78. Visconti was his longtime partner while he had an affair w/ Marisa Berenson and later w/ Nureyev, Britt Ekland, Ursula Andress, Tab Hunter, Linda Blair, Marisa Mell, Anita Pallenberg, Jerry Hall & Bianca & Mick Jagger pic.twitter.com/BUi2k4NE6Q— Bruce LaBruce (@BruceLaBruce) May 19, 2023
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 19 May 2023 19:29 (one year ago) link