The Night Porter (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

The Night Porter is a fascinating look into a sadomasachistic sexual relationship complicated by the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. It takes place in Vienna, Austria after the war is over. Starring Dirk Bogarde & Charlotte Rampling in the leads with numerous well done supporting roles led by Gabrielle Ferzetti as the leader of a group of former Nazi's that are in hiding & have a unique view on how they must deal with the (unjustified) guilt that haunts them.Bogarde plays the night porter at a prestigious Hotel in Vienna. He is surprised one night when a famous conductor appears to lead the Vienna orchestra with his wife, played by Rampling. This woman is none other than his "little girl", the young woman he saved the life of while producing photographic records for the Nazi's during his duties in the camp. What else he did to & with her is the disturbing part of the show. Just as in La Caduta Degli Dei (The Damned) it is shown in detail with nudity & aberrant behavior being on screen many times. If this kind of show offends you then avoid it at all costs.The relationship between these two is renewed by this chance encounter & so many questions as to why someone would submit to this thing that is between them are displayed in action during the film but left for the viewer to determine motivations themselves. An interesting study of aberrant human behavior that doesn't even stray into fantasy really, though many might find that difficult to believe.I myself wonder what this woman's life would have been as an adult if there had been no camp experience for her. It's certain that her camp experiences molded some of her choices & yet would any of her choices been the same despite it? Would she have been a submissive whether she had been sent to the camp or not? It's certain she would not have had a relationship with the night porter had she not gone to the camp. Just like most of us, they respond to being in a life they aren't happy with by going in another direction, in this case they go backwards.This is a movie about people under extreme stress & clear motive isn't always obtainable for the viewer. There are the camp photographer's choices to consider too. Why would this chance sighting change him from a man in hiding to what he becomes afterwards? The group of ex-Nazis is well constructed as are the obvious collaborators. Little is shown of normal society & I feel that was a good choice here. There is plenty to consider about the motivations of the people we do meet, not to mention the continuing fear of what was & for some still is the Nazi machine.I doubt this was an easy movie to act in for anyone & the obvious driving force of the Nazi experience is present throughout. People that believe that Marlene Dietrich was a good sensual dancer may change their mind after seeing the dance scene in this one. It is certainly less restrained being, as it is, set in a concentration camp. I always see this one together with La Caduta Degli Dei (The Damned) which is a good view into the world of Nazi Germany just prior to the war, while The Night Porter is a glimpse into the possible aberrations after the war.

The Night PorterI must confess that I approached this film with a prejudice. I’d read numerous negative reviews of it, many from critics whose aesthetics I respected. So, despite the presence of Dirk Bogarde in the cast, I decided to save my money. Still, curiousity about it persisted. Then, one day, there it was in my face again, presented to me by Amazon and, despite my still present prejudice, I said, “Why not?”Boy, had I been wrong. Another example of unjust prejudice causing regrettable decisions and actions.This film was not an exploitative porn cheapie, as I had been led to believe. It was rather a cinematically well shaped presentation of the very darkest parts of the soul of Mankind, criminal or not, which we don’t talk about, even to ourselves in the mirror. We’re reminded of them, always, and whenever the time, place and opportunity permits and demands, they burst out in the form of shameful unforgivable action, even the sickest, most unthinkable. It makes us shoot our right hand into the air and shout, “Sieg Heil!” to men we know are doing heinous things to other people somewhere else or maybe around the corner. “As long as I don’t have to witness it or take part in it and I don’t have to pay 12,000 deutschmarks for a loaf of bread.”Had the Dirk Bogarde character been Mengele or a Mengele? I think the latter. He didn’t seem to be the consummate evil that Gregory Peck was or Lawrence Olivier was as the dentist. Dirk Bogarde didn’t seem that but his finely crafted performance certainly hinted at a Mengele-like past. Charlotte Rampling, his sexual slave become part dominatrix/dominated intertwining masochism and perhaps sadistic revenge for past tortures subtly stabs the screen with her underacting yet piercing eyes which, through her beauty, evince years of pain and self-loathing. Both, in their post Holocaust lives have managed to push their respective histories into some hopefully unreachable back room and started anew. But fate throws them back into each other’s lives. That patient demon deep down brings victim and victimizer back together and smothers them with his cloak. Of course, because this renewed relationship threatens others also trying to live past their own atrocities, the ODESSA, the lovers are doomed.Dirk Bogarde is superb at this kind of characterization, complex, tortured, many-colored, full of ghosts. The director and staff deserve kudos.To the faint of heart even, this film is a gem worth viewing. In art, form must be congruent with subject.

