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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.

On the surface, THE NIGHT PORTER will be at a minimum, politically incorrect to some, repugnant and perverse to others. How can one find redeeming virtue in the sado-masochistic affair between a former S.S. Officer and concentration camp survivor who chance to encounter one another after the war and resume their "affair?" But indeed, the power of this film is in that very choice. Charlotte Rampling's postwar concert pianist is beautiful, refined, successful and married. Dirk Bogard's former S.S. officer is resigned to quietly living out his days incognito as a night porter in a hotel, secretly preserving his true identity and trying to avoid detection by authorities. In his servile role as a night porter, it's hard to believe he was ever in a position of power over anyone else. But we see in flashbacks what he became when he did have that power, and it isn't pretty. Yet, as E.M. Forster said, "Only connect." And therein lies the mystery. For no matter how one points a finger at these lovers and declares them to be "sick," they are indeed lovers and their attraction to one another compels them to act in spite of the danger to both of them. I believe this is one of the most intriguing stories of human connectedness you will ever see! If you can get past the impulse to respond like the rest of the pack, you may get a glimpse at the mystery of the human condition.

A controversial and shocking movie? Definitely, and the way some people today profess to be jaded about "The Night Porter" says more about our current culture than about the movie itself. Other persons who experienced the Holocaust first-hand have reacted negatively towards it for its portrayal of a destructive but loving relationship born amidst the Holocaust. Their objections are certainly understandable. There has also been, though, an awful lot of politically-correct garbage and pretentious nonsense written about "The Night Porter," much of which has missed or misinterpreted some of the strongest elements of the movie.

When I first saw "The Night Porter" in the early 1980's, it certainly had the power to shock me and many others, yet at the same time it offered a depth of aesthetic experience well beyond just shock for its own sake. These aesthetic qualities produce a sense of doom and sadness, yet also show beauty and love amidst the hopelessness.

Dirk Bogarde gives a really masterful performance as Max, a former Nazi SS man who bears a huge burden of guilt. After World War II, Max works at the main desk of a gorgeous old hotel in Vienna. Here he re-encounters Lucia, who survived the Nazi concentration camps, where she was a victim of Max's sadism. Bogarde's Max, and Charlotte Rampling as Lucia, do not say a word at first during their unexpected postwar encounter in the hotel, yet their understated expressiveness speaks paragraphs. The most controversial parts of the movie show the sort of sado-masochistic relationship which the two resume soon afterwards. While this relationship is very disturbing, with Max's sometimes cruel nature and the destructiveness of the mutual attraction, there is also a kind of love expressed by the two towards each other. Lucia is certainly a victim, yet she also consciously holds a power over Max. The sado-masochism is not glamourized, and I don't see any suggestion that these two lovers are any sort of role models. Yet they also evoke sympathy.

Throughout the movie, Bogarde is able to show a wide range of thoughts and emotions by just a slight movement of the corner of his mouth, or by the raising of an eyebrow. Rampling shows vulnerability and also the power that she has over Max. She sometimes appears like a sleek, sly cat, and at other times clearly like the victim of the camp horrors. Other actors such as Philippe Leroy, Isa Miranda and Amedeo Amodio also do a nice and sometimes subtle job of expressing the psychic state of their characters. Another character, an Italian who survived awful times, appears like a dog who has been beaten and fears another whipping.

"The Night Porter" can be slow-moving, yet this is punctuated by some very vivid scenes. For me, the most striking one is a flashback to a time during the war when Bert, a Nazi associate of Max, puts on a performance for a group of SS men and women, to the accompaniment of some gorgeous classical music. Not only does the scene seem to have a very sinister quality, but Amodio as Bert expresses an emotional longing which has important repercussions. There is also another very eerie flashback showing a musical, cabaret-style performance by Lucia for her SS captors. Something of the corruption, moral bankruptcy and hopelessness of Nazism is conjured up by this scene.

On the downside, some of the minor characters are portrayed in a caricaturish way, the voice dubbing can be off-putting, and some plot elements towards the end of the movie are at times very silly. Through those failures, though, I think the movie still succeeds aesthetically. Partly this is due to the appealing yet melancholy and ominous musical score by Daniele Paris and others, the disturbing magnetism of Max and Lucia, and the cinematography. Throughout the movie the beautiful, fascinating city of Vienna almost seems a character in itself.

"The Night Porter" is certainly not for everyone. In addition to its portrayal of a very disturbing, unconventional love relationship, it has a few brief scenes of graphic sex, and small bits of the ugliness of the camps. For those who don't mind getting through those parts, its aesthetic qualities can be very rewarding. Be warned though that the movie contains much ugliness along with its beauty. As Lucia says to someone who is trying to use pschoanalytical games to avoid his guilt and shame, "There is no cure."

A jaw-dropping study on love in the most obscure of circumstances. It's an intense and compelling study of these characters who flow in the most opposite of circles (one a Nazi, the other a Jewish prisoner in the concentration camp he works at) and a love that transcends anything I've imagined experiencing. I've heard the film called dull numerous times and I could see why one would think this, but I thought the haunting silences only made the film more engaging and had my eyes further glued to the screen. The structure of spasmodically switching from scenes in the concentration camp to when the two lovers see each other again in 1957 really helped put the viewer into the mind-set of the two main characters. It jars the mind and keeps us aware of this inordinate love and why these people are so confused and attracted to one another. A truly original technique that I really admired. Liliana Cavani uses angles and wide-shots that create a haunting sense of passion and really made the cinematography rank high among my all time favorites. Dick Bogarde and especially Charlotte Rampling are phenomenal. Their performances are passionate, intense and natural. The film certainly lived up to my expectations.

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.