The Night Porter - Criterion Collection

Amazon.com

For those who like their love stories dipped in decadence, Liliana Cavani's dark and disturbing 1974 drama--about a concentration camp survivor who fatefully comes face to face with her ex-Nazi captor and lover--has held up quite well over the years despite its sensationalistic tone. It helps that the mysterious, cobra-eyed Charlotte Rampling plays the survivor, Lucia, and that the unctuous and languid British actor, Dirk Bogarde, is former SS officer Max, a now-benign night porter at the Vienna hotel where the pair coincidentally collides. There is a haunted hollowness to these characters that resigns them to relive the sordid past that tragically binds them. Criterion's DVD offers the film in its best available condition, and the color has been restored to enhance its symbolic significance. The Night Porter uses landscape as character, and its desaturated tones evoke memory of the Holocaust and a shady 1950s Vienna plagued by post-World War II guilt. In fact, this is a film full of shadows and shame, and Max and Lucia are victims of this frightening world in which nothing can be trusted and around every corner lurk spies in their house of forbidden love. --Paula Nechak

Description

In Liliana Cavani's scintillating drama, a concentration camp survivor (Charlotte Rampling) discovers her ex-torturer/lover (Dirk Bogarde) working as a night porter at a hotel in postwar Vienna. When the couple attempt to re-create their sadomasochistic relationship, his former SS comrades begin to stalk them. Operatic and disturbing, The Night Porter deftly examines the cruelty and decadence of Nazi culture.

Customer Reviews:

Disappointing.......2007-07-29

I had pretty high expectations for The Night Porter. The reviews are good and the premise seemed interesting. I often enjoy daring and provocative films, so I gave it a shot. Once it started, I kept waiting for it to develop and it never did. I kept saying to myself, `Finally, now we're getting somewhere...oh wait, never mind.' It just dragged on with little or no purpose. And I felt like it was edited by an 8th grade audio-visual club. The dubbing was bad, the writing/acting was labored and the direction was uninspired. What few points the film does score are earned by its relatively creative and esoteric premise. And since there weren't any other entrants in the 1974 `Post-War Era Sadomasochistic Nazi Film Festival', The Night Porter won first prize. But I think the main reason that this film has its cult status, or any following whatsoever, is good advertising. The DVD cover is intriguing, and honestly the cover is better than the film itself. Save yourself the time and money and rent it, or try another film. Schindler's List has some similar themes, mainly with Ralph Fiennes' character, although it is a far superior film of a different overall genre. As a last resort, I guess you could watch Triumph of the Will while sitting on a tack and achieve a comparable level of sadomasochistic Nazism. To each his own.

Like no other film I've seen.......2007-07-28

Being 21-years-old at the time of this review, I had never seen many of the decadent films to come out of Europe during the 1970s, let alone any that dealt with the Nazi Party or The Holocaust. After a good deal of reading online, I ordered "The Night Porter" from Amazon, and decided to give it a try.

Needless to say, I've been haunted for days.

Lucia (Charlotte Rampling in an outstanding performance) arrives in 1957 Vienna, along with her composer husband. A Holocaust survivor who has gone on to live quite a comfortable life, her picture-perfect existence is shattered when she encounters Max (Dirk Bogarde), her ex-Nazi captor, tormentor and lover, whom she had an affair with for many years.

Max is hiding out in Vienna, working as a night porter in the hotel and hoping to avoid standing trial for his crimes. A member of a kind of support group for fellow nazis, he and his comrades seekt to eliminate any witnesses who could send them to prison -- or even death. Agonized over his love for Lucia and the loyalty to his friends, Max decides to go into hiding, where the sadistic/masochistic nature of his past affair begins to resurface.

Never before had I seen a film quite so dark, so decadent, so psychologically penetrating. Rampling in particular is as beautiful as she is heartbreaking; for only someone who was truly mentally ill would continue a relationship as violent as the one she shared. Bogarde fairs equally as well, portraying Max's feelings of anger and love with an eerie authenticity.

The most disturbing part of the movie is that we the audience *know* there cannot be a happy ending; that disaster looms at any moment and that these two people have been traumatized (perhaps beyond repair) by the events of WWII. In my opinion, this is what made "The Night Porter" so realistic -- by showing that the after effects of the Holocaust can and will be felt for decades after the war ended. Perhaps even today.

