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Dec 09, 2014 Web Exclusive By Austin Trunick

Vienna, 1957: twelve years after the fall of the Nazi Germany. Max Adolfer, a former SS officer, grapples with guilt over his wartime involvement as he works as a night porter at a luxurious, Austrian hotel. Repressed feelings come bubbling up when an unexpected guest checks in. Lucia is the daughter of a socialist; she’d been imprisoned in Max’s concentration camp during the war, which is where the two met and had a brief, sexual affair. After her American husband leaves her alone in the hotel, the two re-connect and rekindle the fires of their illicit, erotic relationship. Max’s past eventually catches up with them, as a group of his old, Nazi associates looks to erase their misdeeds by eliminating all of the witness to their heinous crimes.

The subject matter—a romantic relationship between a camp survivor and one of her Nazi oppressors—was controversial in 1974, and feels just as taboo today. An argument has raged in the four decades since the film’s release as to whether The Night Porter is artful cinema, or purely exploitation; solid cases can be made for either side. The amount of sexual content—explicit, yes, but tastefully handled—is very high, whether it’s taking place in the current, Viennese timeline or in flashbacks to Lucia’s years in captivity. Charlotte Rampling, as Lucia, is often disrobed while Dick Bogarde, as Max, wears full SS dress uniform. These scenes feel deeply voyeuristic; even more so, the violence inherent in so many of the acts. Watching them feels wrong, but what leads us to side with artfulness over exploitation is how much it seems that the icky feeling might have been director Liliana Cavani’s intention.

Cavani was part of the generation of young, Northern Italian filmmakers that also produced Pasolini and Bertolucci. She had been making films for more than a decade prior to shooting The Night Porter, including a number of WWII-related documentaries. (One of which—1965’s Women of the Resistance, about female, Italian, resistance fighters—is included on this new Blu-ray.) Cavani was interested in exploring the psyches of Europeans, post-World War II, in particular how those involved with the Nazis’ atrocities justified what they were doing at the time, and how they were able to live with themselves afterward. In the film, Max and Lucia are severely damaged by their shared past, yet both are driven to repeat it; The Night Porter doesn’t necessarily attempt to provide answers, but it does pose these uncomfortable questions directly to its audience amid all of the cinematic kink. Let it be said, too, that The Night Porter is a very attractive film: many scenes are poetically shot without dialogue, under cool lighting, and set to classical music. The results certainly bring to mind the early, silent works of German Expressionists, who Cavani admits were an influence on the film in a newly-included video interview. While the film’s subject matter may be objectionable, Cavani—with cinematographer Alfio Contini (Il Sorpasso) and editor Frano Arcalli (Last Tango In Paris)—certainly made it hard to look away.

The Night Porter is an example of Criterion dipping into their back catalog to atone for an early, rare lackluster release. Their previous DVD version of the film, put out in 2000, contained zero extra features alongside a muted, blurry, non-anamorphic transfer of the movie. For anyone who is already a fan enough of the film to own that old edition, this new version is a must-buy. The high-def transfer is night and day compared to the old, ugly DVD release, and though grainy with some visible dirt and hairs on the image, it’s a far better and more film-like viewing experience. This is likely the best possible presentation of such a fascinating and divisive film.

www.criterion.com/films/604-the-night-porter

Author rating: 7/10