Sadonazism in Film, Part 4

Malcolm McDowell as captain von Berkow

3,749 words

Karel Veliky

Original in Czech: https://deliandiver.org/sadonacismus-ve-filmu-cast-4/ 

Translated by Ondrej Mann

“We must categorically reject the attempt, made primarily by W. Reich, to derive the instinct for destruction from the repression of the instinct for pleasure.”

—Julius Evola, Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex.

Visconti’s authority and the international success of his The Damned (see Part II) were reflected in the fact that in the early 1970s there was perhaps no film about “fascism” or “Nazis” that did not take into account their “sick sexuality.” The Conformist (1970, dir. B. Bertolucci), based on the novel by Alberto Moravia, depicts the behavior of a man (played by J. P. Trintignant), a weak-willed intellectual for whom the only acceptable way out of his own insecurities is to “merge with the totalitarian crowd.” His lack of self-confidence stems from childhood trauma: as a boy, he was raped by an older man and is convinced that he killed his rapist when he shot at him. His efforts to overcome these complexes, feelings of humiliation and guilt, combined with states of exclusion, [1] then compel him—according to the Freudian scheme—to maximum adaptability: to a determination to fit into the course of social events at any cost, including “political murder.” This interpretation of “submission to fascism” is thus another illustration of Sartre’s equation “passive pederasty–active collaboration”. However, this is by no means a curiosity projected in obscure theaters somewhere on the periphery—The Conformist appealed to a wide audience and, thanks mainly to its artistic qualities, is still considered one of the best works of Italian cinema!

While in The Conformist Bertolucci—making no secret of his Freudian-Marxist inspiration—showed why even “intelligent people” joined fascism, in the second half of film 1900 (1976), an almost six-hour epic of “class struggle,” he portrayed a “born fascist” in the form of a demonically sadistic administrator named Attila (another nomen omen). The opening scene (“Struggles, Loves and Hopes”) is telling, with Attila demonstrating his fascist determination by killing an innocent animal. He continues by shooting defenseless villagers and sexually murdering a little boy. The interpretation of fascists as rapists of society undoubtedly reaches one of its dubious peaks here. Let us recall that Bertolucci began his career as Pasolini’s assistant. . .

Sexual undertones are more or less evident throughout the entire series of films depicting the frenetically decadent 1920s and 1930s as the “breeding ground” or “fruit” of fascism. This is the case in the film Cabaret (1972, dir. Bob Fosse) with its famous scene in which a young blond “Nazi” sings the song “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” so convincingly that it was cut from the film for screenings in Germany and became the anthem of the nationalist youth in Italy for a long time after the band La Compagnia dell’Anello included it in their repertoire, without anyone minding that it was supposedly composed by two Jews. [2]

Divina creatura (1975, dir. Giuseppe Patroni Griffi) captivates with Laura Antonelli’s charms, an abundance of literary references, the youthful exuberance of Michele Placido, and the acting of Brit Terence Stamp (among others, the Messiah in Pasolini’s Theorem!) in the role of the main “hero,” Prince de Bagnasca, whose bedroom is decorated with paintings by Klimt and Moreau, but who otherwise spends his fortune on drugs and love affairs. In the latter, his rival in passion is Marcello Mastroianni as Michelle Barra, a fascist marquis: the final scene from a wild party that ends with Giovinezza (the official hymn of the Italian National Fascist Party) sung by drunken “reactionaries” and their prostitutes to the accompaniment of a piano, is significant.

Seven Beauties (1975, dir. L. Wertmüllerová) remains undeservedly much better known, a kind of “negative” of The Night Porter (and one of many films reducing the German vocabulary to “los,” “schneller,” “Achtung,” and “Schweinehunde”). This was probably also due to the personality of the director, who had long rivaled Cavani in salon scandalism and, with this film, became the only female director nominated for an Oscar for a long time! G. Giannini’s entertaining film problematizes the glorified “Latin lover” type in Italy.

The surreal, Kafkaesque Mr. Klein (1976, dir. J. Losey) sets the romantic motif of the double in German-occupied Paris and a nearby castle. Alain Delon plays a greedy antique dealer who unscrupulously profits from Jews who suddenly find themselves in dire straits by buying up their property at bargain prices (the beautiful “Gnostic-Kabbalistic” painting at the beginning!), until he “becomes a Jew” and ends up being transported instead of his mysterious alter ego (according to Freud, the unconscious part of the psyche). Shots from medical examinations of those to be evacuated, or from a cabaret, clearly show where Losey drew some of his inspiration. However, the film aroused displeasure for other reasons. On the one hand, it showed that there were Jews who had enough money to simply pay for their departure from France without having to make any significant changes to their lifestyle, and on the other hand, it emphasized the cold indifference of the French (unless they were directly relieved) to the fate of their Jewish neighbors. Before boarding the trains, these Jews were “concentrated” in the city stadium. Everyday life goes on as normal.