In sum, if you are in the mood to watch a film that portrays violence and sex as one of the same, withouth the requisite happy ending, than "The Night Porter" may very well be for you. While the film doesn't go into much detail about the Nazi party speciifically, it builds such an aura of tension and doom that it doesn't even matter. This may not be the happiest film to ever be made, but it remains among the most memorable.

Some movies better not be rewatched........2007-04-26

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

When I first saw Liliana Cavani's controversial film about sadomasochistic love affair between former Nazi officer Max (Dirk Bogard) and a concentration camp survivor Lucia (Charlotte Rampling)whom he used to abuse sexually and physically during the WWII, it had a shock value. I saw it in Moscow in the middle of 80s, and when our friends brought the tape to watch I thought it was a screen adaptation of the Irwin Shaw's novel "Nightwork" which is a completely different story (both were translated to Russian as "The Night Porter" - hence the confusion). As you can see, the film had a triple-shocking value for me - first, I expected to see a different movie; second and third, for its dark and disturbing subject matter and for the breaking all kinds of taboos in the way Cavani had explored it.

I remember that I was very impressed by Cavani's use of flashbacks, music, and her classy cinematography. Both leads were very good as two people who had met at the most horrifying circumstances but according to the writer-director were not able to forget the disturbing relationship and were willing to give anything just to be able to carry on with it. It was a first time I saw Charlotte Rampling and she became one of my favorite actresses.

I saw it again couple of weeks ago and I have to admit that without its original shock value it did not impress me at all. The plot does not seem that shocking, the story does not make much sense. Some of the dialog is just ridiculous. For example, Max confesses to his old friend, Countess Stein ( who knows everything about his past) after Lucia had entered his hotel and his life:

"Max: I found her. I found my little girl.
Countess: Such a romantic story.
Max: It is not a romantic story, it is a biblical story."

The second part of the movie when the couple try to hide in Max's apartment and the other Nazi wait outside for days for them to come out is just bad, IMO. The final scene is plausible and makes sense - there could be never a happy ending to the story like that but, alas, it took too long for the ending to come - I actually could not wait for somebody to finally take the unfortunate couple out of their misery and I was grateful when it happened - not a good sign for the movie where you should sympathize with the main characters.

I am not sure if the movie is one of "Nazi chic" flicks or a serious and honest even if flawed exploration of the very dark depths of human soul. It sure has the characteristics of both.

2.5/5

Shallow instead of probing.......2006-10-23

I like films that push things to the edge and address taboos, so I was looking forward to this exploration of kink, sadomasochism and Nazism, written and directed both by women. --Hey, it sure promised to be original. You can't say "Oh, not *another* movie about a female concentration camp prisoner who grows fond of her tormentor and wants to continue their sadomasochistic relationship a decade later."

But despite all the promise of debauchery and a probing of the dark side of human nature, The Night Porter, after the first 40 minutes at least, comes off as a confused, muddled, nonsensical and ultimately unintentionally-comic film, with an arbitrary ending that seemed to happen only because the filmmakers looked at their watch and said, "We're coming up on two hours."

The first part of the film, where Lucia recognizes her old captor, now a humble night porter at a Vienna hotel, is well-done. While I found Dirk Bogarde to be a little wooden, Charlotte Rampling is perfect as the woman--you can still see the scars, but she doesn't overplay them; there's quiet dignity, but also the capacity to feel pain. A scene where she goes to the opera and sees Bograde watching her, and flashes back to her predicament as she absent-mindedly rubs her once-chained wrists, is understated. Too bad the rest isn't on that level.

Unfortunately, this understatement soon gives way to a second half that's ridiculously over the top. Bogarde belongs to a sort of "support group" for ex-Nazi camp officers, and together they try to buck each other up, as well as destroy evidence of their past crimes. I found this subplot laughable--I doubt real Nazi guards ever participated in Dr. Phil-type rap sessions. There's another sub plot about a gay former SS-guard who's now a ballerina and dances for Bogarde. I found this subplot bizarre. This thread sort of fizzles out halfway through the movie, and I'm at a loss as to why it was there in the first place.

