Der Nachtportier

In some ways this film is still very shocking. Although it is neither violent nor vulgar, the situation is disturbing and violent -actually it's something we DON'T see with our eyes: a psychological violence.

Some years after the end of Second World War, a woman meets in a hotel her jailer during her concentration camp period. He was an SS officer, now he's a night porter. With him she re-starts a relationship made of attraction and sadomasochism.

The film is shocking because it describes an insane situation, led by two insane people. These are the disturbing elements of the film, because spectators don't feel well in seeing that. The atmosphere has something very icy and miserable. I think it's precisely Liliana Cavani's goal: a study of insanity, without self-indulgence.

After 30 years "Night porter" remains a gem. An intelligent movie, full of provocation. Charlotte Rampling and Dirk Bogarde are extraordinary.

It's easy to dismiss a film like this or Salo or In the Realm of the Senses as garbage. It's too easy, in fact, and not very fair. These films are all very interesting, if you can take them. And, if you can't stand the heat, hey, stay out of the kitchen.

Among the ranks of what I'll call the Artsploitation flick, The Night Porter is rather tame. There are only a couple of hardcore sex scenes, and there are really only two scenes with nudity.

What I like about this film is, first and foremost, the performance by Dirk Bogarde. The subtle guilt and shame he projects is simply amazing. He really builds a three dimensional character, and mostly without dialogue. Other performers are weaker. Charlotte Rampling, his captive, gives a very uneven performance. Sometimes it seems on the money, other times it seems forced, or blank. None of the others are really worth mentioning, except for that one actor's ballet dancing, which is quite remarkable.

Cavani's direction is sensuous. I saw this film for the second time today,

and I had failed to notice before that it was directed by a woman. Unfortunately, that doesn't affect my reading of the film any, but it is interesting. This definitely seemed like a male project. Cavani's direction has a certain grace, a certain elegance. The film contains several scenes that could be called masterpieces in the midst of a lesser work. My favorite in the entire film is the one where Lucia locks herself in the bathroom, breaks a bottle in front of the door, and then allows Max to run in after her. This scene is so marvelously directed, it would work particularly well when seen as a separate entity. The famous nude cabaret song, the one depicted on the Criterion cover, is also exquisite.

Technically, it is perfect. The cinematography is beautiful, as I've mentioned. The musical score is also gorgeous. It's possibly one of the greatest. The biggest failure of the film is definitely its script. The story is very difficult to follow. It's never clear exactly what has happened since the war, and what these former Nazis are doing in Vienna. It's also unclear what exactly the trials are that are always being brought up. And I'm not sure what they are afraid of, what they originally plan to do with Lucia, or anything like that. Or why they can't break into Max's apartment again. A lot of this stuff seems silly. I would have also liked Lucia's character better developed. We get the sense that she accepted Max's advances so quickly so that she could get his protection, which she receives in that biblical dance scene. I want more yet. With Max so well developed, Lucia feels somewhat like an object for the plot.

I rate this a high 7/10.

On the surface, THE NIGHT PORTER will be at a minimum, politically incorrect to some, repugnant and perverse to others. How can one find redeeming virtue in the sado-masochistic affair between a former S.S. Officer and concentration camp survivor who chance to encounter one another after the war and resume their "affair?" But indeed, the power of this film is in that very choice. Charlotte Rampling's postwar concert pianist is beautiful, refined, successful and married. Dirk Bogard's former S.S. officer is resigned to quietly living out his days incognito as a night porter in a hotel, secretly preserving his true identity and trying to avoid detection by authorities. In his servile role as a night porter, it's hard to believe he was ever in a position of power over anyone else. But we see in flashbacks what he became when he did have that power, and it isn't pretty. Yet, as E.M. Forster said, "Only connect." And therein lies the mystery. For no matter how one points a finger at these lovers and declares them to be "sick," they are indeed lovers and their attraction to one another compels them to act in spite of the danger to both of them. I believe this is one of the most intriguing stories of human connectedness you will ever see! If you can get past the impulse to respond like the rest of the pack, you may get a glimpse at the mystery of the human condition.

I saw this film quite by accident last night on IFC and have been walking around in a state of near tears ever since. What really struck me about the story was not the sadomasochistic aspect which I actually found to be rather minor, (He slaps her around a bit and there is a scene where she is chained to a bed), but rather the tenderness and love shown by Max. He calls her "his little girl" throughout the movie and indeed that seems to be the most accurate description of his feelings. I couldn't help thinking of Lolita and indeed it is a similar idea. In both stories the man is both the tormentor and the tormented. Because he is in a position of absolute power of course he is the exploiter, but also it is almost as though he is held captive by "her", the illusive girl/child/women he want to both take care of the way one would a daughter and also penetrate like a lover. And in both stories this proves of course to be impossible as the mans very nature (in one case he is a pedophile, in another a Nazi) prevents it from being so.

