Les Maudits [The Damned] **** (1947, Marcel Dalio, Henri Vidal, Florence Marly, Fosco Giachetti, Paul Bernard) – Classic Movie Review 11,704

Director René Clément’s 1947 French film Les Maudits [The Damned] is an impressive, well-made and exciting thriller, set at the end of World War Two in 1945, as Germany is losing the war, about a bunch of escaping wealthy Nazis, an Italian count (Fosco Giachetti), his sick wife (Florence Marly), a French collaborator and a Norwegian scientist leaving from Oslo in a German submarine heading for South America.

The film is narrated by a French doctor (Henri Vidal) who has been kidnapped to tend the sick woman and realises he will be killed once the woman has recovered, so he tries to escape.

Clément directs in near-documentary style, handling the fictional action tautly within the restricted space of the submarine, while building up effective tension and fleshing out the stock character stereotypes, with the help of the intense actors. It was remarkable in its day for its wartime submarine interior and for its tracking shots through the U-boat.

The film was entered into the 1947 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Adventure and Crime Film (Prix du meilleur film d’aventures et policier).

In 2013, the Cohen Film Collection released The Damned on Blu-ray and DVD in the US, using a restoration by French distributor Gaumont.

The cast are Marcel Dalio as Larga, Henri Vidal as Docteur Guilbert, Florence Marly as Hilde Garosi, Fosco Giachetti as Garosi, Paul Bernard as Couturier, Jo Dest as Forster, Michel Auclair as Willy Morus, Anne Campion as Ingrid Ericksen, Andreas von Halberstadt, Lucien Hector as Ericksen, Kurt Kronefeld, Jean Lozach, and Karl Münch.

 © Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,704

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