Historical evocation of Ludwig, king of Bavaria, from his crowning in 1864 until his death in 1886, as a romantic hero. Fan of Richard Wagner, betrayed by him, in love with his cousin Elisabeth of Austria, abandoned by her, tormented by his homosexuality, he will little by little slip towards madness.
03-07-1973
3h 58m
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Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Director:
Luchino Visconti
Production:
Cinétel, Mega Film, Divina-Film, Dieter Geissler Filmproduktion
Key Crew
Costume Design:
Piero Tosi
Executive Producer:
Robert Gordon Edwards
Producer:
Ugo Santalucia
Screenplay:
Enrico Medioli
Screenplay:
Luchino Visconti
Locations and Languages
Country:
IT
Filming:
DE; FR; IT; MC
Languages:
en
Main Cast
Helmut Berger
Helmut Berger (born Helmut Steinberger, 29 May 1944) was an Austrian-born German film and television actor. He was most famous for his work with Luchino Visconti, particularly in his performance as King Ludwig II of Bavaria in Ludwig, for which he received a special David di Donatello award.
He appeared primarily in European cinema, but also acted in films such as The Godfather Part III and Iron Cross.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Helmut Berger, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Romy Schneider (born Rosemarie Magdalena Albach, 23 September 1938 – 29 May 1982) was a German-French actress. She began her career in the German heimatfilm genre in the early 1950s when she was 15. From 1955 to 1957, she played the central character of Empress Elisabeth of Austria in the Austrian Sissi trilogy, and later reprised the role in a more mature version in Visconti's Ludwig (1973). Schneider moved to France, where she made successful and critically acclaimed films with some of the most notable film directors of that era.
Howard was born in Cliftonville, Kent, England, the son of Mabel Grey (Wallace) and Arthur John Howard. He was educated at Clifton College (to which he left in his will a substantial legacy for a drama scholarship) and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), acting on the London stage for several years before World War II. His first paid work was in the play Revolt in a Reformatory (1934), before he left RADA in 1935 to take small roles.
Although stories of his courageous wartime service in the British Army's Royal Corps of Signals earned him much respect among fellow actors and fans alike, files held in the Public Record Office reveal that he had actually been discharged from the British Army in 1943 for mental instability and having a "psychopathic personality". The story, which surfaced in Terence Pettigrew's biography of the actor, published by Peter Owen in 2001, was initially denied by Howard's widow, actress Helen Cherry. Later, confronted with official records, she told the Daily Telegraph (24 June 2001) that his mother had claimed he was a holder of the Military Cross. She added that Howard had an honourable military record and "had nothing to be ashamed of".
Silvana Mangano (21 April 1930 – 16 December 1989) was an Italian film actress. She was one of a generation of thespians who arose from the neorealist movement, and went on to become a major female star, regarded as a sex symbol in the 1950s and 1960s. She won the David di Donatello for Best Actress three times - for The Verona Trial (1963), The Witches (1967), and The Scientific Cardplayer (1973) – and the Nastro d'Argento for Best Actress twice.
Raised in poverty during World War II, Mangano trained as a dancer and worked as a model before winning a Miss Rome beauty pageant in 1946. This led to work in films; she achieved success in Bitter Rice (1949) and went on to forge a successful career in films, working with many notable directors like Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luchino Visconti, Alberto Lattuada, and Vittorio De Sica. Her career continued well into her 50s, with supporting roles in David Lynch's Dune (1984) and Nikita Mikhalkov Dark Eyes (1987).
Mangano was the wife of international film producer Dino De Laurentiis and had four children with him, including Veronica De Laurentiis and Raffaella De Laurentiis.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Silvana Mangano, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Karl Gerhart Fröbe, better known as Gert Fröbe (25 February 1913 – 5 September 1988) was a German actor who starred in many films, including the James Bond film Goldfinger as Auric Goldfinger, The Threepenny Opera as Peachum, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as Baron Bomburst, and in Der Räuber Hotzenplotz as Hotzenplotz.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Gert Fröbe, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Helmut Griem (born April 6, 1932 in Hamburg – November 19, 2004 in Munich) was a German actor.
Griem was primarily a German-speaking stage actor, appearing at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, the Burgtheater in Vienna, the Staatliches Schauspielbühnen in Berlin, in the Munich Kammerspiele, and finally in the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz, also in Munich.
