The A posteriori le cinema series is an opportunity to celebrate the 7e art by revisiting key titles that celebrate important anniversaries.
There are artists quick to affirm that they would die for their art. In fact, and it is fortunate, the gesture rarely joins the word. Among the exceptions: the filmmaker Luchino Visconti who, after having exhausted himself so much shooting the aptly named fresco Ludwig, the twilight of the gods, was struck down by a crippling stroke; not that that dissuaded him from resuming the editing of his film. Alas, this conclusion to his “German trilogy”, conceived in the wake of the films the damned and Death in Venice, remained butchered during his lifetime. Restored since, this cursed masterpiece co-financed by Italy, France and Germany, had its premiere in Bonn in January 1973.
The film chronicles the mental and physical decline of Ludwig II of Bavaria, nicknamed “the mad king”. After acceding to the throne at the age of 18, he was interned and died drowned at the age of 40 in Lake Starnberg, in unclear circumstances.
On his side, the damned (1969) recounts the downfall of a wealthy family of industrialists under Hitler, while Death in Venice (1971) shows the debasement of a famous composer who, during a rest cure, is obsessed with the angelic beauty of an adolescent.
It will be understood that the decay of the wealthy is the unifying theme of the said trilogy.
Sumptuous result
Knowing this, it is hardly surprising that Visconti, a product of the Milanese nobility, had embraced Marxist ideals at the start of his career when he co-founded Italian neorealism. It is clear, however, that the attraction of ordinary people passed him. Indeed, the second part of his career, devoted to the splendours and miseries of the notables and the powerful, is characterized by a formal ambition at the antipodes of the first.
It was while he was looking for filming locations for the damned that Visconti thought of doing Ludwig. As Henry Bacon explains in Visconti. Explorations of Beauty and Decay :“In 1971, [Visconti] was working on an even grander project, the adaptation of The search for lost timewhich was postponed for financial reasons, so Visconti decided that the time had come to Ludwig. The House of Wittelsbach, former ruler of Bavaria, and the Bavarian civil service were very cooperative. He obtained permission to shoot in all the royal palaces and was able to use the family treasures in such a way as to recreate the right setting. »
To say that the result is sumptuous is an understatement. Rarely will we have seen a more opulent film, but opulent for good reason. Esthete, Louis II lived in a bubble, spending lavishly on the construction of fairy-tale castles, all gilding and frills.
The splendor and the intimate
However, despite the splendor deployed, Visconti never loses sight of his protagonist. In ReleaseSamuel Douhaire noted in this regard in 2001:
“Although shot with a blockbuster budget and incredible luxury in the sets and costumes, this historical film is resolutely intimate: an essential condition for understanding the personality of a hero who, as a good romantic, refused the reality of the day to better take refuge in the shadows of the night. In front of Visconti’s amorous camera, Helmut Berger reincarnates Ludwig the mad king, the virgin king, the moon king in a disturbing mimicry, from the angelic face of the coronation to the puffy face of the last days. »
In fact, like those who preceded him in the “German trilogy”, Ludwig/Louis II is enamored with beauty, but an inner ugliness translates into an appearance that has become monstrous at the end: see Martin (Helmut Berger again) in the damnedand Gustav (Dirk Bogarde) in Death in Venice.
Visconti had many reasons to be attracted by a project like Ludwig. Gaia Servadio, a relative, summarizes in her book Luchino Visconti. A biography : “There is the idea of Ludwig II as a man out of his time, there is the love for Wagner [Visconti espérait à l’époque monter L’anneau du Nibelung à l’Opéra de Milan] and, more modestly, the concern to build […] Visconti also had a mania for “building” houses, for leaving a trail of villas and towers in his wake. And there was homosexuality, but not with the guilt that haunted Louis II. »
At the time, Luchino Visconti was having a tumultuous affair with Helmut Berger: “There was an important reason, however, for Visconti to film Ludwig as soon as possible: it was a way to consecrate Helmut Berger as an actor,” says Gaia Servadio.
The film was therefore made, but Visconti lost his health in it and, if he continued to form a couple with Berger, their relationship was always marked by crises and torments: a great sick film for a great sick love.
Speaking of great love, Ludwig explores the chaste one that Louis II felt during his short life for his cousin Sissi, Empress of Austria. She who had however sworn that she would never play this role again having revealed it, Romy Schneider agreed to take it back for Visconti.
Forever an enigma
The day after the premiere, the Bavarian government expressed its outrage to the producers regarding the homosexuality – yet documented in his diary – of the late king. One hour of material was amputated from the film, whose duration of 173 minutes already constituted, for Visconti, a painful compromise. Too weak to fight, he couldn’t change anything, and other countries pulled out the scissors.
In 2017, Arrow Video carried out a meticulous restoration of the 173-minute version that Visconti hated, and especially of the 238-minute version, in keeping with his original vision.
That year, Samuel Petit, of the Cinémathèque française, wrote ecstatically: “A demiurgic, feverish, flamboyant and fascinating work, sometimes qualified as “decadentist”, Ludwig remains apart in the filmmaker’s career, due to its artistic ambition, its status as a cursed film, but also because of the many turpitudes that occurred during its preparation, its production, and its various montages! »
Note that despite its “incomplete” nature in Visconti’s eyes, Ludwig was well received by the European press, winning the prizes for best film and best direction in Italy, in addition to earning a special mention for its star.
When the film was released in France, Olivier Nicklaus wrote in Les Inrockuptibles that one could read “everything” Visconti in Ludwig“a meditation on a collapsing universe, on the role of the artist, individual freedom, madness and death”.
In the United States, on the other hand, we hated it. Unimpressed in advance by the style of the filmmaker, Pauline Kael, of New Yorker, reproached Visconti for his too little “frivolous” treatment. Vincent Canby, of New York Timesheadlined “A Study in Depravity.”
Years later, in the same newspaper, Joshua Barone will rather evoke an “elegiac, immersive and ultimately tragic” film when approaching the dimension queer of the “German trilogy”.
In view of the fate of Louis II, “tragic” is the right word. Moreover, during the outcome, Visconti keeps the mystery surrounding the death of the sovereign intact. It was in this case the most beautiful tribute that the filmmaker could pay to Louis II, who once wrote to a friend: “I want to remain an enigma forever, for others, and even for myself. »
The film Ludwig, the twilight of the gods is available on iTunes in its 238-minute version in Italian, s.-ta