The Night Porter (1974)

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Blistering performances.

A former Nazi SS officer crosses paths again with a former concentration camp prisoner who he had an affair with. But a group of other former Nazis who are determined to eliminate any incriminating evidence or indeed people who might expose their past deeds know about this woman who they see as posing a real threat to them.Obviously this was very controversial when it was released with many film critics calling it trash and exploitative. But it's neither of these. It feels dignified, rich and not just made to be sensationalistic and play on 42nd Street's Deuce.The photography is breathtaking with the locations almost becoming another character of the film. Both Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling as amazing in the lead roles and their interactions crackle with electricity. The film pulls no punches in the nature of their relationship with elements of sadomasochism being played out. This is certainly a brave film but all the more brilliant because of it. Critics and audiences alike eventually came round to discovering the film's genius premise and vision. I'm so glad this has been released by The Criterion Collection- the final validation for a film that was clearly ahead of it's time.

A hotel clerk in 1957 Vienna recognizes one of his guests as the once-frail and imprisoned woman from the Nazi death camps of World War II when he was an SS officer and she was his half-scared/half-curious sex slave. She recognizes him as well and, despite now being the glamorous wife of an opera conductor, finds herself still drawn to this man. She spies on his private meeting with Nazi sympathizers, who fret about potential "witnesses" bringing their crimes to trial, but the clerk declares his love for the woman and chains her up (willingly) in his apartment. Director Liliana Cavani, who also co-wrote the screenplay, managed to incite a mild uproar from the critics by using a Nazi concentration camp as a backdrop for this kinky relationship, yet the irony of emaciated prisoners of war watching passively while the officer flirts with his pretty, wide-eyed captive is intriguing (at first). But Cavani isn't interested in making a death camp movie; her aim is to be erotic and daring, and the rest is just window-dressing. Once the woman moves into the clerk's room, their neurotic union begins to seem like a watered-down variation of the relationship from "Last Tango in Paris" (in that one, the couple turned on with butter; here, it's raspberry jam). Cavani finally junks the irony and settles instead for melodrama--shot in ghostly color--leading to a woebegone conclusion. Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling don't embarrass themselves, though Bogarde (whose character appears to be bisexual, though this is never expanded upon) has a few moments in the present-day section wherein he looks totally lost as an actor. Also, a lengthy sequence of a male ballet dancer performing in a jock-strap for Nazi soldiers appears to be a flashback to the camps, but the dancer is revealed to be a party sympathizer, and so the scene (which is the only one that has an erotic thrust) is merely padding. *1/2 from ****

THE NIGHT PORTER is one of those Italian art-house movies that goes out of its way to shock and as such has gained some notoriety over the years. In essence, the film charts the torrid love affair between a Nazi who managed to escape from the clutches of the Allies and one of the victims he tortured in a concentration camp. Instead of hating him, his victim finds herself falling for him, and the two embark on a painful, sadomasochistic relationship years before FIFTY SHADES OF GREY made the whole thing popular.I admit this whole set-up isn't really my cup of tea and I prefer films where the Nazis are being shot at rather than presented as broken, sympathetic people. Still, THE NIGHT PORTER is undoubtedly a well-shot movie, and Dirk Bogarde (VICTIM) is always fine playing these dark characters with their hidden secrets. I was a little cold where Charlotte Rampling's concerned, but then I've never really warmed to the actress. The plot is slow moving in this film but it always holds your attention and I appreciated the bleak ending, but it's the sexually-charged midsection that left me rather bored.

The Night Porter is a film that earned a controversial reputation back in the 70's when it was made. In truth, it still has retained a lot of its infamy even today. The reason for this was that it was considered by some as being exploitative and for trivialising the Holocaust. Perhaps more specifically, its mixture of eroticism with Nazis is one that I am guessing has the power to make people feel very uncomfortable. Its story centres on Max, a night porter working in a Vienna hotel in 1957. One day a young woman guest called Lucia arrives at the hotel and his past catches up with him. It turns out he was an S.S. officer who worked at a concentration camp during WWII and Lucia was an inmate who he used as a sexual slave. Their chance encounter leads them to embark on another dark sexual relationship but with slightly different power dynamics. Meanwhile former Nazi comrades of Max have become aware of the situation and plan to silence Lucia who is a potential witness to their war crimes.The central plot idea that underpins the narrative is the Stockholm syndrome. This is a known psychological condition where those repressed and incarcerated form romantic bonds with their captors. It's especially troubling here in that the master and servant are an S.S. officer and his Jewish victim. The sheer real life horror of the Holocaust ensures that this is dark waters for the basis of a film. But overall, despite pushing several provocative buttons along the way, this isn't a very exploitative film. It's certainly a long way away from the Nazisploitation cycle of films that emerged in Italy shortly after this one. Those films were unashamedly sexploitation flicks that really were pushing the limits of good taste. In fact, one of the more notorious examples The Gestapo's Last Orgy also features a dark romance between a camp commandant and Jewish girl, although that's more or less where comparisons end with The Night Porter. No, this is actually a pretty sober and cold movie with a focus squarely on the psychological aspects rather than the salacious ones. It examines a damaged woman's strange compulsions and the inconsistent impulses of her ex-Nazi captor.Although, to be perfectly honest, I felt the film itself is most memorable cinematically when it does feature the flashbacks to the concentration camp. These scenes are always presented in an unreal, dream-like fashion. They never seem very real and this I guess gives the film a bit of overall distance which allows it a bit of leeway regarding its controversial subject matter. Those scenes do feature some very sinister yet surreal moments like the death carnival ride. Yet they often are simply strange such as the S.S. man who performs a homo-erotic ballet routine for his fellow Nazis or Lucia's erotic song and dance number replete with Nazi regalia, which is a sequence that really accentuates the Nazi erotica angle which is understandably problematic for some.The film benefits considerably for having Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling in the central roles. These are difficult characters for actors to tackle to say the least but these two are pretty fearless performers. The acting style is very mannered, as opposed to realistic but this fits in with the overall detached feeling that the film has as a whole. This goes against it a bit to be fair, as it isn't always as engaging as it could be and the pace is pretty slow. It means that this is a film with considerable interest in terms of brave subject matter but one that isn't very easy to connect with. Although given the central idea, this may not be strictly such a bad thing.