Bavaria’s King Ludwig II of the House of Wittelsbach was a politically unsuccessful, oversensitive aesthete slowly succumbing to madness whose life ended beneath the surface of Lake Starnberg: What an ideal subject for a movie! Director Luchino Visconti, however, did not deliver the producers the attractive cinematic spectacle they had expected, and they took revenge by butchering his more than four-hour long film. It wasn’t until later, thanks to the work of film restorers, that audiences could see the film in the form the director had intended.