El rey loco

There is a generation divide, as always with cinema, and it is obvious with regards the Visconti's film and the earliest Käutner's version. In the modern times, when it is commercially fashionable to insist on the more prurient aspects of one's biography and when crude obscenity has replaced suggestiveness, it is quite understandable that younger generations should far prefer the eroticism and nauseating aestheticism of Visconti. As a man in his seventies, I must say I was deeply moved by the Ludwig portrayed by Käutner. The camera-work is excellent, the Wagnerian musical background sublime and the rendering of the end of the King quite gripping. It is a great injustice to compare this film with the Sissi series.