The Night Porter - Criterion Collection

Starring:Dirk Bogarde, Charlotte Rampling, Philippe Leroy, Gabriele Ferzetti, Giuseppe Addobbati, Isa Miranda, Nino Bignamini, Marino MasÃ©, Amedeo Amodio, Piero Vida, Geoffrey Copleston, Manfred Freyberger, Ugo Cardea, Hilda Gunther, Nora Ricci, Piero Mazzinghi, Kai S. Seefeld, Luigi Antonio Guerra, Claudio Steiner
Director: Liliana Cavani
Studio: Criterion
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

For those who like their love stories dipped in decadence, Liliana Cavani's dark and disturbing 1974 drama--about a concentration camp survivor who fatefully comes face to face with her ex-Nazi captor and lover--has held up quite well over the years despite its sensationalistic tone. It helps that the mysterious, cobra-eyed Charlotte Rampling plays the survivor, Lucia, and that the unctuous and languid British actor, Dirk Bogarde, is former SS officer Max, a now-benign night porter at the Vienna hotel where the pair coincidentally collides. There is a haunted hollowness to these characters that resigns them to relive the sordid past that tragically binds them. Criterion's DVD offers the film in its best available condition, and the color has been restored to enhance its symbolic significance. The Night Porter uses landscape as character, and its desaturated tones evoke memory of the Holocaust and a shady 1950s Vienna plagued by post-World War II guilt. In fact, this is a film full of shadows and shame, and Max and Lucia are victims of this frightening world in which nothing can be trusted and around every corner lurk spies in their house of forbidden love. --Paula Nechak

Description

In Liliana Cavani's scintillating drama, a concentration camp survivor (Charlotte Rampling) discovers her ex-torturer/lover (Dirk Bogarde) working as a night porter at a hotel in postwar Vienna. When the couple attempt to re-create their sadomasochistic relationship, his former SS comrades begin to stalk them. Operatic and disturbing, The Night Porter deftly examines the cruelty and decadence of Nazi culture.

Customer Reviews:

Some movies better not be rewatched........2007-04-26

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

When I first saw Liliana Cavani's controversial film about sadomasochistic love affair between former Nazi officer Max (Dirk Bogard) and a concentration camp survivor Lucia (Charlotte Rampling)whom he used to abuse sexually and physically during the WWII, it had a shock value. I saw it in Moscow in the middle of 80s, and when our friends brought the tape to watch I thought it was a screen adaptation of the Irwin Shaw's novel "Nightwork" which is a completely different story (both were translated to Russian as "The Night Porter" - hence the confusion). As you can see, the film had a triple-shocking value for me - first, I expected to see a different movie; second and third, for its dark and disturbing subject matter and for the breaking all kinds of taboos in the way Cavani had explored it.

I remember that I was very impressed by Cavani's use of flashbacks, music, and her classy cinematography. Both leads were very good as two people who had met at the most horrifying circumstances but according to the writer-director were not able to forget the disturbing relationship and were willing to give anything just to be able to carry on with it. It was a first time I saw Charlotte Rampling and she became one of my favorite actresses.

I saw it again couple of weeks ago and I have to admit that without its original shock value it did not impress me at all. The plot does not seem that shocking, the story does not make much sense. Some of the dialog is just ridiculous. For example, Max confesses to his old friend, Countess Stein ( who knows everything about his past) after Lucia had entered his hotel and his life:

"Max: I found her. I found my little girl.
Countess: Such a romantic story.
Max: It is not a romantic story, it is a biblical story."

The second part of the movie when the couple try to hide in Max's apartment and the other Nazi wait outside for days for them to come out is just bad, IMO. The final scene is plausible and makes sense - there could be never a happy ending to the story like that but, alas, it took too long for the ending to come - I actually could not wait for somebody to finally take the unfortunate couple out of their misery and I was grateful when it happened - not a good sign for the movie where you should sympathize with the main characters.

I am not sure if the movie is one of "Nazi chic" flicks or a serious and honest even if flawed exploration of the very dark depths of human soul. It sure has the characteristics of both.

2.5/5

Shallow instead of probing.......2006-10-23

I like films that push things to the edge and address taboos, so I was looking forward to this exploration of kink, sadomasochism and Nazism, written and directed both by women. --Hey, it sure promised to be original. You can't say "Oh, not *another* movie about a female concentration camp prisoner who grows fond of her tormentor and wants to continue their sadomasochistic relationship a decade later."

But despite all the promise of debauchery and a probing of the dark side of human nature, The Night Porter, after the first 40 minutes at least, comes off as a confused, muddled, nonsensical and ultimately unintentionally-comic film, with an arbitrary ending that seemed to happen only because the filmmakers looked at their watch and said, "We're coming up on two hours."

The first part of the film, where Lucia recognizes her old captor, now a humble night porter at a Vienna hotel, is well-done. While I found Dirk Bogarde to be a little wooden, Charlotte Rampling is perfect as the woman--you can still see the scars, but she doesn't overplay them; there's quiet dignity, but also the capacity to feel pain. A scene where she goes to the opera and sees Bograde watching her, and flashes back to her predicament as she absent-mindedly rubs her once-chained wrists, is understated. Too bad the rest isn't on that level.

Unfortunately, this understatement soon gives way to a second half that's ridiculously over the top. Bogarde belongs to a sort of "support group" for ex-Nazi camp officers, and together they try to buck each other up, as well as destroy evidence of their past crimes. I found this subplot laughable--I doubt real Nazi guards ever participated in Dr. Phil-type rap sessions. There's another sub plot about a gay former SS-guard who's now a ballerina and dances for Bogarde. I found this subplot bizarre. This thread sort of fizzles out halfway through the movie, and I'm at a loss as to why it was there in the first place.