Très bien

Der Film ist in die Jahre gekommen, keine Frage. Die Qualität von Bild und Ton sollte aber auch nicht der Grund sein, den Film nicht zu sehen.Dieser Film ist auf mehreren Ebenen tiefgründig und wohl durchdacht.Vielleicht sollte dem Zuschauer auch vorher eine Geschichte aus dem "Neuen Testament" der Christlichen Bibel kennen, dass der Salome die den Kopf des Johannes fordert. Ich vermute, ohne diese Geschichte, dieses biblische Zitat, könnten dem Zuschauer die Beweggründe der beiden Protagonisten verborgen bleiben.Das Ende der Geschichte fand ich weniger gelungen, aber verzeihlich.Die schauspielerische Leistung ist auch nach heutigem Maßstab noch sehr gut, beide finde ich grandios und wer danach das Interview mit der Regisseurin ansieht bekommt noch mal ein Aha Erlebnis.Ich hatte von dem Film weniger erwartet und war positiv Überrascht.

Reviled at its release by sharks through their holier-than-thou articles/film critics, but influencing filmmakers like Jane Campion and Lars von Trier, "the Night Porter" offers an intriguing Stockholm Syndrome story. The ambiguous and masochistic love relationship between a Nazi official and Lucia, a Concentration Camp Prisoner imprisoned with her family because her father was a socialist, nothing about being Jewish as the film's attackers wrote in their articles. An affair that started in the war, but continues years later at Vienna in 1957, although a crucial movie poster identifies the story's timeline as 1960 (Error continuity from those who made the poster perhaps?). Now the wife of a famous orchestra conductor, Lucia's love story with Max continues as they meet in the Hotel where Max is now a Night Porter. However danger looms closer around them. Indeed, Max's former comrades become suspicious of their friend's behaviour. Ready to do anything to save their skins, ready to kill if necessary.An ending I won't reveal to not ruin spectators' surprises.A movie that still leaves an impression in your mind as the story ends.Now of course lots of discussion were made on the movie's thematic being a horrible time period in history, about its appropriateness or not. But to me, I felt the story was a great way to study how the past still haunted War prisoners and about the guilt complexes of former War criminals and how if some of them are ready to deal with their past, others are just incapable to do so, at the point of becoming violent with anything that would endanger them. Not only that, it was a chance for us to have at least some empathy for a man, his demons and for his lover whose passion becomes dangerous, and to see another variation of a love story. The reality of a love developing between an assaillant and its victim, through games where they tease each other as the outside world soon starts attacking them. Not a classical romance, but an attempt to show something else, though not utopifying it like how Stephenie Meyer did with Twilight. Instead Cavani's story is realistic and more plausible to its denouement.As an artist, Cavani's strengths are not in her acting directions as the actors' performances are sometimes irregular between each other (ex: the Bellboy with whom the countess Stein has an affair overacts in his few scenes and his dubbed voice is terrible). Instead her qualities occur through the tensions and moods she films, her german expresionism visuals, her camera skills, and her story. And with Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling, her work gains lots of point through their acting abilities. Indeed, they add human strengths where other actors who could be uncomfortable with the film's topic would have hurt the final product if they had played in Bogarde and Rampling's roles. In conclusion, Bogarde and Rampling leave to us the proof that they are both courageous and talented. In particular in a powerful scene where Lucia sings "Wenn ich mir was wünschen dürfte" in a Nazi outfit and bewitches other Nazi soldiers who listen to her. A scene that shocked many viewers and stands out as one of the most memorable moment in the movie, along with Max and Lucia's confrontation in the hotel room.Of the film's 2K transfer, the end result is pretty good, although at the funeral of a main character, the image is blurry (film stock the film's transferers had at the time?) and there are still those very annoying dirts and hairs in certain scenes (ex: again that confrontation in the hotel room), which I wish the film's editors could have corrected. Nevertheless, the film is a pleasure to look again in HD, and the monaural sound is all right. As for the special features, Cavani's interview is really good to listen as she deals with her detractors with efficient arguments and so is her documentary on War Prisoners that helped her helm this film. But I wish we could have had a dialogue with Charlotte Rampling on the Night Porter as she's quite a fascinating and intelligent woman with relevant statements about her work, never saying cutsy-ditsy-poshy-Hollywood-game statements like how too many actresses and actors pull their interviews. Even better, it would have been nice to have the documentary called "the Private Bogarde". It's a great documentary that dives into the life and persona of a man who left quite a mark on filmmaking.In the end, that movie is an impressionable piece of italian cinema, but also a nice film to watch if you are a fan of Lars von Trier and want to know about this movie that has had a major impact on his work.

