Ludwig

Screening on Film
Recently Restored

Directed by Luchino Visconti.
With Romy Schneider, Helmut Berger, Trevor Howard.
Italy/France/West Germany, 1972, 35mm, color, 238 min.
Italian, German and French with English subtitles.
Print source: Luce Cinecittà

The most ambitious of all of Visconti’s films, Ludwig was the recipient of the energies that should have been channeled into the director’s dream of adapting Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Visconti would never be able to make the latter film after suffering a stroke following the completion of this four-hour behemoth. The film surrounds the excesses, dalliances, and eventual political censure of King Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845-1886), also known as the “Mad King.” Helmut Berger, who bears an uncanny likeness to the monarch, is at his most degenerate in the title role, but like many protagonists of Visconti films, the king is a clear substitute for the director. Builder of castles and patron of the Opera, Ludwig acts as a mirror of Visconti’s architectural and theatrical ambitions.