Visconti Icon Helmut Berger Dies: ‘The Damned’ and ‘Ludwig’ Actor Was 78
He was not on the list.
Helmut Berger, the Austrian actor and regular Luchino Visconti collaborator who become one of the most recognizable faces of European arthouse cinema in the 1960s, has died at the age of 78. The news was announced by the actor’s agent, who wrote that he died “peacefully but nevertheless unexpectedly” on his management company’s website.
Born in Austria in 1944, Berger moved to Rome and began pursuing an acting career after expressing disinterest in following his parents into the hospitality industry. He initially found work as an extra before meeting Visconti in 1964. The “Rocco and His Brothers” director gave Berger a small part in his 1967 film “The Witches,” an omnibus film also directed by the likes of Vittorio De Sica and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Berger and Visconti began a professional and romantic relationship that would go on to shape the European cinema landscape of the subsequent decade.
Berger’s most significant roles came in two of Visconti’s next projects: “The Damned” and “Ludwig.” In 1969’s “The Damned,” Berger played an unhinged fictional heir to a steel empire in Nazi Germany who was willing to bend his morals and do business with Hitler in order to fulfill his lusts for money and power (among other things). Three years later, “Ludwig” saw him portraying the infamous “swan king,” Ludwig II of Bavaria, in a film that explored the late monarch’s obsession with extravagance and the opulent lifestyle that eventually saw him declared insane. Both films saw him portraying powerful men with ambiguous sexualities, which helped establish Berger as one of his era’s most notable sex symbols.
He re-teamed with Visconti on the 1974 film “Conversation Piece,” which starred Burt Lancaster as an aging professor who develops a close relationship with a younger man (Berger). Many interpreted the project as an allegory for the close relationship that Visconti and Berger developed over their decade of working together. It was Visconti’s penultimate film before his 1976 death and the final project that the two men would work together on.
Berger continued to act until his retirement in 2019, memorably playing the titular role in Massimo Dallamano’s Oscar Wilde adaptation “Dorian Gray” and Frederick Keinszig in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather Part III.”
Filmography
(director in parentheses; all films except as noted)
1967: Le streghe (The Witches) (Luchino Visconti) as Young man at Hotel (segment "La Strega Bruciata Viva")
1968: The Young Tigers [it] (Antonio Leonviola) as Dario
1969: Sai cosa faceva Stalin alle donne? [it] (Maurizio Liverani) as Aldo
1969: The Damned (Luchino Visconti) as Martin Von Essenbeck
1970: Dorian Gray (Massimo Dallamano) as Dorian Gray
1970: The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Vittorio De Sica) as Alberto
1971: Un beau monstre (Sergio Gobbi) as Alain Revent
1971: The Bloodstained Butterfly (Duccio Tessari) as Giorgio
1972: La colonna infame (Nelo Risi) as Arconati
1973: Reigen [de] (Otto Schenk) as Der Junge Herr / The Youngman / Alfred
1973: Les Voraces [fr] (Sergio Gobbi) as Kosta
1973: Ludwig (Luchino Visconti) as Ludwig
1973: Ash Wednesday (Larry Peerce) as Erich
1974: Conversation Piece (Luchino Visconti) as Konrad Huebel
1975: Order to Kill (José G. Maesso) as Clyde Hart
1975: The Romantic Englishwoman (Joseph Losey) as Thomas
1976: Salon Kitty (Tinto Brass) as Helmut Wallenberg
1976: Victory at Entebbe (Marvin Chomsky) as Wilfried Böse
1977: Beast with a Gun (Sergio Grieco) as Nanni Vitali
1977: Paperback
1978: The Greatest Battle (Umberto Lenzi) as Lt. Kurt Zimmer
1978: The Fifth Commandment (Duccio Tessari) as Bernhard Redder
1979: Le rose di Danzica (Alberto Bevilacqua) as Baron Erich von Lehner
1980: Fantômas [fr] (Claude Chabrol, Juan Luis Buñuel) (TV miniseries) as Fantômas / Nanteuil / Gurn / Valgrand
1980: Eroina (Massimo Pirri) as Marco
1981: Mia moglie è una strega (Castellano & Pipolo) as Asmodeo
1982: Deadly Game [it] (Károly Makk) as Boris
1983: Femmes (Tana Kaleya) as Helmut
1983: Veliki Transport (V. Bulajic) as Colonel Glassendorf
1982: Victoria! La gran aventura de un poble (Antoni Ribas) as Tinent Rodríguez Haro
1983: Victoria! 2: El frenesì del 17 (Antoni Ribas) as Tinent Rodríguez Haro
1983–1984: Dynasty (television series) as Peter De Vilbis
1984: Victoria! 3: La razon y el arrebato (Antoni Ribas) as Tinent Rodríguez Haro
1985: Code Name: Emerald (Jonathan Sanger) as Ernst Ritter
1988: Faceless (Jess Franco) as Docteur Flamand
1988: Act of Revenge (Salvatore Nocita)
1989: La Puritana (Nini Grassia) as Carlo Martora-Doctor
1990: The Godfather Part III (Francis Ford Coppola) as Frederick Keinszig
1992: Adelaide (Lucio Gaudino) as Gilas
1993: Boomtown (Christoph Schrewe) as Richard Schwarzer
1993: Ludwig 1881 (F. Dubini / D. Dubini) as King Ludwig II
1995: L'affaire Dreyfuss (Yves Boisset) as Schwartzkoppen
1996: L'ombra del faraone (S. Ben Barka)
1996: Teo (Cinzia TH Torrini) as Signor Mastrovito
1997: The 120 Days of Bottrop [de] (Christoph Schlingensief) as Himself
1997: Last Cut (Marcello Avallone)
1999: Under the Palms (M. Kruishoop) as David
2004: Honey Baby (Mika Kaurismäki) as Karl / Hades
2005: Damals warst du still (R. Matsutani) as Fabian Plessen
2009: Zapping Alien (V. Zeplichal) as Jack / 00Y / Georg II
2009: Blutsfreundschaft (Peter Kern) as Gustav Tritzinsky
2009: Iron Cross (Joshua Newton) as Shrager / Vogler
2011: Mörderschwestern (Peter Kern) as Dr. Schleier
2013: The Devil's Violinist (Bernard Rose) as Lord Burghersh
2014: Saint Laurent (Bertrand Bonello) as Yves Saint Laurent en 1989
2015: Helmut Berger, Actor (Andreas Horvath), documentary film as himself
2016: Timeless (Alexander Tuschinski) as Professor Martin
2019: Helmut Berger, meine Mutter und ich (Valesca Peters), documentary film as himself
2019: Freedom (Albert Serra) as Baron von Walchern
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