The Damned (Götterdämmerung) is a 1969 historical-drama film directed and co-written by Luchino Visconti, and starring Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin, Helmut Berger, Helmut Griem, Umberto Orsini, Charlotte Rampling, Florinda Bolkan, Reinhard Kolldehoff and Albrecht Schönhals in his final film. Set in 1930s Germany, the film centers on the Essenbecks, a wealthy industrialist family who have begun doing business with the Nazi Party, and whose amoral and unstable heir, Martin (played by Berger in his breakthrough role), is embroiled in his family's machinations. It is loosely based on the German Krupp family of steel industrialists from Essen.

Plot

In Germany in early 1933, the Essenbecks are a wealthy and powerful industrialist family who have, reluctantly, begun doing business with the newly-elected Nazi government. On the night of the birthday of the family's conservative patriarch, Baron Joachim von Essenbeck, a member of the old German nobility who detests the upstart Adolf Hitler, the family's children have prepared performances. Joachim's grandnephew Günther plays a classical piece on his cello, while his grandson Martin performs a drag performance, which is interrupted by news that the Reichstag is burning. Assuming Hitler will use this incident to seize even greater control, Joachim announces at dinner that he is replacing Herbert Thallman, an outspoken anti-Nazi who is married to Joachim's niece Elizabeth, with his boorish and unscrupulous nephew Konstantin, who is an officer in the SA, as vice president of the family steelworks.