The Damned

The Damned (La caduta degli dei, 1969) is Luchino Visconti's operatic drama about a German steel dynasty — watch it online on iFILM. The Essenbeck family has controlled one of the country's biggest industrial empires for generations. Then the Reichstag burns, the Nazis consolidate power, and the family turns on itself.

Friedrich Bruckmann, played by Dirk Bogard, manoeuvres for control through the widow's bed; her son Martin, in a career-defining turn by Helmut Berger, slides into depravity and collaboration; SS officers methodically bring the steelworks under the Third Reich. Visconti shoots it all like a grand opera that's gone badly wrong — long takes, ornate frames, performers pushed to the edge. The film's Italian title nods directly to Wagner's Götterdämmerung, and Visconti meant every bit of that parallel.

Shot across Germany and Italy at the peak of Visconti's late-career run, The Damned is the first part of his loosely linked German trilogy. Charlotte Rampling, Ingrid Thulin, and Helmut Griem round out an ensemble that performs collective moral collapse with unnerving precision. Stream The Damned (1969) online on iFILM.