For all the things that Liliana Cavani’s 1974 erotic, post-Holocaust, psychological drama The Night Porter is, it always strikes me as odd yet truthful when its director, Cavani, and star, Charlotte Rampling, refer to it as a romance. Yet no matter how disturbing, perverted and traumatic the relationship of Max and Lucia at the heart of Cavani’s film is, it is just that, a romance. One stained by years of hate, violence and PTSD, but a romance all the same. Cavani’s film is many things and yet fundamentally always returns to this chief relationship, with its concluding image of the two walking together forever indelibly haunted on any audience members mind.

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At the heart of The Night Porter is the aftermath of the holocaust, told through a few very distinct and different point of view. For instance we have seen Nazi’s dealing with trials after the war,. But have never seen those trials being conducted by the Nazi’s themselves, all in some veiled attempt to discover whether or not they feel guilt. We have seen victims of the camps come to terms with those that abused them mentally and psychically, but have never seen that victim come to enjoy the sadomasochistic relationship and return to it willingly (whether a product of her own trauma or not). The night porter of the film’s title is Max played by Dirk Bogarde who one night whilst going about his regular duties in a Vienna hotel comes face to face once more with a woman whom he previously had known as a teenager, in a concentration camp where he tortured her, assaulted her and in some ways protected her also. Bogarde is undeniably riveting in this film as a stoic and intense man coming to terms with the pain of his own past life, for Cavani’s chief goal is to present the complexities of everybody’s time after the war, not just the victims’. Cavani in her script and direction never lets Bogarde’s Max off the hook, however doesn’t feel the need to completely villanise him either, their main goal is rather simple, to present as complex and truthful a representation as possible. This is thwarted some times by some clunky dialogue that nobody could deliver well, but Bogarde makes a nice attempt. The greatest moments of the film are in the silence, with the dialogue removed. The greatest of all of them being of course the initial reunion of Max and Lucia, where across a hotel reception desk, a whole wealth of history and life is told through a couple of startled glimpses, from two people deeply affected by their past suddenly in the present.

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The other naturally extraordinary aspect of the film is Charlotte Rampling, with a performance signalling from the beginning of her career, the immense depth of emotion that the woman can deliver in any role. Here this depth of emotion is utilised to emphasise years upon years of immeasurable trauma, that has however in the current been tackled and harnessed to fuel a sexual energy that denotes a sense of power and reclamation. Cavani flits between these states constantly in the first half of the film, and most famously in the second half with a bizarre party sequence with Lucia performing topless in some sparring elements of Nazi uniform, performing a classic Marlene Dietrich song for the other officers. Performance is an integral part of the film, quite literally and of course in the sense of our multiple characters becoming new versions of themselves in a post Holocaust world. Bogarde reportedly considered retirement after performing in this film, after finding the shooting such a draining experience. One can almost understand Bogarde’s reasoning behind this, with the experience of watching the film deeply draining in itself. The film is still unnerving and controversial to this day with a variety of critics still finding certain matters of the presentation of the holocaust to be sensationalist at best and deeply problematic and insulting at worst. I find myself somewhere in-between with all the criticism. I agree with Rampling who stated that she too found the film a little slow  as it continued, but I also find that the films languid pace and editing adds to the overall atmosphere of pain and dread. I agree with some critics who find the relationship at the heart of the film one note, however I have to say that I feel it is rather a study of a very complex relationship cemented in one position through years of abuse. The Night Porter is not for everyone, as a matter of fact many believe that it’s not for anyone. But whatever can be said, this must be said too; the film is still disturbing, still daring and certainly still haunting. Whether these things mark this as a film of quality on the other hand is of course in the eye of the beholder. 

-        -  Thomas Carruthers