Faulting Luchino Visconti’s lavish, fastidious Ludwig for historical inaccuracies makes about as much sense as faulting Shakespeare’s Richard III, or for that matter Laurence Olivier’s film of it (1955), on such grounds. It is equally foolish to worry that Visconti does not dwell on the actual political figure of Ludwig II, the Mad King of Bavaria. For all that, the restoration of the film to its 4-hour length—there have been four different versions of Visconti’s film, and the one I saw at the movies 35 years ago was hardly anything like the “complete” version now available—is indeed an important event. Ludwig is a fine, engrossing piece of work.
Ludwig was 18 years old when he became Bavaria’s last king, and a unifying theme of Visconti’s splendiferous achievement turns on the irony of a ruler who is always being “ruled” and manipulated by others. This is so much the case that Ludwig never enjoys his role and feels a prisoner to it. The style of the film suits this thematic substance: grand, stately, measured in its pace, but occasionally riled by one of Ludwig’s fits of pique or frustration. At those moments Ludwig is, briefly, like a wild beast rattling its cage. Eventually, adjudged to be insane and plotted against, he commits suicide, allowing Visconti to close on a superlative freeze frame that pictures the 40-year-old Ludwig as a hunted animal lying shot to death on the forest floor. This, too, is ironic; Ludwig was never permitted a wild creature’s freedom. Not cut out to be a monarch, Richard Wagner’s patron believed his primary purpose was to bring culture to his people and by doing so enrich their souls.
Visconti’s film casts history as a darkening fairy tale or romance that slips into paranoid reality. Ludwig builds castles that he never visits, bankrupting Bavaria as he regresses into childhood play and withdraws ever deeper into his solitudinous self, except for a stray gay encounter or orgy. Like everything else about Ludwig, his paranoia is suspect; this guy has real enemies. In opposing mirrors, an image of himself reflects a confused image of himself.
Visconti’s young lover at the time, Helmut Berger (dubbed into Italian by Giancarlo Giannini) is fine as Ludwig, but two other performances are brilliant: Romy Schneider as Elisabeth of Austria, Ludwig’s cousin, whom he adores but who will not marry him, rendering his rule empty, unsatisfying (fifteen years earlier, the same role had made Schneider a star); Helmut Griem as Count Duerckheim, Ludwig’s humble, tactful, loyal protector since childhood. One flashes back to the kind of ruler that Ludwig once promised to be; it is like Duerckheim. Griem’s acting is very moving.
Armando Nannuzzi’s color cinematography, especially at dusk and at night, haunts.
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Dennis Grunes 