Then there's the main plot line, which as I said startes off interestingly, but gets pretty silly by the second half, wherein Bogarde and Rampling find themselves cut off from food and being shot at by the other former SS guards, like insurgents holed up in a hideout. If that sounds weird, it is weird. The second half makes no literal sense, and one of the former SS-guards himself points out the foibles in Bograde's actions ("Chain can be cut."), yet the film asks us to continue to take it seriously. Then the ending just comes, out of the blue, with no explanation.

Sorry, but this wasn't an "exploration" into the decadence or dark side of the human soul, or of SS decadence. This was sexploitation in Nazi garb. The flashback where Rampling dances for the officers in the bar, though sexy in a perverse sort of way, is also silly. She's supposed to be this meek and frightened concentration camp victim, yet she's dancing like she was born to it. I don't see an exploration of anything. I just see an attempt at sexy sadomasochism. Rampling is so good she *almost* sells me on this, but the others are rather stiff, some of the dialogue is laughable, and the second half is all disjointed.

For once Criterion drops the ball in terms of presentation. The non-anamorphic DVD utilizes a somewhat faded, beat-up print. The sound is not very good, even for 1974 mono. There are no extras at all, not even a trailer, not a commentary, nada. If this is an attempt to "explore" and "examine" our dark side, an analysis by the filmmaker or a film scholar would have been welcome. Maybe that person could have made heads or tails of this story's resolution. I cannot, and I cannot recommend this disc very strongly. It only has Rampling's performance to redeem it, and in the end, that's not quite enough.

The human nature does not know the limits of the aberration!.......2006-07-23

Liliana Cavani made of one of the most poignant, caustic and incisive human portraits around two people: a miserable and docile human being who, in theory only obeyed superior orders, but besides he enjoyed to exert physical, mental and spiritual wounds around a woman in a concentration camp during the opprobrious WW2, who eventually by these strange destiny tricks, will meet again in Vienna 1957.

The seventies knew about three brilliant female filmmakers: Liliana Cavani, Von Trotta sisters and Lina Wertmüller, visceral, artistic and spiritually affected by the horrors of the WW2. These three bold, brave and smart women decided to approach the miseries of the War from different perspectives but with the same purpose. To carve in relief the level of incivility and abjection to which a human being is able to come, when the War works out as the perfect alibi to surpass the verboten boundaries about ethics and moral. Paraphrasing to a personage from Crime and punishment: "If War exists everything is permitted."

Highly recommended but you must be aware about the ferocious and implacable script.

Dirk Bogarde Collection (Accident/The Mind Benders/The Servant)

Average customer rating:

Essential for Bogarde Fans
the servant is mind bending
Teacher, Teacher
Off the beaten track.
Comulsory for Fans of 1960s British Cinema

Dirk Bogarde Collection (Accident/The Mind Benders/The Servant)
Starring: Dirk Bogarde , Sarah Miles , Wendy Craig , James Fox , and Catherine Lacey
Director: Joseph Losey , and Basil Dearden
Manufacturer: Anchor Bay
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B00005R24N
Release Date: 2001-12-18

Customer Reviews:

Essential for Bogarde Fans.......2007-08-11

Though he is seldom mentioned in the same company as Laurence Olivier or Ralph Richardson, Dirk Bogarde is unquestionably one of the finest British actors - and compared to his other distinguished Knighted contemporaries, he was arguably the finest film actor of the lot. With his striking features and easy charm, Bogarde became a matinee idol early on - a label he detested. After appearing in a string of mostly forgotten comedies, Bogarde found an ideal artistic "partner" in the blacklisted American director Joseph Losey. They worked together for the first time on the pulpy, but stylish, melodrama The Sleeping Tiger (1954), which Losey was forced to sign as Alex Hanbury. When they reunited later, for 1963's The Servant, the end result would establish them both as forces to be reckoned with. It's appropriate, then, that this box set from Anchor Bay includes The Servant, as well as arguably the finest of the Losey/Bogarde collaborations, 1967's Accident. Both films show Bogarde and Losey at the top of their form, feeding off each other's respective creative gifts and working from top notch screenplays by the noted playwrite Harold Pinter. The Servant is arguably the more accessible of the two films, having a more clearly defined plot, but Accident stands out as one of the most striking British films of the decade - it unfolds in an impressionistic manner and is less concerned with contrivance than it is with nuance and detail. The "odd man out" of the set would have to be Basil Dearden's sci-fi drama The Mind Benders, which is still of interest as it predates the central theme of Ken Russell's Altered States (1980) by many years. Bogarde gives another compelling performance as a scientist whose experiments in sensory depravation reveal hidden facets to his personality, and the film itself has aged more gracefully than some of the more outlandish sci-fi pictures of the period. All three films are given excellent transfers, and while one could wish for better supplementary material (trailers and talent bios are all there is to be found), it's nevertheless a terrific intro to one of the finest and most creatively fearless British actors.