The Night Porter is a tough, confrontative but rewarding psychological thriller about two people thrust together under very different circumstances to what it was they were both experiencing the first time they met. In the present day, that is to say 1950's Vienna, they are an extremely wealthy female Countess and a shrewd, brash male boss of a small group of staff that do well to keep a luxurious Austrian hotel running as well as it does. What they once were, however, is a male who was fairly high up in the Nazi pecking order of a concentration camp and one of the many female inmates inhabiting it. In short, the film is a depiction of power play and sadomasochism - but a power play and such wherein both parties seem to enjoy playing both the roles of the dominant and submissive. When they meet much later on, and much deeper into their newfound relationship these years later, they enjoy the dynamic that comes with it: one half of the twosome allows themselves to be chained up and spoon fed under these controlled conditions, whereas the other needs to constantly be aware that their identity and history are both at threat of being exposed in an instant.

Dirk Bogarde plays Maximilian, or "Max" to most around him; the said character in charge of a group of staff at a Vienna hotel in 1957 whose job it is to meet, greet and help new arrivals of an often affluent nature. Max strikes us as a bit of an animal, badgering and ordering his crew around as if with some sort of experience in running a tight ship and getting what he wants. Upstairs, the quarters wherein the live-in staff rest sport pictures hanging from the wall depicting separate images limited exclusively to topless women and two duelling boxers going at it in a ring. This overwhelming presence of sex and aggression apparent in this collection of images will come to define the central pairing we observe play out. This pairing, consisting of Max and one other, is complete with the hotel's latest arrival: a young woman named Lucia Atherton (Rampling), who arrives with what we presume to be her usual entourage but immediately makes us aware of something not quite right when she spies Max behind the front desk and vice-versa as she stands there in the lobby. His nervous behaviour during the immediate thereafter is distinctly different enough to suggest something has truly thrown him, whereas Lucia's experiences of PTSD that evening (as she flashes-back to her time in Wartime Europe) allude to a greater truth.

It is out of these beginnings that the two come together and go through the tryst that they do. It is one built on an enforced power exchange of the past that was initiated by a greater power beyond either of their control as well as the fresh control over the participant, whose role in any work or casual relationship is usually of a dominant nature, the "submissive" participant now has. The pair of them were based at the same Concentration Camp during World War Two, he has a guard; she as an inmate. We observe how he would shoot live rounds at and around Lucia's person where it's inferred many other inmates have already lost their lives. To this extent, it is a game; someone playing out their designated role of aggressor and forcing the other through metaphorical hoops for their own pleasure.

Away from the central tract are Max's peers: a large group of other war criminals hiding out in the Austrian city who meet around large tables in grand drawing rooms when they need to discuss something. They object to her presence, but Max wants her to stick around. Another aside arrives in the form of an odd, homo-erotic tie he has with a man named Bert (Amodio); a dancer who performs near-nude routines in the sanctuary of his own abode in front of him. He too is dissatisfied at Max's presence in his own life when Lucia comes along.

Issue and controversy will always come with a film such as The Night Porter. It's a film dealing with very morbid triggers for sexualised urges, but it's a film distilling all of this through this back story of a prisoner/inmate Stockholm syndrome situation that is initiated in a Concentration Camp. One scene which will kill the film stone dead for those whom do not take to it arrives during an opera; a sequence with both parties present, although away from each other, and peppered with these flashbacks of varying sexualised activity in the camps whilst the tenor's performance acts as a deeply juxtaposed overture to what we're seeing. The point being we're not supposed to know whose flashbacks they are; whose memories are being shown and thus, remain unsure as to whether each of the person's reactions sync up with how much they're enjoying the evening or the fact their head's are being reignited with "pleasurable" instances from the past. In 1995, Katherine Bigelow would direct "Strange Days" wherein there was a scene depicting a rape. Through the certain means therein, rapist and rape victim could be conjoined in their experience and could both systematically share the pain and pleasure, agony and ecstasy of what the other was feeling. It could be argued Italian director Liliana Cavani was using similar ideas of power dynamics and enforced shifting emotions all of twenty years earlier, and in films that did not need fiction technological USP's to do so. The film has upset some, as did Strange Days; I happened to find it a quite engrossing and really rather well made drama.