A group of Nazi sympathizers of various nationalities board a submarine at Oslo on a secret mission to land in South America where it is planned that Hitler and the Third Reich will rise up once again. On navigating the English Channel, one of the party gets injured – Florence Marly (Mdm Garosi). She needs a doctor and it's the one thing that has been overlooked on this journey. So, they stop over in France and kidnap one – Henri Vidal (Guilbert). They resume their journey with the new arrival who realizes that his life is in danger as he now knows too much – he has to survive by making himself indispensable to the gang.The whole story is pretty much set aboard the submarine. It's a novel setting and provides the necessary claustrophobic atmosphere as we wonder how and when our doctor hero is going to make his escape. Other characters don't fare too well when deciding to break free from the clutches of evil Jo Dest (Forster). By the way, this Dest character is a cartoon character Nazi who has a blatant homosexual arrangement with his young muscleman as played by Michel Auclair (Willy). Dest's male bitch is even given the name 'Willy' so that you are under no doubt that they like playing with each other's willies.

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.

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.

Les maudits is directed by René Clément who also co-writes with Victor Alexandrov, Henri Jeanson, Jacques Rémy and Jacques Companéez. It stars Marcel Dalio, Henri Vidal, Florence Marly, Fosco Giachetti, Paul Bernard, Jo Dest, Michel Auclair and Anne Campion.It's the last days of World War II and a submarine full of Nazi's and fellow collaborators head off from Oslo bound for South America. Hoping to evade capture by the Allies, their plans are stalled when a depth- charge attack injures one of the lady passengers causing them to stop off in France to kidnap a doctor. Once on board the doctor realises the gravity of his situation and uses his medical knowledge to spread slow- burn fret throughout the submarine; just as news of the armistice breaks…A lesson in claustrophobic suspense and slow-burn psychological edginess, Les maudits riff's on the rats leaving a sinking ship with considerable success. It's a hot-bed of unsavoury characters, where political sin hangs heavy in the scratchy black and white atmosphere. Clément inserts the tension deftly whilst also garnering rich performances from the multilingual ensemble of actors. It all builds to a quite terrific ending that closes down the picture on suitably intelligent note. It's a hard film to pin down but if you get the chance don't hesitate to view it. 8/10