どんよりとした雰囲気のウィーンの空気感が伝わってくる映像の美しさ。舞台となるホテル内の撮影など、重厚感があり、まさに名画といっていい映像美です。比べるまでもありませんが、以前出ていた国内版DVDとは、映像の美しさは別物。日本語字幕はありませんが、この映画が映像でいかに魅せているのか、よく分かります。セリフがなくとも映像での表現で語りかけてくるようです。ダーク・ボガートとシャーロット・ランプリングの演技、表情、その存在に見入ってしまいます。またホテルのロビーを俯瞰で撮ったショットや、ランブリングがウィーンの街をそぞろ歩くシーンの魅力的なこと。今まで観てきた映画館やDVDでは気がつかなかったような、ハッとするような場面が少なくありません。ジャケット写真にもある映画史に残るであろう有名なシーンの青みがかった色合いも残酷な美しさをさらに醸しているよう。１ヶ所、カメラの前にカギの字型の糸くずのようなものが映り込んでいるところがありますが、これは修復以前の問題でしょう。たいへん満足できるブルーレイでした。特典映像としてカヴァーニが65年に製作？したWoman of Resistance という55分のドキュメンタリーが収録されています。ナチス侵攻に対するパルチザン女性の生存者へのインタビューで構成されたモノクロ作品。語りは、リカルド・クッチョーラ。時代を感じさせるもので、英語字幕だけだと、ちょっとツライ。あと2014年の短めですがカヴァーニのインタヴューも付いています。こちらも英語字幕のみですが、興味深い話が語られているようで、一生懸命字幕を追ってしまいました。

I had heard much about the supposed sado-masochistic content of The Night Porter, and I suppose, in a basic sense, it is there in the apparently willing sexual and emotional surrender of victim to captor. However, there is so much more at the heart of this film than kinky sex and shock-value. There is a frailty to every principle character; Dirk Bogarde's Max is not virile, but, at least in the present, appears broken and somewhat fragile . Charlotte Rampling beautifully captures Lucia's desperate search for meaning in the brutalities of her past. The shock-value of the film lies ultimately in the fact that it tests our moral limitations-in one of the extra features on the DVD, an interview with director Lilliana Cavani, she quotes a former concentration camp internee, who declared that her hatred of her German captors lay in the fact that they showed her a side of herself that she didn't know existed. A beautiful and tragic film in many ways that is, as Bogarde insisted, an unconventional love story at it's heart. Bogarde brings to his role all his characteristic grace and elegance, with occasional bursts of brutality, and Rampling carries her character's emotional baggage artfully on those narrow shoulders.The quality of the DVD transfer could be a little clearer in some scenes, but it's worth buying as it is generally sound.