The Serpent’s Egg (1976, dir. I. Bergman) shows Berlin in the 1920s as a “hopeless world from a nightmarish dream, in which all the horrors of approaching fascism are already looming—like a fully developed snake visible through the thin shell of an egg.” The snake takes the form of a doctor who conducts various experiments in his clinic, where several murders have taken place. The good is represented by Abel, an American Jew. And of course, cabaret is a must. [3]

Nest of Vipers (1977, dir. T. Cervi), the “snakes” are already mating—this time in Venice. Despair (1978, dir. R. W. Fassbinder), based on Nabokov and with screenplay contributions from Moravian native Tom Stoppard, is, like Mr. Klein, based on the motif of the double, but also on the desire for death and the concept of “murder as a fine art” (Thomas de Quincey). The film, overflowing with “art deco decor,” reflects the “uncertain times” of the Weimar Republic with its Sturmabteilung in the streets through the eyes of a deranged factory owner of Jewish origin, an emigrant from Soviet Russia, in a disturbing performance by Dirk Bogarde (see “The Damned” and “The Night Porter”).

All these films of the seventh decade seem to be summed up in Just a Gigolo (1979, dir. D. Hemmings): a garish sex cabaret, gay Nazis, sadly comical weirdos, communist shadows, capitalists enjoying themselves, impoverished junkers. In short, the whole panorama of “decadent Weimar”—the decline of the West, perfect bittersweet kitsch. The cast is extremely exclusive: Marlene Dietrich in her last role, Baroness von Semmering, sings the melancholic chanson Just a Gigolo as the owner of a dubious dance hall, singer David Bowie, a few years after his “cocaine-fascist” period, [4] plays the fearless former Prussian officer Paul von Przygodsky, who, in the permanent crisis of the so-called “Weimar democracy,” ultimately becomes, fittingly, “just a gigolo.” David Hemmings, the most famous of Antonioni’s “Blow-Up,” then tries, as “Captain Kraft,” to permanently and unsuccessfully win Paul von Przygodsky over to National Socialist ideas, while singer Curd Jürgens lends his appearance to the obese “prince,” etc. The strangely peculiar tone of the film is undoubtedly influenced by the fact that a significant portion of the footage was destroyed by fire, so the final version is the result of an emergency edit. Best scenes: when Kraft, who lives in a disused Berlin subway wagon, plays Wagner on a gramophone to Przygodsky over the sound of passing trains and shows him Nietzsche’s writings; when Przygodsky, hit by a stray bullet in a street shootout between militants, ultimately becomes—unintentionally and unknowingly—”a martyr of the movement.”

Our list cannot be exhaustive, as Freudo-Marxist and Sadian influences have permeated even the most disparate genres. The Diary of Chambermaid (1964, dir. L. Buñuel), members of the Catholic “French Action” are pedophiles who rape and kill a minor, while the “Gothic” Horror Castle (1963, dir. A. Margheriti), with a disfigured Christopher Lee, refers to “Nazi torture chambers,” Shock Waves (1977, K. Wiederhorn) with Peter Cushing as Frankenstein, who, as a former SS officer on a Caribbean island, commands a unit of Nazi zombies called the “Totenkorps”—previews the recent Dead Snow (2009, T. Wirkola), in the thriller Marathon Man (1976, dir. J. Schlesinger), Dustin Hoffman plays a Jew interrogated by the sadistic “SS dentist” Szell (Laurence Olivier); the comedy Sturmtruppen (1977, dir. L. Samperi), the detective film The Night of the Generals (1967, dir. A. Litvak) and the drama The Old Gun (1975, dir. R. Enrico) all deal with the “excesses of military power,” while The Skin (1981, dir. L. Cavani), based on Malaparte’s novel of the same name (the title itself evokes the idea of “getting under the skin,” “skinning,” its cutting, sex, even cannibalism) boldly manifests the idea of replacing one “evil” with another: When the Americans, with substantial logistical support from the mafia, occupied the area around Naples in 1943 without resistance from the enemy, their presence led to the prostitution of the entire society. [5]—everything is now governed solely by what can be sold to the “allies” (poor mothers from the lowest classes sell their children, daughters and sons, to the “goat fuckers” of the Moroccan legions); The only ones who really profit from all this (e.g., from extortion money for German prisoners of war, who are fattened up for meat in local restaurants) are the “patriotic” mafiosi, who always manage to cheat the gullible Americans. [6]

