Product Description

Luchino Visconti's Complete Four Hour Masterpiece Digitally Restored and Re-Mastered!

Director Luchino Visconti (The Leopard, Death in Venice) brings his famed majestic style to this lavish and operatic portrait of Ludwig II (Helmut Berger), the 19th century `mad king' of Bavaria. Tormented by his unrequited love for his cousin, Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Romy Schneider), coupled with his obsession with the music of Wagner (Trevor Howard), Ludwig retreats into a fantasy world - building fairytale castles and ultimately losing his already-fragile grip on his sanity.

Featuring Over 2 Hours of Bonus Features:
Luchino Visconti "Life as in a Romance" Documentary
Silvana Mangano "The Scent of Primroses" Documentary
Piero Tosi Interview with Carlo Lizzani

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17239 in DVD
• Brand: Koch International
• Released on: 2008-10-14
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: Italian
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 238 minutes

Amazon.com
Modern movies are short on elegance, but Luchino Visconti's Ludwig has elegance to burn. It's not only the sumptuous and scrupulously realized depiction of 19th century royal ceremony and trappings, which gleam with old world glamor; it's also Visconti's long, fluid scenes and the subtle play of emotions in the faces of beautiful Helmut Berger (as Bavaria's King Ludwig II) and even more beautiful Romy Schneider (as his cousin Elisabeth, Empress of Austria). From his coronation to when he was deposed due to mental illness, Ludwig was a sad, eccentric figure, obsessed with the mythic operas of Wagner (played by Trevor Howard, Brief Encounter) and building fantastic (and woefully expensive) castles. Ludwig follows the monarch's slow collapse with compassion and nuance. The movie is full of odd, languid scenes, such as when Ludwig, lying in bed, has a visiting actor deliver a romantic speech over and over--Berger's haunted face and the buzz of servants constantly tending to his whims make this sequence both comic and unsettling. Many will find this four-hour-long movie hopelessly slow, but Visconti's portrayal of the strange, arid life of royalty--indulged and lavish, yet deprived of meaning--has a hypnotic power. The dvd includes an excellent documentary about Visconti (who also directed The Leopard and White Nights) and another about actress Silvana Mangano (who also appeared in Visconti's Death in Venice). --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

This is the complete theatrical cut, it's NOT a cut version, people!
The two comments about this being a cut version are misleading. This is the complete theatrical version as released at 238 minutes. There WERE various cut versions that the producers released without the director's approval, but this is not one of them. It's the version Visconti sanctioned to be released at the time. To speak of the only version worthy of release as being a 6 hour version is certainly a bit extreme. Would you refer to the approved theatrical release of Bergman's Fanny and Alexander as cut?

Visconti's lesser known major opus
I'm so glad this film finally has been re-released in the American market.
The scope, cinematography, and character development is excellent. The gradual deterioration and dethronement of Ludwig is very well represented.
The question as to whether Ludwig is a genius or a madman- or a combination of both- is handled sensitively and intelligently. The portrayal of his enduring love of his cousin (Romy Schneider in one of her finest and most controversial roles) is excellent, as is the portrayal
of the wily genius, Richard Wagner, by Trevor Howard, Ludwig, played adroitly by Helmet Berger. is victimized by a lack of royal mentoring and the very common inbreeding that often afflicted European royalty. All in all, the historical representation is enlightening as exemplified by the backdrop of Bismark's consolidation of the disparate German kingdoms into modern Germany in 1870. I was ALSO impressed by the representations of Ludwig's castle without rooms, and his underground grotto with swan boots in a spring. The film gets pretty bizarre at times, and the ending in particularly puzzling and strangely justified.


I've seen this four times and each time I find something new and interesting. On the other hand, the film is long with subtitles which may turn off much of the American audience. I feel this movie is most like another Visconti masterpiece "The Leopard." which also depicts the
demise of the preeminence of European monarchies in the nineteenth century. Also the obsessive homoerotic element is reminiscent of Visconti's
adaptation of Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice. For someone who loves first rate European "art films;" Ludwig is a real boon!

Great effort by Visconti!
People who think tis is the cut version, please check the data at imdb.com. Only the extras that gave the illusion that the movies was short. I also bought te Region 2 DVDs and they are the same. They only have extras about Mr Visconti review of other movies.
Nowadays, people don't want to sit trough a film that is more than 3 hours long. A lot of newer movies had to be cut to about 2 hours because of people who is too quick to judge...