the servant is mind bending.......2005-09-30

want to see greates acting ever? see dirk bogarde's performance in the servant. constantly interesting story as well.

Teacher, Teacher.......2002-08-12

Since I have already reviewed "The Servant" separately, I will confine my comments here to "The Mind Benders" and "Accident."

"The Mind Benders" is an excellent example of the kind of film that has given British cinema a bad name. Literate, intelligent, well-acted, it's also a plodding progression of one staid camera set up after another. Bogarde and company are all excellent; one almost wishes they were a little less so. There is nothing to react to beyond the finesse with which they round off every corner of character, so thoroughly *written.* Each conflict is trimmed and groomed, each revelation tastefully neat and in place. It's all rather lifeless and unconvincing, though moderately engaging if you expect little from it.

"Accident," on the other hand, is Joseph Losey at his most winningly fluid. It's also Bogarde at his rat-like best as an envious Oxford don with the hots for one of his pupils. Playwright Harold Pinter's dialogue is so smart, it must have given the actors toothaches. All (with the exception of the inept Jacqueline Sassard as the object of Bogarde's attentions) obviously relish the chance to create a bevy of scheming, overeducated, unattractive vipers out of Pinter's clipped dialogue and famously pregnant pauses. With Losey at his most floating, sensuous, yet simultaneously precise, the movie almost defines the sexiness of style.

It's also style with a real subject, one that coincidentally sheds light on the failure of "The Mind Benders." "Accident" is, bar none, the most accurate evocation of the lifeless drift, petty jealousies and barely contained mutual contempt that constitute life in academia. "The Mind Benders" tries to make us care about academics, but the results are diagrammatic. We can see we're *supposed* to feel concern for Bogarde and his wife, we can tell how we're *meant* to react when their marriage starts to go awry because of his work, but we can't work up much more emotion than the recognition.

"Accident," on the other hand, exposes the lies and double-dealings of its characters. We don't care what happens to them for a moment. We can't, they're too accurately drawn, too self-pitying and lacking in any serious problems they don't create for themselves. The results nonetheless are riveting, *because* we recognize the truth of them. It's a nasty, knowing, unblinkered view of thoroughly unattractive people, a viciously witty snipe at ivy clad hypocrisy.

Off the beaten track........2002-06-06

This has to be one of the oddest DVD collections out there: *The Dirk Bogarde Collection*, three movies featuring one of the most unique and courageous actors in the history of film, Dirk Bogarde. Bogarde started as a British matinee idol, but as middle-age approached decided to take some risks. The result was an impressive career consisting of masterpieces directed by the likes of Losey and Visconti. (The Visconti films, *The Damned* and *Death in Venice*, are absolute masterpieces that are not yet on DVD, for some stupid reason.) This collection features two great ones by Losey and another by Basil Dearden, all from the 1960's. In chronological order and ascending importance:

*The Mind Benders* (Three Stars): Inessential but entertaining piece of Cold War hysteria, in which Bogarde is a scientist / professor at Oxford who has been fooling around with sensory-deprivation experiments. The experiments involve submerging a person in a tank of water: given scuba gear and suspended by cables so that he can't sink or rise to the surface, the person evidently goes rather insane after a few short hours. It seems ridiculous until you remember the opening title-cards, which inform us that the idea for the story is based on REAL experiments performed at colleges in the US. Hey . . . the Commies WERE coming, you know.

