ShangLuda Admirable film.

ThrillMessage There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

lasttimeisaw THE NIGHT PORTER, is a doomed love story in its kernel while being notorious for its sadomasochistic exploitation between not any random two, but Max (Bogarde), a former Nazi SS officer and Lucia (Rampling), his prisoner in the concentration camp. It is such a campy plot design, blatantly excites for controversy. Directed by the Italian art-house cult- director Liliana Cavani, my very first foray into her filmography, what sticks in my mind after watching is not the sensational perverseness of the sex act, but a tenacious nihilism animated by those two equally impenetrable characters, with the most passive and futile resistance, it is a fearless scenario of two against the whole world, nothing else matters, as long as they can march toward their grim fate together, no compromise or whatsoever, which is intensely heart-rending. Vienna 1957, 13 years after WWII, Max now is a hotel's night porter, and by a mere chance, Lucia and her husband, an orchestra conductor come to perform in the city and stay in the same hotel. This unexpected encounter stirs memory flashbacks in both and instigated by Mozart's MAGIC FLUTE, which is conducted by Lucia's husband, their mutual longing reaches the boiling point, the sadomasochistic torment (more spiritually than physically) which generates the irresistible pleasure, reunites them, Lucia leaves her husband and moves into Max's cramped apartment, even voluntarily being chained inside, if that's so, as long as everything is consensual, they might be the happiest couple in the world. However, Max is an ex-Bazi officer, and is currently involved with a coterie of former SS comrades, lead by Hans (Ferzetti), they are intent on destroying any documents and dispatching all the possible surviving witnesses in order to clear their names so that they can live in peace. So, when they find out Lucia's presence, both her and Max's lives are at critical stake. Well, one major drawback in the plot is the elliptical motivations of the coterie, on the surface, they arrange a certain trial of its members individually, yet, an ultimate purpose is to eliminate all the evidences associated in the war crime (as Max mercilessly murdered one of his witness, we can only hear the voice-overs playing while on screen it is Max in his apartment, disconcerted), so why on earth they need such a trial? Some kind of remedial therapy? Moreover, in the scenes where Hans faces Lucia alone in the apartment, obviously, it is much easier to whisk her away or simply finish her off, so she will no longer be a threat, but instead, Hans painstakingly wheedles her to be the witness in the so-called trial against Max, which is rather perplexing.From then on, the narrative steers towards the hungry strike in a claustrophobic status, aimlessly hemmed in the apartment, Max and Lucia indulge in their memories, haunted by their memories and can only get excited through their memories, complete devoid of any political agenda, it is a battle between human's primal sex impulse and basic desire to survive. Ms. Rampling is renown for taking unorthodox projects and braving challenging roles, here, apart from her strikingly alluring solo-dancing scenes among Nazi officers, which doesn't connect the story necessarily, instead impairing her vulnerable status as a powerless victim, indeed is a hyped gambit to be shamelessly titillating and contentious. She compellingly conveys Lucia's abstruse psyche through her expressive facial expressions and body languages; Bogarde, symmetrically excellent in veiling Max's complex lust with a chilling sophistication, both can be gauged as the top-picks of their eclectic careers. Shot in lurid Technicolor in 35mm, THE NIGHT PORTER is unequivocally Cavani's most popular work and fairly speaking, it is a singular curio might find audience among those who are not feeble-minded and vacant from all the political innuendos, also one has to accept that it doesn't conform to the formula where in the upshot, those loathsome wrongdoers never get their comeuppance.

gavin6942 After a chance meeting at a hotel in 1957, a Holocaust survivor (Charlotte Rampling) and the Nazi officer (Dick Bogarde) who tortured her resume their sadomasochistic relationship.This film deals with the psychological condition known as Stockholm Syndrome in the most extreme way possible. It also borders on the offensive. Some would say it crosses over into the offensive...For example, film critic Roger Ebert calls it "as nasty as it is lubricious, a despicable attempt to titillate us by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering." Ebert is flat wrong. He can take the moral high ground, but this is the same guy who wrote "Beyond Valley of the Dolls"...

