The kind of analogy which Visconti draws in [The Damned] between the history of the von Essenbecks and the rise of Nazism is by no means without precedent in literature. As artists, Visconti and Mann [particularly in his novel Buddenbrooks] have more than a little in common. The symbolic structure of Mann's novels in which 'characters and situations take on a representative symbolic character' incorporating a 'general human predicament' goes hand in hand with a minute attention to naturalistic detail. Both Mann and Visconti are stylists without being mere aesthetes. Mann's 'static and reflective' language and the distancing he achieves through his intrusion as a narrator might be said to be paralleled by Visconti's slow-moving camera which dwells on the remarkable textures and grouping he achieves in his work and which sometimes takes on an independent life of its own. In The Damned, for instance, during the scene of the birthday concert, the camera wanders amongst the spectators like an unseen guest lingering on individual faces in unhurried scrutiny. (pp. 47-8)

More specific parallels between Buddenbrooks and The Damned are to be found between Mann's conscious use of the Wagnerian leitmotif which becomes part of the symbolic structure of his work and Visconti's use of the same technique in this film. The strongest recurrent image in The Damned is that of fire. The opening and closing shots on an ominous fiery furnace is an image to which we often return, either directly or through analogy, as in the book-burning scene. Faces are frequently shown lit in a red glow, as if reflecting flames. (p. 48)

The suggestion of impending doom in the ominous smoke and flames of the opening shot, and the ill-fated marriage which leads to death, are straight out of Wagner's Götterdämmerung itself. We are reminded of the way Visconti uses Verdi in his earlier operatic film Senso. This begins with a performance of Il Trovatore in Venice—we are told it is Spring 1866 and that the Austrian occupation of Italy is coming to an end. The camera moves between stage and audience until the chorus begins a call to arms. The audience is roused to demonstrate in favour of the national cause and there is considerable confusion out of which an Italian patriot challenges an Austrian officer to a duel. The camera movement between stage and audience and the effect of the opera in inciting action amongst the audience sets the tone of the whole film. Visconti has said that he wished to show the way in which the melodrama of the stage carried over into the action of the audience and principal characters of the film.

In The Damned, Visconti once again makes use of this kind of interplay between the associations of Wagnerian romantic epic and the behaviour of those it inspires. Significantly, there is no musical reference to Wagner. The performance on stage which leads into a wider performance, again including the spectators, is an amateur concert. In place of the heroic Brunnhilde we are shown not merely a contemporary sex symbol, Dietrich, but a debased pastiche of her appearance and performance. The song Martin sings as Dietrich comes from The Blue Angel , a film which deliberately presents its characters as actors and is concerned with the sado-masochistic humiliation of a man by a woman…. [The] humiliation of Martin by his Mother, analogous to that of Herr Unrath by Lola-Lola, is a symptom of a state of mind peculiarly receptive to Nazism. Thus through its cinematic and literary associations, Martin's act symbolizes something of the state of...