The adventurous The Passage (1979, dir. J. Lee Thompson) deserves a separate mention, in which the family of Jewish professor Bergson (!) flees from the Nazis across the Pyrenees with the help of a tough Basque shepherd (Anthony Quinn). Malcolm McDowell (Alex from A Clockwork Orange, later Caligula) as the “fanatical SS captain von Berkow” who pursues them surpasses similar performances by Helmut Berger (The Damned, Salon Kitty, Code Name: Emerald), Dirk Bogarde (The Night Porter), Helmut Griem (The Damned) and Klaus Kinski (Five Into Hell, Heroes in Hell). Particularly memorable are the interrogation scene in the kitchen (“cut, cut”), the burning of a gypsy (“I’ll send him exactly where he sent me—to hell”), and the giant swastika on the captain’s underpants as he prepares to abuse the professor’s daughter. The clownery culminates when, in one shot, he puts a black comb under his nose to look like “you know who,” or when, bloodied and with a gun in his hand, he emerges from under tons of snow from an avalanche that Bask wanted to bury him under. [7]

Perversion as a “consequence of the liberated energy of social events” also penetrated behind the Iron Curtain, most clearly—unsurprisingly—in Yugoslavia, where the barrier was more permeable: The Fall of Italy (1981, dir. L. Zafranovič) thus situates, alongside the groundedness, naturalness, and vibrant beauty of the “domestic” landscape (sun, sea, wine, brandy), the vigorous people, and the nakedness of women, “foreign” fascism as a nightmarish D’Annunzio-esque theater (note the absurd performance of the Italian “colonel” associated with burning at the stake, or the “SS angel of death” who approaches the “scene” of a mock ritual execution on a sidecar! This is presented as something highly artificial and artistic. Add to this the “gags” and caricatures of Croatian Ustasha, Serbian Chetniks, and savagely “innocent” Circassians. The hammering of nails into the heads of those arrested in an Ustasha bus from Zafranovič’s Occupation in 26 Pictures (1978), in the special effects quality of Romero’s early productions, may have remained the most brutal thing that could be seen in the regular distribution network of cinemas in socialist Czechoslovakia. And the filming of a Nazi party at the town hall with a cavalcade of bare breasts is clearly inspired by both The Damned and Salon Kitty. The Hungarian-German film Mefisto (1980, dir. I. Szabó), based on Klaus Mann’s novel about a “pact with the devil” (read: with “Nazism”) concluded by Klaus Maria Brandauer in the role of actor Hendrik Höfgen—a variation on the “conformist” who lost his identity (symbolized by a mask) and “helped bring fascism into the world.” [8]

The Czech film Pramen života (Spring of Life, 2000, dir. M. Cieslar), based on a screenplay by Vladimír Körner (Údolí včel—The Valley of the Bees 1967), can be considered a late response to these films. Although the subtitle “A story about how even the greatest cruelties happen without cruelty” is more indicative of an elaboration and application of Arendt’s “banalization of evil.” The story of a poor Silesian girl, Gréta Weiserová, who is sent to the Isolde forest sanatorium to be raised in the spirit of a new order, is, in the director’s words, an attempt to “portray the entire system of the birth of a new generation of Germans as faithfully and impressively as possible for the period.” “Emphasis was placed on the authenticity of the details, the choice of locations for filming, the props, and the overall visual style (…) we conceived the film in the gray, lifeless colors of winter, which are illuminated by SS rituals dominated by the red color of blood,” explained Milan Cieslar. But what good is that? When it comes to the “dramatic relationship” between Grétka and the Jewish boy (the “cuckoo’s egg” motif)? even the evil Odillo—well cast by Karel Dobrý in the role of a cultivated SS officer—is powerless against such “screenwriting banality.” [9]

Sadonazism today

During the 1980s, the genre naturally fell out of fashion: The Berlin Affair (1985, dir. L. Cavani) is more of an elegant melodrama about lesbian love between the wife of a German diplomat and the daughter of the Japanese ambassador to Germany in the 1930s. Helmut Berger starred in the trash horror film Faceless (1987, dir. J. Franco)—an adaptation of Franju’s Eyes Without a Face—”played” a plastic surgeon who uses “experimental experience” from a “concentration camp,” but he did not surpass the perversion displayed in Behind the Glass (1986, dir. A. Villaronga).

