O Porteiro da Noite

The film's big number, the song in the nightclub scene, is uncredited. Its title is 'Wenn ich mir was wuenschen duerfte', and it was written by Friedrich Hollaender, aka Frederick Hollander. Hollaender was the leading cabaret composer in Berlin in the 1920s, and achieved international fame with his songs for Marlene Dietrich in 'The Blue Angel'. Coincidentally, Dietrich recorded 'Wenn ich mir was wuenschen duerfte' in 1930.

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.

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.

This is quite dark. If you are seeking material that can be described as "happy" or "light", you will not find it here. I didn't know anyone in this prior to viewing. This deals with Max, the night porter of the title, who has tried to put his past in the SS behind him. One night, he spots a woman, Lucia, and they both recognize each other... she was one of the concentration camp prisoners, and the two had a specific relationship with one another. The plot is captivating. This is deliberately paced, and those who have short attention spans, and/or wish for a lot of developments in a feature are not the intended audience for this. I found the behavior of all of the characters chillingly psychologically accurate, and this definitely takes a long, hard, unflinching and uncompromising look at human nature and the mind, and not everyone is going to like the observations. The acting is excellent. All of the leads disappear into their roles. They are all well-cast, too, talent as well as physical types. I don't know if anything similar to this has truly happened, but I can imagine it, and this does pay respect to the historical events. The editing mixes flashbacks and the present effectively. This has disturbing content, including violence, sexuality that is not graphic and explicit nudity. None of it is gratuitous. The DVD has credits and posters, and while the print starts out looking shabby, it turns out to be perfectly fine. I recommend this to anyone who believes they can handle it, and is mature enough, from reading this review. 7/10

Even though I was planning to watch something else that Saturday night, I came across BBC2 where "The Night Porter" was on and saw it once again. The first time I saw the movie I was a bit disappointed. I had heard so much about this movie that the film couldn't live up to my high expectations. But some scenes found a place in the back of my mind and stayed there. The second time I saw it I was intrigued more and more and ever since I see it as the classic it should be.

If ever there was a difficult movie, it was "The Night Porter". The pace is slow and the characters are all weird. There aren't many movies where you get a homosexual Nazi wanting to be a ballet dancer and a sadistic Nazi still in love with love with a masochistic girl from the camps. (There's more, but I don't want to spoil the plot.) Only a spark of the plot could have been the subject for lots of raunchy exploitation movies, but "The Night Porter" manages to keep its class. The movies is set years after the war. Some Nazis were fortunate enough not to be caught and got on with their lives. Unfortunately one person has survived the camps as well. She immediately recognizes Max (Dirk Bogarde), her cruel S&M-master, and he (now a night porter in a hotel) recognizes her (Charlotte Rampling) as well. The only problem is that the other living Nazis cannot know she's still alive, or they would assassinate her. The passion between Max and his former slave returns and the Nazis find out about their relationship. Max tries to keep her out of their hands, so madly in love that he wants to die for her. (Again, more information would spoil the movie.)

"The Night Porter" is one of the few movies where S&M-relationships aren't immediately reduced to a bunch of idiots and losers playing around with whips and leather masks. It also dares to show you other Nazis than the Pavlovian dogs you normally get to see. And above all it stars Charlotte Rampling as Lucia. Watch her as she performs the dance of Salomé and gets a present from Max (know your Bible and have an idea of what's to come). Watch her face and her near-skeletonlike body very closefully: that is how you should act disgust. Watch her as she locks herself in the bathroom and tries to hurt Max's foot with some glass. Listen to the music, the perfect addition to this murky movie.

Due to the difficulty of the movie it'll never raise above its status as cult classic and actually that's a shame. Be brave and try it.