Director Luchino Visconti was a filmmaker of many contradictions: a member of Milanese nobility who directed Neorealist films sympathetic to the working class; a chronicler of social change who examined historical truth via heavily stylized, melodramatic means; and a radical, progressive activist who made film after film mourning the loss of antiquated values. Ultimately, these contradictions are a reflection not of confusion or inconsistency, but of a complex, original thinker whose work had a profound influence on filmmakers who followed him.

Visconti's contradictions - as well as his most scathing portrait of the aristocratic world in which he was raised - are on glorious display in the new DVD of his controversial 1969 epic The Damned. Presented in its full 157-minute version, the film tells the story of the Von Essenbecks, a family of German industrialists whose patriarch, Joachim, is murdered on the night of the Reichstag fire. What follows is a battle between Joachim's protege, Frederick (Dirk Bogarde), and his depraved grandson, Martin (Helmut Berger), for control of the family business as it becomes inextricably linked to the rise of the Nazis.

Visconti, an anti-Fascist who was active in the Resistance during World War II, merges his political and autobiographical obsessions in The Damned, which recreates not only the sweeping social changes in Germany under Hitler but intimate experiences of Visconti's own youth as an Italian count. Merging elements of his own history with the behavior of the film's characters, who represent everything he fought against during the war, allows Visconti to present a complex portrait of Germany under the grip of Nazism that is terrifying and darkly comic.

The premise of an upper-class family in decline amidst historical upheaval is a familiar one in Visconti's work, but this theme reaches delirious, melodramatic heights in The Damned. Whereas The Leopard and Senso depict old world orders slowly fading away, The Damned portrays a hierarchy that's being destroyed by an inferno - it's no accident that the opening and closing shots depict fires. Rape, murder, suicide and incest figure prominently in this study of Nazi decadence, which eschews the director's Neorealist roots in favor of bold, operatic excess.

To realize his vision, Visconti tapped two distinguished cinematographers: Pasqualino De Santis and Armundo Nannuzzi. De Santis, who operated on a number of pictures before getting his big break as a director of photography on Francesco Rosi's The Moment of Truth, won an Oscar in 1968 for his lush work on Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. The cinematographer's reputation as a master of interior lighting is on full display in The Damned, particularly in the virtuoso setpiece that opens the film: 45 minutes set almost entirely in the Von Essenbeck mansion on the night of the Reichstag fire. This sequence lays out the characters and relationships with clarity, concision and great style; the filmmakers use a combination of deep-focus compositions and rapid zooms to introduce the viewer to a family (and a country) on the verge of self-destruction. The filmmakers create meticulous, elaborate spaces, only to demolish those spaces both figuratively (through zooms that islolate the characters from their surroundings) and literally (in the violent destruction of a later sequence depicting the Night of the Long Knives massacre).

Nannuzzi's resume‚ encompassed diverse projects such as La Cage Aux Folles and cult films by Roger Corman, but The Damned is one of the high points of his career. The picture offers a wide range of emotional and visual material, often veering so close to excess that it risks becoming laughable, yet containing moments of violence that are undeniably chilling.

The cinematographers' lighting scheme features bold colors as well as dark, chiaroscuro images, and their work is well served by this DVD transfer, which preserves the breadth of the cinematography's tonal range. The mono soundtrack is less impressive, but this might be due to the circumstances of the film's production; the dialogue was filmed in English, but many of the actors' lines were subsequently dubbed.

The DVD features a theatrical trailer and a short documentary from the time of the film's release that offers a brief but illuminating view of the director at work. Flat sound aside, this transfer preserves the filmmakers' meticulous attention to color, light and composition. The visual sophistication on display makes The Damned essential viewing.

- Jim Hemphill