The Night Porter 846654 220650590 2008-06-20T22:05:59Z Drivespeak 5745906 removed "Italian" from the film's language (the film's is entirely in English, except for a song in German) {{Infobox_Film | name = The Night Porter | image =Thenightporter.jpg| amg_id = 1:35235| imdb_id = 0071910| director = [[Liliana Cavani]] | writer = [[Liliana Cavani]] | starring = [[Dirk Bogarde]]<br>[[Charlotte Rampling]]<br>[[Philippe Leroy]]<br>[[Gabriele Ferzetti]]<br>[[Isa Miranda]]| producer = [[Robert Gordon Edwards & Esa De Simone]]| music = [[Daniele Paris]]| cinematography = [[Alfio Contini]]| distributor = [[Avco Embassy]] | released = [[Image:Flag of the United States.svg|22px|USA]] [[October 1]], [[1974]] | runtime = 122 min. | language = [[English language|English]]| }} '''''The Night Porter''''' ([[Italian language|Italian]]: '''''Il Portiere di notte''''') is a controversial [[1974 in film|1974]] film by [[Italy|Italian]] director [[Liliana Cavani]], starring [[Dirk Bogarde]] and [[Charlotte Rampling]]. ==Synopsis== Dirk Bogarde plays Maximilian Theo Aldorfer, a former [[Nazism|Nazi]] [[SS]] officer, and Charlotte Rampling plays Lucia Atherton, a [[concentration camp]] survivor who has been tormented by Aldorfer. Thirteen years after [[World War II]], Lucia meets Aldorfer again; he is now the night porter at a [[Vienna]] hotel. There, they fall back into their [[sadism and masochism|sadomasochistic]] relationship. To hide his shame about his past, Max works obsessively as a hotel night porter where his aim is to please his guests, especially the Countess--a confidante who requires his services to get her young men as sexual partners. Many of the other guests are war criminals, who hold secret meetings in the hotel to uncover any evidence connecting them with their war crimes. Max prepares with these former Nazis a strategy for his upcoming War Trial at the hands of the Allies, as they conduct mock trials to learn about records in the archives they should destroy and witnesses to be tampered with or eliminated. Into this hotel culture, which reeks of nostalgia for the Führer, comes the only live witness who can testify against him--the young Viennese camp inmate who is now married to an American opera conductor. She is someone he sexually abused in the camp and Max can't stop obsessing over their past torturous relationship. They are drawn uncontrollably to each other despite the dark past both of them share and the apparent danger from Max's unchanged fanatical and bloodthirsty Nazi comrades, Klaus and Hans. ==Themes== ''The Night Porter'' uses desaturated colour to evoke memory of [[the Holocaust]] and to evoke a shady 1950s Vienna plagued by post-World War II guilt. Max and Lucia are victims of this frightening new world in which nothing can be trusted and their forbidden love doomed to misunderstanding. The film depicts not only the political continuity between wartime Nazism and post-war Europe, but also the psychological continuity of characters locked into compulsive repetition of the past. == Criticism == In responses to ''The Night Porter'', Cavani was both celebrated for her courage in dealing with the disturbing theme of sexual transgression and, simultaneously, castigated for the controversial manner in which she presented that transgression: within the context of a Nazi Holocaust narrative. The film has been accused of mere sensationalism: film critic [[Roger Ebert]] calls it "as nasty as it is lubricious, a despicable attempt to titillate us by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering."[http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19750210/REVIEWS/502100301/1023] Given the film's dark and disturbing themes and a somewhat ambiguous moral clarification at the end, ''The Night Porter'' has tended to divide audiences. It is, however, the film for which Cavani is best known. == See also == *[[Sadism and masochism in fiction]] ==External links== *{{imdb title|id=0071910|title=Portiere di notte, Il}} *[http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=59&eid=74&section=essay Criterion Collection essay by Annette Insdorf] * Rebecca Scherr, [http://www.othervoices.org/2.1/scherr/sexuality.html The Uses of Memory and the Abuses of Fiction: Sexuality in Holocaust Fiction and Memoir], Other Voices, vol. 2.1 {{DEFAULTSORT:Night Porter, The}} [[Category:1974 films]] [[Category:Italian films]] [[Category:BDSM in films]] [[Category:Drama films]] [[Category:English-language films]] [[Category:Holocaust films]] [[Category:Erotic films]] [[de:Der Nachtportier]] [[it:Il portiere di notte]] [[ja:愛の嵐 (映画)]] [[pt:Il Portiere di notte]] [[ru:Ночной портье (фильм)]] [[tr:Gece Bekçisi (film)]]