Berger worked for everyone from the high-brow likes of Joseph Losey and Vittorio De Sica to the tawdry likes of Umberto Lenzi and Jesus Franco. He finally ended his career in a valedictory capacity, as the screen’s regal gremlin king in the stupendous “Saint Lauren” by Bertrand Bonello and Albert Serra’s impish “Liberté.”
Here’s a celebration of “Ludwig,” a 1973 film directed by Luchino Visconti, the cinema’s great aristocratic esthete. It’s his most soul-bearing love letter to the late Helmut Berger, and a look at what happens when you search heedlessly for the most splendid things in life and let everything else fall to ruin.
To watch more of Scout Tafoya’s video essays from his series The Unloved, click here.