William Dieterle | Ludwig der Zweite, König von Bayern: Das Schecksal eines Menschen (Ludwig II, King of Bavaria: One Man’s Fate) / 1930

a world of fantasies

by Douglas Messerli

 

William Dieterle and  Charlotte Hagenbruch (screenplay), William Dieterle (director) Ludwig der Zweite, König von Bayern: Das Schecksal eines Menschen (Ludwig II, King of Bavaria: One Man’s Fate) / 1930

 

The life of Ludwig II, the King of Bavaria from 1845-1886 has long fascinated writers and filmmakers for its whirlpool mixture of music, architecture, and madness, three of the most important elements of all great filmmaking. Add to that the vortex of Ludwig’s homosexuality and the subject becomes irresistible. Beyond the film under discussion there was a previous 1920 work directed by Rolf Raffé, Das Schweigen am Starnbergersee (the Silence at the Starnberg Lake), the famed 1973 version, Ludwig by Luchino Visconti—which I discuss at length in the volume which includes the early 1970s—Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s Ludwig – Requiem für einen jungfräulichen König (Ludwig: Requiem for a Virgin King) of 1972, and Peter Sehr and Marie Noëlle’s 2012 film Ludwig II.

     The best of these, Visconti’s failed masterwork, focuses quite understandably upon Ludwig’s relationship with his brilliant cousin, Elisabeth of Austria, on Ludwig’s major financing of Richard Wagner’s operas, and the sexual scandal regarding Wagner, Cosima von Bülow, and Wagner's conductor Hans von Bülow brought upon the Bavarian society, along with an extravagant portrayal of Ludwig’s homosexuality. Visconti does not ignore Ludwig’s castle-making and certainly dramatizes his last years of what one might describe as “castle” as opposed to “house” arrest, but obviously the other two aspects of his almost mythical life far outweigh his fairytale castle-making.

     William Dieterle’s 1930 version, on the other hand, foregoes nearly all mention of Wagner—Wagner becomes a brief matter of interest only upon the announcement of his death—and only briefly introduces Elisabeth (Trude von Molo). In fact, the film brushes aside the major portion of Ludwig’s life, focusing primarily on his late attempts to continue building his castles and the financial duress of the country leading to his psychiatrist Bernhard von Gudden’s (played by Theodor Loos) claim of Ludwig’s madness, his home imprisonment, and the strange incident of his and von Gudden’s death in the shallow waters of the Starnberg Lake, except for the latter, the least fascinating aspects of the “mad” King’s oracular life.

     For all that, Dieterle’s work (with Dieterle himself helming his film in the role of Ludwig) is oddly affecting. By the time this film gets its full wind, Ludwig has encountered enough difficulties along with his life-long hatred of public events and day-to-day governing, to justify some of the bizarre behavior we witness. Desperate to continue his building projects, indeed defining his life, now that his music-loving days are over, in terms of his construction projects, Ludwig nonetheless cannot be bothered to meet with bankers and other noted figures who might have loaned him the money. His life has become increasingly isolate, as, almost like a child, he takes tea with the imaginary reincarnations of the French King Louis XIV and Marie-Thérèse of Austria, dining at a small table between their two portraits hidden behind matching curtains.

     Wearing long sable robes, he speaks to a nonexistent mass gathering of his dreams. And when he is not checking out the construction of his palaces or perusing architectural renderings of the dream buildings, he gathers around him his male Greek statues.

     The film in a remarkably honest portrayal of his sexuality—for 1930—lays Ludwig out on a divan as he holds up a naked Greek athlete, asking his assistant to pose in a position similar to the statue while he conjures up a homosexual orgy for the white and black statuary which topple down upon one another in a grand pictorial montage of a male-on-male fuck-fest. For one grand moment we observe a look of absolute pleasure on his usually worried face before he regains his consciousness of where his imagination has carried him, smashing one of the statures to the floor in frustration and anger over his own temporarily openly expressed desires.