Then there's the main plot line, which as I said startes off interestingly, but gets pretty silly by the second half, wherein Bogarde and Rampling find themselves cut off from food and being shot at by the other former SS guards, like insurgents holed up in a hideout. If that sounds weird, it is weird. The second half makes no literal sense, and one of the former SS-guards himself points out the foibles in Bograde's actions ("Chain can be cut."), yet the film asks us to continue to take it seriously. Then the ending just comes, out of the blue, with no explanation.

Sorry, but this wasn't an "exploration" into the decadence or dark side of the human soul, or of SS decadence. This was sexploitation in Nazi garb. The flashback where Rampling dances for the officers in the bar, though sexy in a perverse sort of way, is also silly. She's supposed to be this meek and frightened concentration camp victim, yet she's dancing like she was born to it. I don't see an exploration of anything. I just see an attempt at sexy sadomasochism. Rampling is so good she *almost* sells me on this, but the others are rather stiff, some of the dialogue is laughable, and the second half is all disjointed.

For once Criterion drops the ball in terms of presentation. The non-anamorphic DVD utilizes a somewhat faded, beat-up print. The sound is not very good, even for 1974 mono. There are no extras at all, not even a trailer, not a commentary, nada. If this is an attempt to "explore" and "examine" our dark side, an analysis by the filmmaker or a film scholar would have been welcome. Maybe that person could have made heads or tails of this story's resolution. I cannot, and I cannot recommend this disc very strongly. It only has Rampling's performance to redeem it, and in the end, that's not quite enough.

The human nature does not know the limits of the aberration!.......2006-07-23

Liliana Cavani made of one of the most poignant, caustic and incisive human portraits around two people: a miserable and docile human being who, in theory only obeyed superior orders, but besides he enjoyed to exert physical, mental and spiritual wounds around a woman in a concentration camp during the opprobrious WW2, who eventually by these strange destiny tricks, will meet again in Vienna 1957.

The seventies knew about three brilliant female filmmakers: Liliana Cavani, Von Trotta sisters and Lina Wertmüller, visceral, artistic and spiritually affected by the horrors of the WW2. These three bold, brave and smart women decided to approach the miseries of the War from different perspectives but with the same purpose. To carve in relief the level of incivility and abjection to which a human being is able to come, when the War works out as the perfect alibi to surpass the verboten boundaries about ethics and moral. Paraphrasing to a personage from Crime and punishment: "If War exists everything is permitted."

Highly recommended but you must be aware about the ferocious and implacable script.

The revisitation of a concentration camp relationship.......2006-05-29

Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling star as a pair of doomed survivors of the horrors of WWII in the unsettling but dubious Liliana Cavani directed drama, "The Night Porter".

Bogarde played Max Aldorfer currently the night porter at a 1957 Vienna hotel. Aldorfer, formerly a Nazi SS officer ensconsed as a doctor in a concentration camp, had been deemed too insignificant to be prosecuted in the Nuremberg trials. He however maintained contacts with significant high ranking ex-officers who had thus far eluded apprehension.

While at the camp, Bogarde had sustained a lurid and kinky sexual relationship with a young internee Lucia played by Rampling. Much to Bogarde's shock a seemingly affluent and cultured Rampling and her husband, an orchestra conductor checked into the hotel while on a concert tour, some 13 years later.

In an improbable plot twist Rampling implores her husband to continue on without her so that she and Bogarde could secretly resume their sado-masochistic relationship. Bogarde is about to go on trial to help preserve his secret Nazi past as orchestrated by his powerful compatriots. Rampling's presence as a possible witness to the decadence and horror that existed in the death camps was portrayed in a series of flashbacks. This renewed relationship had potential to undermine the efforts of the ex-Nazis and Bogarde and Rampling feared for their lives holing up in his apartment.

This uneasy film filled with nudity and degeneracy painted a very negative picture of the alleged master race. It was hard to imagine how badly damaged a mind must be to resume an unhealty and damned existence as Rampling's character chose to do in the film.

Despite all the hype... yes, it's THAT good........2006-05-18

The Night Porter (Liliana Cavani, 1974)

What to say about this exquisite film? It is as difficult to review as it is, sometimes, to watch.

It's Vienna, 1957. Max (Dirk Bogarde), an SS officer who's been living underground as the night porter of the Hotel de L'Oper, has a chance meeting with Lucia (Charlotte Rampling), the wife of an American conductor. The problem is, Lucia was an inmate in the concentration camp where Max served, and the two of them had an intimate, if twisted, relationship. Lucia's presence puts Max in great danger, yet he doesn't know what to do...

A stunning examination of the enduring quality of power, both sexual and authoritarian, The Night Porter rarely puts a foot wrong on the tragicomic path to its inevitable ending. The acting, the sets, the subtexts, the lighting, everything works in tandem here. (If there is a criticism to be levelled at the movie, it is the pace, which stumbles momentarily a time or two before righting itself and continuing on; given the mental image that's likely to raise given the film's subject matter, even that might have been intentional.) Bogarde and Rampling are both playing characters who are in a situation that is at best absurd, and yet both play them to the hilt, not once allowing the viewer to think that this situation couldn't really be happening. And the true magic of the movie reveals itself in that remaining the case, even as the situation gets more and more absurd.

A brilliant, brilliant film. **** ½

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