Written by Liliana Cavani
Starring: Dirk Bogarde, Charlotte Rampling
Music by: Daniele Paris
Language: English
Rating: 5/5
Liliana Cavani's Night Porter is a controversial, provocative movie entirely based on the so-called Stockholm syndrome, the psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy toward their captors. In this particular case, the captor is Max, a a former Nazi SS officer (played by Dirk Bogarde), and the victim is Lucia, a concentration camp survivor (played by Charlotte Rampling).
The movie is set years after World War II, in Vienna, where Max works as a night porter, but alternates also flashbacks showing the couple during the times at the concentration camp, where Max used to be Lucia's protector. As Max and Lucia accidentally meet again years after the end of the war, they immediately fall back into their sadomasochistic relationship.
The Night Porter has to be celebrated for the bravery of the director, who dared to portray such a thorny topic resorting to a Nazi Holocaust narrative. It was not easy, in particular considering when the movie was shot and the self-righteous Italian culture (Liliana Cavani is an Italian film director and screenwriter). In addition, there is an aspect that should always be underlined: the Night Porter filmmaker's is a woman. So it is possible to say that Liliana Cavani did to cinema what, twenty years before, Anne Desclos did to literature: showing that the interest for sadomasochistic relationships is not typical of men only.
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