     With the exception of the pornographic Le Ménage moderne du Madame Butterfly of 1920 and the other pornographic films I discuss, this scene is perhaps the most overt depiction of gay sex to date.

   Strangely, however, critics have written about only in hushed terms such as that expressed, for example, by Peter Hourigan in his essay “King Ludwig II of Bavaria: Representations in the Cinema 1920–1986” in Senses of Cinema:

 

“There is also, as the opening title promises, a deeper understanding of his personality, even if some aspects cannot be explored in depth. There is a telling scene, hinting at his homosexuality. The King receives a consignment of classical statues, Greek studies of male nudes. One is of an athlete standing, another depicts two naked wrestlers. As Ludwig admires them, a cut suggests he is also thinking how his manservant would look in the same stance as one of the athletes. It is a well-handled, discreet scene, but when Ludwig smashes one of the statues, we can certainly read that as suggesting he feels tormented by his sexuality.”

 

     Yet Dieterle’s representation, just as in his hand-holding prisoners in Geschlecht in Fesseln (Sex in Chains) of two years earlier, is anything but discreet in its radical representation of male physical contact. Unlike the more coded kissing scene in William A. Wellman’s Wings there is no other manner in which to interpret the scene, the figures obviously not preparing for war or appearing in an aerial dance in Ludwig’s imagination. Here, they are quite obviously bowing to their sexual desires.

      And despite all his fantasies, the frank expression of his sexuality, and the constant reckonings of reality made by the endless government assistants and royals surrounding him, Dieterle’s Ludwig is portrayed quite sympathetically, a man loved by his people despite his hermit-like existence and being hated by the conservative forces of the establishment. The decision to declare him insane is presented as a backstage and backstabbing plot, with a sniveling servant-spy who is so detestable that he might have appeared in an early 20th century theater or film melodrama. When even his faithful friend Paul, historically presumed to possibly be one of his numerous male lovers, can no longer convince the governmental authorities, he has no choice but to bow out as the noose slowly is tightened around Ludwig’s neck.

      Even when he is told what is happening, Ludwig refuses to flee, attempting to stand his ground, at first besting the small cadre of those who would oust him with the locals and his personal guards protecting their King against the attempted coup.

      Eventually, of course, the authoritarians, clearly dismissive of his major contributions to the worlds of music and architecture, win the day, putting up wire fencing around all the Starnberg Castle windows, removing all door handles and replacing them with locks, and drilling spy holes into the walls in a manner that is so horrific that even when Ludwig begins to show signs of true madness, we feel for him while hating the others.

      In one terribly frightening scene he discovers that his image in the mirror, unlike Narcissus, is behaving in manner entirely opposed to his own feelings and expression of them. The man in the mirror, in this case, suddenly has developed a mind of his own, a troubling reality that Ludwig cannot permit if he is to retain his last vestiges of sanity. He finds it ultimately soothing when, as reaches out for the image, it too touches his hand almost as in reassurance.

     The final scenes where he goes on an evening stroll with von Gudden when both were found drowned in the shallow waters of the lake, attempts to provide a logic to the mysterious facts by von Gudden gently commenting on his own role regarding Ludwig’s insanity and the former King’s justifiable anger during which he pulls the psychiatrist into the waters and holds him under, after which during the strenuous effort, he himself suffers a heart attack, himself falling into the waters.

      Most historians, however, have long suspected that others killed him, murdering the physiatrist as well in order to cover up just what happened in the manner in which this film has concocted events.

      In the end, if this Ludwig is not the most interesting of Kings, the film implies that events conspired against the impossible dream, as they must in most societies where visionaries meet up with small-minded and selfish politicians. Royalty was already a dying breed. As one commoner says to another in a Bierstube near the end of the film: “If they wanted to declare all kings insane on those grounds, soon there wouldn’t be any left.”

 

Los Angeles, December 17, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2022).