Rent Ludwig (1972)

Epic - Ludwig review by Pete W

Of epic length at nearly 4 hours, this film feels that it needs a good edit to get an hour at least off the running time. Taking its lead from one of main characters - Wagner - it fails to sustain the viewers interest throughout. Which is a shame because it is an interesting historical story with a good performances from a number of actors - Helmut Berger has to carry the film. But it is obvious that the actors are all speaking different languages which have then been dubbed into Italian. Visconti also skirts round the sexual confusion which afflicts Ludwig.

A Wagnerian biographical epic that is probably a bit too long - Ludwig review by Philip in Paradiso

At the start of the film, we are in the city of Munich, in 1864. Ludwig II (Helmut Berger) is only 18 when he is crowned King of Bavaria. The young monarch is more interested in the arts and in culture than in anything else. He provides composer Richard Wagner with lavish support, encouraging the musician to settle down in Munich. The movie develops from there, covering the entire reign of Ludwig II, who soon develops a keen and costly interest in architecture, having extravagant castles built all over Bavaria.

Overall, the movie is structured in a predictable way, as the narrative follows the chronology of the king's reign and his life. Ludwig II, who was born in 1846, reigned from 1864 until his death in 1886. This was also a period of transition in German history, with Prussia asserting growing control over the fate of the German states, at the expense of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The film is historically accurate in most respects, it would appear, in terms of how it presents the chain of events, the king's character, etc. ; everyone speaks Italian, however, which is odd in a way, as the story takes place in Bavaria, mainly.

It is a good film (in Italian with English subtitles), a kind of romantic, epic biography, given the fact its central character is a tormented young man fascinated with Wagnerian myths and Wagner's musical genius. The film is also fairly slow, albeit never boring, and probably overlong (at nearly 4 hours). There is something a bit ponderous and predictable about the portrayal of Ludwig, the mad king, even though Luchino Visconti is never simplistic in the way he approaches his complex and tragic subject. One thing that surprised me is the fact that L Visconti, overall, does not really make the most of the aesthetic and spectacular potential of the backdrop to the king's story, namely those castles and palaces he had built all over his kingdom. Given how extravagant and Disney-like some of them are, we get a glimpse of them, but I feel that much more could have been made of those settings.

Overall, a good movie and a well-made classic, where Romy Schneider as Empress Elisabeth of Austria (or Sissi) shines through with her radiant beauty (but her part is a fairly minor one in the film, unfortunately).

The long goodbye - Ludwig review by LR

Visconti's film about Ludwig, the mad King of Bavaria, has many interesting episodes within it, for example, the story of Ludwig's excessive admiration for Wagner and his music, admiration which inspired him to fund Wagner recklessly, to the extent that the Government of Bavaria became alarmed. Visconti uses a lot of Wagner's music on the soundtrack, which is entirely appropriate, given the heroic dimension to Ludwig's life and the operatic melodrama of its highlights. The reconstruction of the period is well done, as one would expect after The Leopard.

So it is a shame that the film is quite tedious in places. Visconti takes four hours to tell the story and there is nothing to justify that length. I felt that David Lean could have achieved the same positive effects much more economically. Part of the problem seems to be that Visconti is not sure what point he is trying to make - something about class, inequality, aesthetic elitism, sexual repression, aristocratic integrity versus bourgeois penny-pinching, etc. The lack of thematic focus results in a flabbiness of narrative. Not a magnificent failure, nor a flawed masterpiece. Just a potentially interesting story badly told.