The association of “fascism” with sexual deviance also began to offend. A construct whose foundations date back to the interwar period and deeper [10], could not be viable at a time when its essential elements (based on Foucault’s theses) had been transformed into cherished components of the “new proletariat” of oppressed minorities (instead of the bourgeoisified working class disappearing in favor of “services”). Perversion was therefore promptly removed from the list of the “roots of fascism” proclaimed by Leftists and liberals, which included fear, anger, envy, and frustration. Nevertheless, “sadonazism” fulfilled its “historical role”: it undoubtedly contributed to the viewer learning to perceive monstrosities and oddities almost as normality. S/M stylization thus moved from “hidden” cardboard dungeons, padded cells, and soundproof “laboratories” into the mainstream, from the sick minds of eccentrics of all kinds to television and from there into the imaginations of the middle class and the masses.

The 1990s, alongside the obvious pornography of Le bambole del Führer (1995, dir. J. d’Amato), also saw the birth of the rather exceptional  The Ogre (1996, dir. V. Schlöndorff). The protagonist is Abel, a Parisian car mechanic, a mentally retarded foundling, a “simpleton with the face of a murderer” (John Malkovich—who else?), who is sent to the front after being accused of raping a schoolgirl, where he is captured by the Germans. From the prison camp, he accidentally ends up serving in a hunting lodge, where Marshal Göring himself takes a liking to him for his humiliating simplicity. However, he only becomes a servant of true “Evil” when, in the nearby ancient castle of Count Kaltenborn, now home to a military academy for boys, Professor Blättchen, a professor of racial genetics, entrusts him with the task of finding Nordic-looking boys from the surrounding villages for the school. Abel, on horseback, in a long black cloak and with two Dobermans, becomes a local ghost. . . Although the film is overburdened with clichés (Abel’s “epiphany,” hiding a Jewish refugee, biblical metaphors, etc.), the “narrative” is at times impressive (boys living with the vision of an invincible Germany, refusing to surrender to Russian tanks), interesting (insights into the workings of the institution) and long controversial (Abel, as a “monster” devoted to something more knowledgeable and powerful, feels truly content for the first time, convinced that he is perfectly fulfilling his destiny).  11]

In the new millennium, Tinto Brass attempted to revive the genre with Black Angel (2002, dir. T. Brass), which he once again set in the Republic of Salò. [12] The film faithfully reproduces many of the images and motifs from the 1970s, which are also enthusiastically paid tribute to in the “Tarantinoesque” (=> Inglourious Basterds, 2008) trailer for the fictional Grindhouse: Werewolf Women of SS (2007, dir. R. Zombie). And even Pasolini might have turned pale before The Human Centipede (2009, dir. T. Six)! [13]

Film “sadonazism” can certainly be interpreted to a large extent as a self-projection of its creators, Jews, wheeler-dealers, Leftists, and other deviants (cf. e.g. “Viennese Actionism”). On the other hand, it is undeniable that many so-called “neo-Nazis” identify with this demonic, negative image, which explains why their “scene,” not only in the US, continues to attract so many weirdos (hence its impotence and numerous ridiculous features!). The influence on Scandinavian black metal, or performers such as Nachtmahr or Shadow Reichenstein, is obvious, as is the influence on various “collectors” (Pierluigi Concutelli, a militant of the New Order, calls them “armchair fascists”), “cosplayers” (as in “dress-up artists”), who adorn themselves and surround themselves with bizarre props and other junk. [14] After all, an SS uniform with a skull, daggers, and rings has about as much symbolic value after the post-Nazi film orgy as a headless Templar costume, a manga image, an evil character somewhere between Hellboy and Darth Vader, see the children’s “bogeyman” Beyond (2000, dir. A. Sandgren) or the sci-fi film Iron Sky (2011, dir. T. Vuorensola)—it has simply long been part of pop folklore.

