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The overlooked forerunner is Minnelli's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, thus Ingrid Thulin as the Baroness and Reinhard Kolldehoff's striking emulation of Lee J. Cobb. Metallurgical hellfire gives way to the lavish family gathering, the birthday of the patriarch (Albrecht Schoenhals) is interrupted by news of the Reichstag fire, the old man is slain amid satin sheets before dawn. The Nazi regime is a change in management, a new chancellor "with a weakness for big industrialists" suits the ambitious executive (Dirk Bogarde). Alliances and negotiations, always in the shadow of the smiling SS officer (Helmut Griem). "Certain things are not done halfway," Luchino Visconti pursues his demonic soap opera all the way through. The central figure of New Germany is the scion (Helmut Berger) explicitly linked to Weimar cinema images, introduced in Dietrich's top hat and stockings from Sternberg's The Blue Angel and later seen trembling from sick urges like Lorre in Lang's M. Mania requires funding and aristocrats are ready and willing, Hegel's crushed flower is invoked for the elimination of obstacles, a spreading poison is the effect sought and achieved. "The true miracle of the Third Reich," namely complicity, red and green and blue lights flashed on collective sallow skin. The Night of the Long Knives is a voluminous Stroheim wallow adjusted to the rise of Hitler and the fall of censorship, the upshot is a panorama of blood-splattered beefcake. "A ruthless logic" and a swamping torpor, hollow luxury further degraded by roving zooms. The scion's final form is in full regalia, just a lateral move for the molester overseeing Mom's wedding-execution. "All the power, or nothing." Fassbinder goes on to analyze this nightmare six ways from Sunday, and Brass in Salon Kitty clarifies it by helpfully scraping off its patina of art. With Umberto Orsini, Renaud Verley, Charlotte Rampling, Florinda Bolkan, Nora Ricci, and Irina Wanka.
--- Fernando F. Croce |