Among his many film and TV appearances (a quite memorable one being NBC's mini-series Peter the Great, portraying the formidable Tsar's lifelong friend and "right hand" Alexander Menshikov, alongside Maximilian Schell), the Oscar-winning film Cabaret (1972), in which he played the rich "Baron Maximilian von Heune" is probably the best-known; other internationally-known performances include his work in The Damned, The McKenzie Break, and Ludwig. Griem starred in the television mini-series "The Devil's Lieutenant" directed by John Goldschmidt, adapted by Jack Rosenthal and based on the novel by M Fagyas, for Channel 4 and ZDF.
Despite his success in film, the theatre remained at the heart of Griem's work, and he performed in many classic roles from both the German and English-language repertoire. Later in his career Griem turned to theatre direction, including Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill. Before his death, Griem had planned to direct the Botho Strauss play Die eine and die andere (This One and The Other).
Griem twice won the Bambi Award: in 1961 and in 1976.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Helmut Griem, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Umberto Orsini (born 2 April 1934, in Novara) is an Italian stage, television and film actor.
Born in Novara, Orsini gave up his career as notary to attend the Accademia Nazionale di Arte Drammatica Silvio D'Amico. In the late 1950s, he emerged as a talented stage actor, and in 1960, for the theatrical representation of L'Arialda, he worked for the first time with Luchino Visconti. After a few secondary roles (that include Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita), Orsini debuted in a leading role in 1962 with the film Il mare, directed by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi. In 1969, he was awarded with the Nastro d'Argento for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Visconti's The Damned. In 2008, he was nominated to David di Donatello for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Il mattino ha l'oro in bocca.
Source: Article "Umberto Orsini" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
John Moulder Brown (London, June 3, 1953) is a British actor who started his career as a child; he is best remembered for his role in the 1971 classic Deep End.
Founded The Academy of Creative Training a Drama school in Brighton, Sussex in 1997.
Description above from the Wikipedia article John Moulder Brown, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Sonia Petrovna (name also credited as Petrova and Petrowa) (born 13 January 1952) is a French dancer and actress (film, television and theatre). Petrovna was born in Paris, from between the age of 6 and 14 she studied dance at the Paris Opera Ballet (Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris) and on the initial invitation of Roland Petit went on to appear in various ballet productions. Her most famous early acting roles were those of Vanina Abati in La prima notte di quiete acting alongside leading French actor Alain Delon and as Princess Sofia in Ludwig alongside leading actors Helmut Berger, John Moulder Brown and Romy Schneider, both in 1972.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Sonia Petrovna, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Eleonora Ricci (19 July 1924 – 16 April 1976) was an Italian actress.
Born in Viareggio, Tuscany, Ricci was the daughter of actors Renzo Ricci and Margherita Bagni. Ermete Zacconi was her mother's stepfather. At 17 years old, she moved to Rome to enroll in the Academy of Dramatic Arts, where she met Vittorio Gassman, who became her husband in 1944 and from whom she separated shortly after the birth of her only child, actress Paola Gassman (born June 1945), divorcing Vittorio in 1952 so he could marry Shelley Winters.
Ricci made her professional debut in 1943, in the theatrical company led by Laura Adani. During her career she was active on stage, radio, television and in films, notably working with Luchino Visconti, Pietro Germi, Liliana Cavani. She died after a long illness, aged 51.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Nora Ricci, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Friedrich Anton Maria Hubertus Bonifacius Graf von Ledebur-Wicheln (June 3, 1900 – December 25, 1986) was an Austrian actor who was known for Moby Dick (1956), Alexander the Great (1955) and Slaughterhouse-Five (1972).
Ledebur was born in Nisko, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Poland) in 1900. Friedrich enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Army in 1916, and was an officer in the Austrian Cavalry Division during the last years of World War I.
In the 1930s Ledebur became a close friend of Charles Bedaux, with whom he traveled extensively in Africa and Canada.
After the war, Ledebur spent the next two decades travelling the world, working all manner of odd jobs from gold mining to deep sea diving, to riding and winning prize money at rodeos. Ledebur settled in the United States in 1939 and anglicised his name to 'Frederick'.
A close friendship with fellow adventurer and director John Huston, gave Ledebur his entrée to character acting.
In 1945, von Ledebur made his film debut. He later appeared in Alexander the Great (1955), and played chief harpooneer Queequeg, a South Sea chieftain, in the film Moby Dick (1956). "Better a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian", Herman Melville's Ishmael famously says of Queequeg in the book and the film. He appeared as Brother Christophorus in The Twilight Zone episode "The Howling Man".
Source: Article "Friedrich von Ledebur" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.