*The Servant* (Four Stars): The first of the Joseph Losey / Harold Pinter / Dirk Bogarde collaborations in this set (director, writer, and star, respectively). The times were a-changin', all right: James Fox, in his first screen role, is a playboy who has inherited millions from his family and thinks he can live like a Gentleman of Yore in the Sixties . . . but he picked the wrong decade to attempt it. (Hell, he picked the wrong century.) Of course a Gentleman must have a Manservant, so he hires Dirk Bogarde to clean up his new mansion and cook his meals. Bogarde is amazing, here: nobody could raise his eyebrows with such withering disdain as this guy. Pinter and Bogarde combine to create a fascinating character that transcends the Pinterian class-warfare stuff that's probably the main point of the movie. We watch with fascination this latter-day Iago destroy his master for no particular reason except that he can, which is reason enough for him. (Pinter keeps trying to score his class war points, but they merely intrude on the interior psychodrama between Fox and Bogarde.) Amusingly, 30 years later Fox was to again play a wealthy English gent pestered by a manservant -- Anthony Hopkins -- in *The Remains of the Day*.

*Accident* (Five Stars): A hideously sophisticated masterpiece. *Accident* takes on the dark, damp theme of teacher-student relations . . . while also taking on mid-life angst, under which aegis we'll include loveless marriages, professional envy, and resentment of youth. Dirk Bogarde plays a family-man professor at Oxford (again!) who's got a crush on one of his students, a beautiful, deeply tanned, exotic Continental girl (Jacqueline Sassard, a rather atrocious actress). He's the epitome of frustration. His wife, Vivien Merchant, is pregnant with another child (they have several), has a terrible haircut, wears dumpy housedresses, and seems to have nothing but seething contempt for her husband. When he discovers that his swinish "pal", fellow professor Charlie (a superb Sir Stanley Baker), has beat him to the punch with the beautiful girl, he's driven over the edge. There are too many rancid riches here for one mere paragraph. I'll finish by saying that never has England seemed more HUMID: director Joseph Losey takes full advantage of what must've been an exceptionally hot summer over there. The scene where they play tennis and drink whiskies is enough to give the viewer a woozy head.

[The DVDs, by Anchor Bay, feature splendid bios of Bogarde, Losey, Pinter, Baker . . . but the sound on each is TERRIBLE. I practically had the volume on my TV maxed out in order to hear what everyone was saying.]

Comulsory for Fans of 1960s British Cinema.......2002-01-03

This DVD release of "The Servant" "Accident" & "The Mind Benders" gets 5 stars here, simply because the three films are so well-presented (and the cost is so reasonable). Extras are skimpy: original trailers (it is quite informative to see how such challenging films were marketed in the early 1960s) and sketchy notes on the artists ("Victim", for example, in which Bogarde starred in 1961, is not included in his filmography). The films are nicely divided into chapters, but there are no subtitles included.

The transfers are wonderful. All three films are letter-boxed, so viewers can at last get a sense of Losey's use of space in his two. Only a Criterion issue is likely to have surpassed these transfers. Particulary in the case of Losey, it might have been good to have included some sort of commentary by surviving participants or film scholars.

"The Servant" is a major film of the 1960s. Wonderfully fascinating, it occupies the realm of social commentary/satire and as well as that of psychological thriller. This superbly acted drama has an uncanny atmosphere of pervasive strangeness. John Dankworth's score and the recurring use of his song 'All Alone' contribute greatly to the bizarre goings-on. The main performers have probably never been better: Bogarde, James Fox (in an impressive debut), Sarah Miles and Wendy Craig.

"Accident": called by some Losey's masterpiece. Again, the top-notch transfer works wonders for the viewer's involvement and appreciation. There is a subtle use of color in this film that is well served. It may be a tiny bit too self-consciously "arty" in its execution, but "Accident" contains very fine work from Bogarde, Stanley Baker and Vivien Merchant. And this film has in common with "The Servant" a strange, foreboding atmosphere.

"The Mind Benders" is probably the least artistically important of this trio. Yet, for three quarters of its length, it's a slow, but very compelling hybrid of science-fiction and domestic drama. Bogarde is, again, at the peak of his form. But mention must be made of Mary Ure, brilliant as his tormented wife. Only this film's final moments let it down in a sentimental turn that a Losey probably would have avoided. This is not to disparage director Basil Dearden, whose direction of actors here is as good as anyone's. There are several highly dramatic scenes and a superior musical score by Georges Auric, adding to the effectiveness of this picture.

Description

Disc 1: BATTLE OF BRITAIN Disc 2: THE GREAT ESCAPE Disc 3: A BRIDGE TOO FAR Disc 4: RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP

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