The Night Porter (Criterion Collection Spine #59)
by Liliana Cavani
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Charlotte Rampling, Dirk Bogarde, Gabriele Ferzetti, Giuseppe Addobbati, Philippe LeroyDirector: Liliana Cavani
DVD: 2 Layers, Region Code 1
Audio: Italian (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Letterbox, 1.85:1
Running Time: 118 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-03-28
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of The Night Porter (Criterion Collection Spine #59)
Movie Review: Examing evil, embracing cruelty
Summary: 5 Stars
Examining the very essence of evil, grappling with the demons attached to memory. The Night Porter is a sordid tale of a concentration camp survivor coming face to face with her devastating past--her ex-torturer/lover. The lurid, graphic images simmer and boil over in her mind, scalding the fragments of her sexual psyche.
This story locks you in, you become trapped and pressurized with such an overwhelming intensity. The couple soon recreate their sadomasochistic relationship as you witness the lingering, destructive nature of submission. This strange retrogression definitely brings startling questions--WHY?!??! Why plunge back into this world of hell? How does something so horrifying transform into something you crave, or even become dependent of? Few of us have ever experienced such an overwhelming atrocity, the effects of such a catastrophe are mind-boggling.
I know one thing--70's CINEMA RULES!!!! That was a decade when extremely disturbing topics were tackled. One warning though, this cover is misleading. This is not some sleazy sexploitation stunt, or even a naziploitation flick. It does have some extreme elements, but it's also very operatic and artistic. It's not crammed with sex and action, so some might get bored. I found it a startling character study, not to mention a cultural study as well.
Summary of The Night Porter (Criterion Collection Spine #59)
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 NechakIn 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.
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