"Magesterial." Slant magazine

"Grand and melancholy." Richard Brody, New Yorker

Presented here in its full length version, this is – appropriately – the most extravagant costume drama from Luchino Visconti, the Italian count whose sumputuous period pieces include Senso, The Leopard, and Death in Venice.

King Ludwig of Bavaria, whose reign extended from 1864-1886, is remembered for his spectacular and ornate castles, for his patronage of the great composer Richard Wagner, and for going barking mad. Visconti (who also cowrote the screenplay) doesn’t shortchange these elements, but provides a complex and haunting portrait of a doomed Romantic, an anguished sovereign who turns his back on power and politics to immerse himself in a world of art and beauty.