zuhairvazir A wayward exploitation of the cinematic 'Nazi Evil' cliché, which prevailed throughout the seventies horror cinema; from mad doctors/scientists to jail guards with a penchant for bondage and puerile victims willingly giving themselves to the morbid fantasies of the script writer.The nonsensical screenplay of 'The Night Porter' pays homage to the latter and also adds to the distress of anti-porn activists by throwing in an uncomfortable-to- watch set piece.A holocaust victim suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome finds herself helplessly drawn to the impeccable and aching charms of a former tormentor and SS officer who has given himself to the succulent comfort of a non-significant existence after having basked in the degenerating excesses, which apparently the SS life offered.In hiding, we are shown, he has become a night porter at a hotel in post-war Vienna and prefers to live like a 'church mouse'. After their chance meeting both are ostensibly pulled into a dangerous game of lurid passion. A passion which is explored with more seriousness and insight in Star 80 (83).While Star 80 shows us the lecherous, conflicted and tragic demise of the American dream and destiny, The Night Porter simply wants us to swallow whole the idea of misplaced feelings and deviant sexual overplay as if it were a bonafide means to post trauma catharsis. If it weren't for the fervor in Cavani's operatic exploration, Charloette Rampling's off the rack and risqué performance and Bogarde's sullen yet decisive night porter the film would have been forgotten.

MisterWhiplash The Night Porter - it's the kind of movie if you ask your mom or dad about it (or if you're my mom and dad's age you just remember it) they'll put it as 'that Nazi movie with Charlotte Rampling' or 'wow, hot stuff' (if they're a particular kind of parent, besides the point). It's not a film that won a lot of awards when it came out - matter of fact it might have not gotten great reviews overall, despite this getting a low-key Criterion DVD release some years ago - but it can be worth a try so many years later. Why not with actors like Dirk Borgarde and Charlotte Rampling (also of Luchino Visconti's The Damned)? Or with the premise, which just the first part sounds good enough for a movie: an once-Nazi commandant at a camp is a night porter at a hotel in Vienna, and a woman comes with her husband, played by Rampling, and they recognize each other instantly, but neither saying a word. It's mutual shock as she was in the camp herself. But the catch? This is where it gets interesting and kinky and starts to go over into potential Natzi-sploitation territory (for those who know the sub-genre it's from the 70's, stuff like Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, s*** like that), as Borgarde's character during Lucia's time in the camp picked her out as his own. By that, I mean, a dominant/submissive relationship, and leading on to her even "performing" for other Nazi soldiers. This is all seen in flashback, of course, and intertwined with a story of Borgarde having to deal with the other ex-Nazis that are still around the area - and hey, what's that girl doing here anyway?Liliana Cavani's direction in the first half of the film is mostly very delicate and dramatically so intriguing. We get both the Porter and Lucia's points of reference on what happened, how startling to jump from "modern" day (of 1957) to being in a cramped space being photographed with a 16mm camera naked in a line-up with the rest of the Jewish people, and then later into the bedroom as Maximilian and Lucia got deeper into their bondage territory. Why would Lucia go for it to start with and, more importantly to what happens in the film, goes with it again when the characters meet once more and reignite the old "spark" as it disturbingly was? Maybe some attention, some form of psychological game that made things a little more tolerable past the potential death in the camps and then, in Vienna, the... I don't know what. Control, it would appear, is a supremely powerful instrument, and in sex, oh man.There are good erotic moments, of the raw, rough 70's sort (NOT porno, must make that clear), mostly when Maximilian and Lucia do suddenly get back into their "NO - YES" mode of love-making, particularly in one very long shot where Cavani shows the characters, like uninhibited beasts, on the floor of the hotel room. There are others, in the second half of the film, that veers on the unwatchable - not for being filmed too poorly, just as being too hard to take. For those interested in BDSM it is a kind of essential film, of its or any time, in how it takes on what could make this relationship tick in the scope of Nazis. For those who just want to see good acting, there's that too, especially from Rampling as she almost 'becomes' her former, younger self in the third act when she stays inside the hotel room (sometimes, shockingly for me, chained to a bed). It's certainly got some problems with minor performances, and a side bit with a gay character who dances in one sequence in the camp for the Nazis is bizarre - almost TOO bizarre. But for what it was, and is, it can be revisited and admired, and when it really sticks to its guns as a drama it is convincing and not campy. Probably the most "serious' Nazisploitation flick then?