The difference between how American
films portray Nazism and fascism and how European films do is perhaps a
difference based on distance. For the
US, the Nazis were cold-blooded killers and the personification of evil. The accounts they heard of Nazi atrocities
were secondhand prior to the start of World War II.
Europeans on the other hand
offer at the same time a more realistic and a more scathing portrayal of
fascists as decadent perverts- sort of a throwback to royalists of wars past
going back to the Roman Empire. It is a
less comic book, more personal caricature.
This is problematic as some portrayals
(which are rooted in fact) flirt with homophobia. In particular, how the influence of the SA
under Ernst Rohm before the Night of the Long Knives is shown. They are portrayed as homosexuals.
Luchino Visconti‘s THE DAMNED
certainly shows them this way (The night before they are murdered by the SS as
one big homosexual orgy) and also ties Nazis to German big business and uses
that to strongly suggest German society as a whole post Treaty of Versailles
was sick. Aside from homosexuality, we
are presented with incest, rape, drug abuse, child molestation. Dirk Bogarde as Frederich Buckmann the social
climber who plots to take over the Essenbeck family business is the least bad of
the lot.
The tempting, devilish SS officer
Aschenbach himself a distant member of the Essenbeck family initiates their
downfall through a series of intrigues and conspires to have the Nazi government
take over the business. This film is
overwrought maintaining high levels of decadence throughout. It sees fascism and capitalism as kin Not as explicit as a film like 120 DAYS IN
SALOM but in every way paints a similar picture of fascists as evil corrupt
perverts.
This film is part of what I
call Dirk Bogarde’s “streak” by which I mean when he switched from being a cookie
cutter heartthrob to making arty interesting films culminating in his
masterpiece THE NIGHT PORTER....I wrote more about that here http://rgdinmalaysia.blogspot.com/2009/03/night-porter-plus-dirk-bogarde-poster.html
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