Notes:

1. These stem not only from the fact that Trintignant’s Marcello Clerici (a clearly suggestive name, a cleric-intellectual) achieved the status of a respected philosopher, but—in the “spirit” of Freudianism—also from the “phallus” of a firearm, whose absolute power he “savored” at the age of thirteen by simply pulling the trigger.
2. John Kander and Fred Ebb. Note also Helmut Griem (alias SS Captain Aschenbach from “Twilight“), this time as the bisexual Baron Max.
3. See Stefano Vaj’s comments on the film The Serpent’s Egg in his note no. 24 on p. 21 of Locchi’s “The Essence of Fascism.” The best book on “Weimar decadence” remains Erich Kästner’s Fabian, a novella that was made into a film by Wolf Gremm in 1980.
4. On Bowie, see here.
5. The similarity to post-November developments in Czechoslovakia is striking! However, a performance in which a transvestite simulates childbirth so that, to the cheers of the crowd, a plastic baby boy with an enormous penis is “born” would today most likely be funded by EU funds for cultural development and equal opportunities. See the recent victory of the “bearded singer” in Eurovision. . .
6. Thanks to US military aid during the war (the use of Italian emigrants and smuggling routes for espionage, etc.) and its above-standard relations with US intelligence services, the mafia established its post-war influence, which extended to the highest echelons of the demoliberal regime.
7. McDowell’s counterpart is the “pure Nordic” Rutger Hauer as the “decent” SS-Sturmbannführer Xavier March in Fatherland (1994, dir. Ch. Menaul). The film is set in 1964, when the new Greater German Reich of Germania rules Europe and seeks to establish friendly relations with the US to help end the protracted guerrilla warfare behind the Urals (the expected arrival of President Kennedy coincides with the Führer’s 75th birthday celebrations). We mention this mainly because it was largely filmed in Prague: for example, the building of the former Federal Assembly of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic next to the National Museum, a structure standing on four double pylons, is used as an “SS office” and is truly heart-wrenching. . .
8. Further variations on these “conformists” can be seen in Ettore Scola’s films: the homosexual radio editor Gabriel in A Special Day (1977) and the collaborator figures-masks in Le Bal (1982). In terms of atmosphere, “Mephisto” is also very close to The Last Metro (1980, F. Truffaut).
9. Luděk Munzar still holds the top spot for Czech portrayals of SS officers. Watch him closely in “Vyznavači ohně” (Fire Worshippers), the second episode of the first series of the TV series about Major Zeman, as Dr. Wolf (!), an SS weapons doctor, who says with growing passion: “We are not defeated. The flame has not been extinguished, it is only smoldering. Every Act that sanctifies our idea is as pure as the fire we profess. The fire will break out again, the whole world will go up in flames. And on its ruins we will build a new, eternal Reich.” Jiří Štěpnička is also excellent as Rudolf Höller, a former “camp commander,” in Thomas Bernhard’s play Před penzí—”Before the Pension” (“The Jews will destroy all of nature!”), which was recorded by Czech Television.
10. Two random dates: in 1895, Oscar Wilde was sentenced to two years in prison and hard labor for homosexuality; in 1962, a new constitution legalized sodomy in Czechoslovakia.
11. Volker Schlöndorff dedicated the film to Louis Malle, for whom he worked as an assistant, probably also in memory of his Lacombe Lucien (1974). One interpretation claims that this occupation drama also “examines the phenomenon of collaboration as a consequence of mental disability.” However, Lucien is more of a simple, rural simpleton. We would like to remind you that Schlöndorff had already sketched out his vision of totalitarianism in The Handmaid’s Tale (1990).
12. The film features numerous flags with swastikas hanging around in a nonsensical manner, but there are also brief glimpses of young men dressed in uniforms of various armed forces of the Italian Social Republic Salo. For a more realistic take, see Blood of the Losers (2008, dir. M. Soavi) or even the old The Fascist (1961, dir. L. Salce). Also worth mentioning is Everybody Go Home! (1960, dir. L. Comencini).
13. Or the creators of such “blockbusters” as Awakening of the Beast (1970, J. M. Marins), Cannibal Holocaust (1980, R. Deodato), or Guinea Pig: Devils Experiment (1985, dir. Satoru Ogura) and Tokyo Gore Police (2008). Long live the free market!
14. See the film Zlopověstné dítě (The Ill-Fated Child, 2003, dir. L. Králová–M. Novák) about a young man who is fascinated by the evil of concentration camps and investigates how they function: he searches archives, interviews survivors, collects “souvenirs,” etc.

Special tips: Christopher Lee as Mr. Midnight in The Return of Captain Invincible (1982); Yukoku (1966, dir. J. Mishima) and Žižek’s Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006, dir. S. Phiennes).