Ex-InTransit
Portiere Di Notte visThe Night Porter
The Night Porter... As U Like IT
Considered The Most Controversial Picture Of Our Time!
Set in 1957 Vienna, Liliana Cavani's film, The Night Porter is a disturbing, mesmerizing drama that viewers seem either to love or loathe. To be sure, this is not a film for everyone. Its subject matter is dark and difficult. The fascinating, if twisted, story is about the revival of an intense relationship that had started in a Nazi concentration camp – between Max, an SS officer and Lucia, one of the inmates.
Max is now, in 1957, a night porter in a hotel – the hotel that Lucia happens to visit with her. But when, at the opera, he looks at Lucia, and Lucia cannot resist turning her head to meet his gaze (and at a point in the opera where the words being sung are about how love sweetens troubles and all creatures sacrifice to love), Max, too, is drawn inexorably.
Despite what some reviewers seem to think, The Night Porter is absolutely not a skin flick, and nor is it a Nazi exploitation flick. It is a film about a relationship. It is about the power of a human connection and a little tenderness in an extreme situation – and about the power of extreme situations to create passion. It is about how intoxicating relationships having an element of control/power can be – and how intoxicating a mixture violence and loving tenderness can be. It is perhaps a warning about the all-consuming and potentially self-destructive power of an intense relationship.
The Night Porter has some very memorable scenes, and the acting of the main characters is superb. The subtlety and complexity of Charlotte Rampling's Lucia is staggering. It could have been played so badly, but Charlotte Rampling had the courage and the insight and the ability to give a breathtakingly brilliant performance, conveying strength as well as vulnerability, peacefulness as well as terror, intense desire as well as numbness, power and control as well as submission, lightness as well as darkness, heaven as well as hell.
Liliana Cavani has an eye for psychologically difficult and tension-increasing juxtapositions. In one scene, we hear Mozart's pure and heavenly music about the higher purpose of love and man and wife, while a concentration camp guard buggers a male prisoner, presumably not entirely consensually! In another scene, there is the eroticism of a topless dance together with the ghastly truth that the woman is dancing for the concentration camp guards who hold her and may one day execute her. In another, there is extreme violence mixed with passionate love.
Charlotte Rampling: www.imdb.com/name/nm0001648/
Dirk Bogarde: www.imdb.com/name/nm0001958/
A Short Extract:
au.youtube.com/watch?v=TfSdXK5sMM4
David Gregory-Interviews on The Night Porter with Liliana Cavani:
au.youtube.com/watch?v=_fhG12j9D6g
au.youtube.com/watch?v=L8gW7IDG1DU
.
Portiere Di Notte visThe Night Porter
The Night Porter... As U Like IT
Considered The Most Controversial Picture Of Our Time!
Set in 1957 Vienna, Liliana Cavani's film, The Night Porter is a disturbing, mesmerizing drama that viewers seem either to love or loathe. To be sure, this is not a film for everyone. Its subject matter is dark and difficult. The fascinating, if twisted, story is about the revival of an intense relationship that had started in a Nazi concentration camp – between Max, an SS officer and Lucia, one of the inmates.
Max is now, in 1957, a night porter in a hotel – the hotel that Lucia happens to visit with her. But when, at the opera, he looks at Lucia, and Lucia cannot resist turning her head to meet his gaze (and at a point in the opera where the words being sung are about how love sweetens troubles and all creatures sacrifice to love), Max, too, is drawn inexorably.
Despite what some reviewers seem to think, The Night Porter is absolutely not a skin flick, and nor is it a Nazi exploitation flick. It is a film about a relationship. It is about the power of a human connection and a little tenderness in an extreme situation – and about the power of extreme situations to create passion. It is about how intoxicating relationships having an element of control/power can be – and how intoxicating a mixture violence and loving tenderness can be. It is perhaps a warning about the all-consuming and potentially self-destructive power of an intense relationship.
The Night Porter has some very memorable scenes, and the acting of the main characters is superb. The subtlety and complexity of Charlotte Rampling's Lucia is staggering. It could have been played so badly, but Charlotte Rampling had the courage and the insight and the ability to give a breathtakingly brilliant performance, conveying strength as well as vulnerability, peacefulness as well as terror, intense desire as well as numbness, power and control as well as submission, lightness as well as darkness, heaven as well as hell.
Liliana Cavani has an eye for psychologically difficult and tension-increasing juxtapositions. In one scene, we hear Mozart's pure and heavenly music about the higher purpose of love and man and wife, while a concentration camp guard buggers a male prisoner, presumably not entirely consensually! In another scene, there is the eroticism of a topless dance together with the ghastly truth that the woman is dancing for the concentration camp guards who hold her and may one day execute her. In another, there is extreme violence mixed with passionate love.
Charlotte Rampling: www.imdb.com/name/nm0001648/
Dirk Bogarde: www.imdb.com/name/nm0001958/
A Short Extract:
au.youtube.com/watch?v=TfSdXK5sMM4
David Gregory-Interviews on The Night Porter with Liliana Cavani:
au.youtube.com/watch?v=_fhG12j9D6g
au.youtube.com/watch?v=L8gW7IDG1DU
.