Liliana Cavani-Il Portiere di notte (1974)

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. criterion.com




Thirteen years after WWII a concentration camp survivor (Rampling) and her tormentor, currently the night porter at a Vienna hotel, meet again and fall back into their sado-masochistic relationship. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0071910/plotsummary)




The dark and melancholy story of a former teenage Nazi concentration camp inmate, Lucia, and the S.S. officer who was her torturer/lover, Max , who accidentally meet again in a Vienna hotel in 1957 where Max works as the night porter. They resume their sadomasochistic relationship, although Max's former S.S. comrades have something different in mind for them. The story unfolds like a gruesome dance of death. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0071910/plotsummary)




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. (amazon.com Editorial Reviews –Paula Nechak)




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. (amazon.com Editorial Reviews –Paula Nechak)




There is a haunted hollowness to these characters that resigns them to relive the sordid past that tragically binds them. (amazon.com Editorial Reviews –Paula Nechak)




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. (amazon.com Editorial Reviews –Paula Nechak)




If ever there was a difficult movie, it was "The Night Porter". The pace is slow and the characters are all weird. There aren't many movies where you get a homosexual Nazi wanting to be a ballet dancer and a sadistic Nazi still in love with love with a masochistic girl from the camps. (There's more, but I don't want to spoil the plot.) Only a spark of the plot could have been the subject for lots of raunchy exploitation movies, but "The Night Porter" manages to keep its class. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0071910/usercomments)




"The Night Porter" is one of the few movies where S&M-relationships aren't immediately reduced to a bunch of idiots and losers playing around with whips and leather masks. It also dares to show you other Nazis than the Pavlovian dogs you normally get to see. And above all it stars Charlotte Rampling as Lucia. Watch her as she performs the dance of Salomé and gets a present from Max (know your Bible and have an idea of what's to come). Watch her face and her near-skeletonlike body very closefully: that is how you should act disgust. Watch her as she locks herself in the bathroom and tries to hurt Max's foot with some glass. Listen to the music, the perfect addition to this murky movie. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0071910/usercomments)




Due to the difficulty of the movie it'll never raise above its status as cult classic and actually that's a shame. Be brave and try it. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0071910/usercomments)