Product Description

The meticulously reconstructed story of the last King of Bavaria who was crowned in 1864 at the age of twenty.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16016 in VHS
• Released on: 2000-10-03
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Formats: Color, Letterboxed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: French, German, Italian
• Number of tapes: 2
• Running time: 231 minutes

Customer Reviews

My Favorite Visconti Film!
An absolute perfect film by craftsman Luchino Visconti about the "Mad" King of Bavaria, Ludwig the second, played flawlessly by Helmut Berger. We go thru Ludwig's entire reign as King up till the time when he meets the love of his life,Empress Elizabeth (Romy Schneider, who's performances deserved an Oscar nomination, her pressence brings a certain uniqueness to every scene), his associating with Richard Wagner (Trevor Howard), and his angagement to Sophie (Sonia Petrowa). Every scene in this movie is perfectly done. The acting is amazing and superb, the costume designs by Piero Tosi and the production designs by Mario Chiari and Mario Scisci are fantastic and beautiful. The musical score by Schunann, Wagner, and Offenbach complements each and every scene by adding the emotional impact on every scene. The cinematography by Armando Nannuzzi is masterful and dazzling. And of course the directing by Visconti is incredible. He setsup everything in a way only he can. The screenplay by Enrico Mediolo and Visconti is intriguing. I can't think one of bad thing about this film, every second of it is flawless. Even though it's about 4 hours, none of it is wasted. But, I'm afraid due to the lenght of the film, some may avoid seeing it. This is the same fate Bertolucci's "1900" suffered. Also, this isn't as widely known as other Visconti films such as "The Leopard", "Death In Venice" and "The Innocent". Which, I can't understand why. This movie, in my opinion, is better than all three movies I just mentioned! It's an embracive,heartfelt, bittersweet movie, that stands as one of the greatest of all time. Every movielover should hurry up and buy this movie. No one will be disappointed with this movie, I can 100% assure it!

An outstanding movie for aestethicians
I disagree completely with Martin's review that Ludwig is a character so cold that no one feels any symathy for. But I do think that you have to have prerequisites to see this movie otherwise you won't appreciate it: you must be a Wagner's fan and generally you have to love art, you need to know the Tannhauser and Tristan und Isolde operas, you need to know a story of Richard Wagner and Cosima von Bulow; you need to know something about Austrian Empress Elisabeth, and you better have visited Ludwig's castels in Bavaria and also the city of Munich. Ludwig was an unusual man, and it would be inappropriate to judge him by ordinary standards. A great Visconti film, and if you like Death in Venice, you shoudl try this one, too.

Ludwig was originally in English
Ludwig in the original 1973 theatrical release was 246 minutes, as opposed to the present abridged version of 186 minutes. This historically faithful bio-drama was in English, while the recent release is dubbed Italian with English subtitles. (Practice your lip-reading and you will find in this edition the lip movement is English.) I find it difficult to comprehend why this Visconti masterpiece was released with dubbed Italian, and why the editing was so savage. The most serious omission is the entirely deleted epilogue which reveals that Ludwig's corpse had multiple bullet wounds when it was retrieved from Lake Starnberg. Why cut these minutes of historic fact ? This film was conceived as a masterpiece, but now it is turning into a compounded major mystery. I prefer the magnificent and coherent original version as Visconti released it, in English, -- all 246 minutes