The Night Porter (1974)

Directed by Liliana Cavani
Written by Liliana Cavani
Starring: Dirk Bogarde, Charlotte Rampling
Music by: Daniele Paris
Language: English

Rating: 5/5

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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.

La Pianiste (2001)

Directed by Michael Haneke
Written by Michael Haneke, Elfriede Jelinek (novel)
Starring: Isabelle Huppert, Benoît Magimel
Language: French

Rating: 5/5

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Based on Nobel Prize for Literature winner Elfriede Jelinek's novel, La Pianiste can be undoubtedly considered the best Haneke's movie (so far). Helped by the masterful Isabelle Huppert's interpretation, the Austrian director here perfectly portrayed the sexually and emotionally repressed piano teacher, who is the main character of this intimist drama. 

Erika is in fact a cold, castigated woman in her forties who still lives with her mother - a controlling, asphyxiating figure who tries to take her daughter away from every kind of frivolousness and instead pushes her hard to succeed in her professional life. The relationship between the two women is unhealthy and based on unresolved issues that slowly consume them both. Moreover the cumbersome presence of her mother stops Erika from having normal, healthy intimate relationships, which she replaces with a long list of paraphilia: she enters a sex shop to watch porn and smell semen from the used tissues she finds in the video cabin; she walks a drive-in theater to stare at couples having sex; she self-inflicts genital injuries. 

The only one who tries to shake Erika from her lonely, severe routine is Walter, a young engineering student and talented piano player who claims he falled in love with her. Erika, who initially rejects his exhausting avances, in the end will drag him in a world of humiliation and masochism the student can hardly understand. Powerful.

The Collector (1965)

Directed by William Wyler
Written by Stanley Mann, John Kohn, John Fowles (novel)
Starring: Terence Stamp, Samantha Eggar, Mona Washbourne
Music by: Maurice Jarre
Language: English

Rating: 5/5

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Based on a novel written by John Fowles, The Collector is that kind of movie that should have no place on a blog about BDSM. In fact consent is the key factor of every BDSM-based relationship and in this Wyler's masterpiece there is no trace of it, but still. Its plot and the power dynamics between the two main characters will fascinate everyone who has an interest in BDSM - this is why it is worth a mention.

To put it shortly, The Collector is the story of a middle class white collar who wins a large sum of money, buys an isolated country house and locks a young, pretty art student - Miranda - in a windowless cellar. But it is actually more than that. It is a brilliant psychological thriller that perfectly portrays all the possible phases of a kidnapping-scenario.

Miranda, who initially opposes her kidnapper firmly, tries to get her freedom back begging, trying to find a deal, deceiting her kidnapper and even trying to seduce him. Frederick Clegg, the kidnapper, is on the other hand a monolithic character who always maintains his position, even when he seems to welcome Miranda's requests. He is always calm but manipulative, he does not need to use the force - he never beats or rapes the victim - and his irritating good manners have the incredible effect of reducing the empathy one could feel for Miranda. In the end a gentleman is a patient wolf and Frederick Clegg is certainly a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Coming to a conclusion, yes, The Collector is that kind of movie that should have no place on a blog about BDSM, but it should definitely be in the private collection of everyone who fantasized about kidnapping - no matter if as kidnapper or victim. Classic.