Day 59: The Night Porter (1974)
Liliana Cavani’s “The Night Porter” is a film exploring the fine line found between pain and pleasure and how it can be so easily crossed in the right (or should I say wrong) circumstances. A sensual and controversial picture, it was both panned and praised by critics for dealing with its theme of sexual transgression within a story structure centered on the Nazi Holocaust. Though some found this as simply a gimmick to better heighten emotional tension through the use of a horrible moment in history, others found the Holocaust as the perfect jumping off point to discuss the concepts of humiliation, sadomasochism, and hiding our past and its place in history.
In “The Night Porter,” we find Maximilian Theo Aldorfer (Dirk Bogarde), a former Nazi SS officer, working as a hotel night porter in 1957 Vienna. Though he was once a man performing unspeakable atrocities, he now spends his days trying to forget the past- to move on, as he puts it, and live a life as quiet as a church mouse. This is why he enjoys his current third-shift position, for he feels naked and revealed in the day and, with the way things are now, he can find solace in the dark.
Soon though, Max will feel free to stand in the light as a secret organization of former Nazis have been working on clearing his name from all military records and “eliminating” any still living witnesses to his crimes. When this is complete, he will be able to start anew and begin again without anyone realizing who he once was. But, just when it looks like this will be his future, Lucia Atherton (Charlotte Rampling), a concentration camp survivor, who Max both tortured and protected, begins staying at the hotel, and the two reconnect once again in a terrifying and lustful relationship, bringing all ideas of hiding the past to a grinding halt and forcing the underground Nazis to aim their attention at eliminating both Lucia and Max if they ever hope to remain hidden in the shadows of society.
A film with multiple layers, both psychologically and sexually, “The Night Porter” dives head first into whether or not we should push away or embrace our pasts if all they brought were pain and regret. Though Max, at first, seems to believe, like his former Nazi colloquies, that the horribleness of the past can only be forgotten through its destruction in the present, the sudden appearance of Lucia seems to change this in him. He now sees a reason to remember, even with the suffering and guilt it causes him, and this brings about a need for renewal through, of all things, reinterpreting and repeating moments of he and Lucia’s history together. In one scene, he chains her to her own bed and both find this as a way to reevaluate the past experience of concentration camp imprisonment as something sexually gratifying. Sick stuff yes, but also an honest and desperate attempt at finding resolution to previous pain.
It also should be noted that Lucia expresses, through her attraction to Max, the symtoms of Stockholm syndrome- a psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, even sometimes to the point of defending them from those who seek to bring them to justice. At any point in the film, Lucia could have simply informed the police of Max’s presence and this embodiment of evil could have been brought to justice, but director Liliana Cavani saw an opportunity to explore how a person truly reacts to meeting a past oppressor and even gave Lucia a name to contradict with her actions. For Lucia is an Italian reference to light, but also Saint Lucia, the patron saint of the blind. With Lucia, we have someone who can reveil the darkness of the past but is too blinded by her obsession with Max to do any such thing.
“The Night Porter” is a film not easily or comfortably defined and, while it may use aspects of sensationalism to drive the plot, there is something dark about it that draws us in closer and begs us to understand.
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