The Damned (Les Maudits)
Directed by Réné Clément
Written by Réné Clément, Jacques Rémy, and Henri Jeanson; story by Victor Alexandrov and Jacques Companéez
1947/France
Spéva Films
First viewing/Amazon Instant
[box] I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea. — H. G. Wells [/box]
This didn’t deliver on the suspense promised by its premise but is interesting nonetheless.
In Oslo in the days immediately preceding the fall of Berlin, a ragtag group of Nazi bigshots hitch a ride on a submarine. The u-boat has orders to take them to South America, where they will try to initiate phase two of the New World Order. They are Mr. Garosi, an Italian, and his wife Hilde, a German, who communicate with each other in French. Hilde happens to be the mistress of the Wermacht General on board. Then there is SS officer Forster and his vicious boy toy Willy Morus, a French collaborator, and a mysterious Scandinavian scholar and his teenage daughter.
Hilde is injured en route so some of them sneak into a French port and kidnap a doctor. Dr. Guilbert rightly fears for his life and spends his time cooking up ways to make himself indispensable and escape plans. One of his ploys is to declare an outbreak of contagious disease which forces one of the cabins to be turned into an isolation ward with the passengers forced into even closer quarters than before. It takes very little to light the flame of discord among them.
By the time the u-boat arrives in South America, Hitler is dead and Berlin has fallen. The agent (Marcel Dalio) that the Nazis expected to smooth their entry has had a change of heart. From then on nothing goes right but the Germans in the group remain relentless in their loyalty to the old cause. This only increases the danger to Guilbert.
If this was intended to be a thriller, it lacked excitement. As a glimpse into the post-War French mindset it is quite interesting, however, and the film is certainly well-made. It was recently restored and looks beautiful.
DVD release trailer showing beautiful restoration work
