The Damned (1969)

Set in 1930s Germany at the onset of the Third Reich, a wealthy industrialist family (loosely based on Krupp family) doing business with the Nazis has an unstable and amoral heir (Helmut Berger) at its core. Directed by Luchino Visconti (THE LEOPARD). Visconti's portrait of a morally corrupt dynasty obsessed with power and their downfall is powerful stuff but it is far from perfect and its flaws are glaring. At over 2 1/2 hours, Visconti doesn't believe that less is more and some scenes are dragged out to the point of monotony. For example, there's a sequence based on the "night of long knives" that's interminable and could have been cut in half. The Nazi boys in drag and various stages of undress and having sex with each other might have been shocking in 1969 but today just looks tedious. Still, there's enough incest, pedophilia, rape and killing (the film received an X rating) to shock the still shockable. With Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin, Charlotte Rampling, Florinda Bolkan, Helmut Griem, Reinhard Kolldehoff and Umberto Orsini.