Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

popcorninhell The history of French cinema, for better or worse, is largely tethered to two boad-sweeping movements; the Poetic Realism movement and the Nouvelle Vogue. Both periods expanded the limitations of film technique while constantly calling into question grammar and form. Populated with names like Godard, Varda, Renoir and Carne, these movement most importantly laid the foundation for auteur theory (the notion that a film is a product of the director like a novella to an author).Rene Clement is not a member of either of these movements. Considered too young for the poetic realism and too old for the French New Wave, Clement was dismissed by Francois Truffaut as part of the Cinema du papa (Your dad's cinema); a blanket term for French filmmakers who try to mimic the bloated spectacle of Hollywood. Yet anyone who gives Forbidden Games (1952) or Purple Noon (1960) a chance can clearly see a talented filmmaker with a flair for docudrama and a taste for good-old-fashioned storytelling.Now granted The Damned does not reach the feverish heights of Purple Noon but it nevertheless oozes with the spirit of Americanized suspense while telling a story that's uniquely French. Set during the last months of the Third Reich, a group of Nazis and Nazi sympathizers have planned a daring escape from Europe via U-boat. Things however hit a snag after a close encounter with a Allied ship, forcing the boat to dock and kidnap a French doctor (Vidal). The doctor then bares witness to the escalating fanaticism of the U-boat's crew and occupants as they come to terms with the war ending.Filled with potboiler intrigue, calculating villains and frenetic action, The Damned brings to mind Hitchcock's slim but suspenseful war-period films like Lifeboat (1944) and Foreign Correspondent (1940). Yet unlike those films which played on the uncertainty of a wartime audience, The Damned has a foreboding sense of ennui. The narration provided by Henri Vidal puts you into the mind of the Doctor and his multiple attempts to escape from the clutches of the U-boat's occupants, which include fanatical SS Officer Forster (Dest), Wehrmacht General Von Hauser (Kronefeld), Italian industrialist Garosi (Giachetti) and his wife (Marly). His main motive is concentrated to that of sheer survival. He knows full well that the moment the wife's injuries are cared for, he's a dead man, so he cleverly uses any excuse to stay on as the resident doctor until better options arrive.Yet while the doctor may be absolved in his complicity to the Nazi cause, the film shades in the rest of the characters in sometimes quixotic ways. By virtue of being connected to the virginal Ingrid (Campion), Scandinavian physicist Eriksen (Hector) is absolved of his motivation to sell nuclear secrets to the highest bidder. The majority of the Nazi U-boat crew are seen in a positive and simplistic light; a cadre of men just wanting to go home. Meanwhile Florence Marly's Hilde is savaged by the events of the story, not merely because she's a sympathizer but because she is also the mistress to the General. Paul Bernard plays Couturier a French newspaper editor (and the only representative of Vichy France) who is quietly kept under the rug until his final curtain call. One can't help but think that if Couturier's death wasn't so senseless, Clement was trying to build a story around justifying culpability.Regardless, The Damned is still a brilliantly shot film full of nail-biting suspense and claustrophobic mis en scene. Those who saw Das Boot (1981) or Run Silent, Run Deep (1956) will no doubt see similar visual cues which, I won't go far enough to say were inspired by The Damned but are strongly reminiscent of it. Rene Clement may not be one of the names immediately conjured up when thinking of French filmmakers but with quality films under his belt, he certainly doesn't deserve the Cinema du papa moniker.

Karl Ericsson I give this film five stars although I would rather have given it one star, because of the other reviews posted here. I cannot say for sure that this is René Clement's weakest film but it is by far not his best and it is the weakest I can remember to have seen. It contains the typical Nazi stereotypes that were maybe true, I don't know, but nevertheless boring. Had the Nazis all have been such idiots they could hardly have lasted six years in a war against practically the whole world. True, they were first supported by the west to scare off the Bolsheviks but later on they were pretty much alone against the whole world. When it came out maybe there were not that many films about Nazi stereotypes and so it must have seemed better thenö but I review the film from the impact it could have to day and in that lite it is at best vaguely interesting but on no account whatsoever comparable with Les yeux interdit, for example. I just went through the list of Clements films and of the ones I've seen, this is indeed his weakest.

writers_reign If there were such a position as Poet Laureate of the Second World War then Rene Clement would surely be a strong candidate for office. Beginning with La Bataille du rail at the very end of hostilities he returned to it in Le pere tranquil, Jeux Interdits and Paris, Brule-e-til. Les Maudits is arguably the star in his crown albeit he 'borrowed' the idea of hell as other people from Sartre and it's hardly new to use a small space as a microcosm of a larger society nevertheless - and without the use of major stars - he is able to rack up the tension like the master he is in this Henri Jeanson scripted tale of what might be called a Ship Of Foils, a mixed bag of Nazis, businessmen, mistresses etc all for one reason or another anxious to get to South America via submarine at the tail-end of the war. They make two stops en route, once to hijack a doctor after one of the passengers is injured and once in Africa where Marcel Dalio - the sole 'name' in the cast - has a warehouse. Clement skillfully builds the atmosphere and explores the conflicts that inevitably develop and offers no respite. It might be a typical Hollywood 'bomber-crew' movie but it is far from a Hollywood ending. Excellent.

dbdumonteil Among all René Clément 's movies dealing with WW2 ("jeux interdits" "la père tranquille" "Paris brûle-t-il?" ...) "les maudits" is simply the best.It might possibly be also Clement's best and I hope many comments will join mine soon.Nazis are escaping from Germany in 1945 now that the writing's on the wall.They will cross the sea in a submarine and take refuge in South America .Among them ,a general , a manufacturer and his wife (who's the general's lover),a scientist and his daughter,a French collaborator,a "Dritte Reich " die-hard and his minion .The woman is injured and they have no doctor.So,in Royan,they kidnap Guilbert who will be forced to share their desperate odyssey.Never maybe René Clément's direction has been so impressive:he uses with stunning results the enclosed atmosphere ,where the characters are prisoners:the audience like them is panting for breath.When the doctor enters the place ,the cinematography suggests a descent into hell.This submarine is really Hell's anteroom.Heightened sensibilities ,suppressed hatred,and reciprocal contempt show because of an unbearable lack of privacy .Guilbert ,the doctor (Vidal) understands that ,because he's not one of "them" ,his days are numbered ,and he's got to play cat and mouse to survive.So strong is the supporting cast that they overshadow the hero (Henri Vidal was a limited actor though).The strange homosexual couple ,Himmler's former henchman (Jo Dest) and his lover (Michel Auclair who gives the most fascinating performance of the whole movie;René Clément met him when he filmed "la Belle et le Bete" with Cocteau ,Auclair played la Belle's brother)are much more than secondary characters.It even includes SM (the nazi whips his minion).When we leave the submarine-coffin,all we find is the dark waters of an empty sea.And when we call at a harbor in South Africa,we find ourselves in Marcel Dalio's (who was part of "Casablanca" supporting cast!)office,the Venitian blinds of which are carefully lowered;or -in a scene so strong that it rivals the best of Hitchcock-,in the darkness of a coffee warehouse.This is a must-see movie,which was also remarkable for another reason:everyone speaks his language ,which was not that much obvious at the time,and it adds another suspenseful plus:the hero must not show he understands German.Henri Jeanson whose sense of humor is intact despite this thoroughly desperate noir story wrote astounding lines:"it looks like Noah's Ark,says the general at the beginning of the film,now all we need is the deluge".He will not be disappointed.You will not either if you try this Clément overlooked gem.