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IMDbPro

The Night Porter

Original title: Il portiere di notte
  • 19741974
  • RR
  • 1h 58m
IMDb RATING
6.6/10
13K
YOUR RATING
Charlotte Rampling and Dirk Bogarde in The Night Porter (1974)
Max (Dirk Bogarde) is a night porter in a Vienna hotel in the 1950's. When beautiful Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) checks in, they recognise each other from a terrible past; Max was an SS officer in a Nazi concentration camp who had abused and tortured then teenage Lucia, a prisoner. Lucia is travelling with her husband, an orchestra conductor and when he leaves to continue his tour, Lucia stays behind as she and Max find themselves compelled to renew their former, intense, sadomasochistic relationship. Max is reluctant member of a group of former SS who are ruthlessly covering up their pasts. They soon consider Lucia a threat and urge Max to hand her over. He refuses and hides our with Lucia, while his former comrades enact their threats.
Play trailer1:07
1 Video
74 Photos
  • Drama
A concentration camp survivor rekindles her sadomasochistic relationship with her lover, a former SS officer - now working as a night porter at a Vienna hotel - but his former Nazi associate... Read allA concentration camp survivor rekindles her sadomasochistic relationship with her lover, a former SS officer - now working as a night porter at a Vienna hotel - but his former Nazi associates begin stalking them.A concentration camp survivor rekindles her sadomasochistic relationship with her lover, a former SS officer - now working as a night porter at a Vienna hotel - but his former Nazi associates begin stalking them.
IMDb RATING
6.6/10
13K
YOUR RATING
  • Director
    • Liliana Cavani
  • Writers
    • Liliana Cavani(screenplay)
    • Italo Moscati(screenplay)
    • Barbara Alberti(collaborator on the screenplay)
  • Stars
    • Dirk Bogarde
    • Charlotte Rampling
    • Philippe Leroy
Top credits
  • Director
    • Liliana Cavani
  • Writers
    • Liliana Cavani(screenplay)
    • Italo Moscati(screenplay)
    • Barbara Alberti(collaborator on the screenplay)
  • Stars
    • Dirk Bogarde
    • Charlotte Rampling
    • Philippe Leroy
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 102User reviews
    • 91Critic reviews
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 2 nominations

    Videos1

    Night Porter Trailer
    Trailer 1:07
    Night Porter Trailer

    Photos74

    Charlotte Rampling in The Night Porter (1974)
    Charlotte Rampling and Dirk Bogarde in The Night Porter (1974)
    Dirk Bogarde and Isa Miranda in The Night Porter (1974)
    Dirk Bogarde in The Night Porter (1974)
    Charlotte Rampling and Dirk Bogarde in The Night Porter (1974)
    Charlotte Rampling in The Night Porter (1974)
    Charlotte Rampling in The Night Porter (1974)
    Charlotte Rampling in The Night Porter (1974)
    Hilda Gunther in The Night Porter (1974)
    Dirk Bogarde and Nora Ricci in The Night Porter (1974)
    Charlotte Rampling in The Night Porter (1974)
    Charlotte Rampling in The Night Porter (1974)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Dirk Bogarde
    Dirk Bogarde
    • Maxas Max
    Charlotte Rampling
    Charlotte Rampling
    • Luciaas Lucia
    Philippe Leroy
    Philippe Leroy
    • Klausas Klaus
    Gabriele Ferzetti
    Gabriele Ferzetti
    • Hansas Hans
    Giuseppe Addobbati
    Giuseppe Addobbati
    • Stummas Stumm
    Isa Miranda
    Isa Miranda
    • Countess Steinas Countess Stein
    Nino Bignamini
    • Adolphas Adolph
    Marino Masé
    Marino Masé
    • Athertonas Atherton
    • (as Marino Mase')
    Amedeo Amodio
    • Bertas Bert
    Piero Vida
    Piero Vida
    • Day Porteras Day Porter
    Geoffrey Copleston
    • Kurtas Kurt
    Manfred Freyberger
    • Dobsonas Dobson
    • (as Manfred Freiberger)
    Ugo Cardea
    • Marioas Mario
    Hilda Gunther
    • Gretaas Greta
    Nora Ricci
    Nora Ricci
    • The Neighboras The Neighbor
    Piero Mazzinghi
    • Conciergeas Concierge
    Kai-Siegfried Seefeld
    • Jacobas Jacob
    • (as Kai S. Seefeld)
    Luigi Antonio Guerra
    • Bit roleas Bit role
    • (uncredited)
    • Director
      • Liliana Cavani
    • Writers
      • Liliana Cavani(screenplay) (story)
      • Italo Moscati(screenplay)
      • Barbara Alberti(collaborator on the screenplay) (story)
    • All cast & crew
    • See more cast details at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Sir Dirk Bogarde considered retiring from acting after making this movie, which he found to be a draining experience.
    • Goofs
      In the flashbacks, Max is wearing the War Merit Cross First Class with Swords upside down on his SS uniform.
    • Quotes

      Hans: I'm only here to ask you some questions on behalf of myself and the others, and to have a look at you. Look, I could have come at another time to see him too, but, I don't need to speak to him. I don't need to speak to him... in front of you. Useless. With this business of the trial, he's... become too diffident.

      Lucia: He's right.

      Hans: What do you mean?

      Lucia: Because then for the first time he saw you all clearly. Nothing's changed, has it?

      Hans: You're wrong. We've all had our trials. Now we are cured and live in peace with ourselves.

      Lucia: There's no cure.

      Hans: It is you who are ill. Otherwise, you wouldn't be with somebody who made you...

      Lucia: That's my affair.

      Hans: Very well. But nevertheless, your mind is disturbed. That's why you're here, fishing up the past.

      Lucia: Max is more than just the past.

      [Lucia crawls under a table]

      Hans: Listen. Why don't you go to the police? If you want to, I'll take you. Hm?

      Lucia: Dr. Fogler, I remember you so well. You gave a lot of orders.

      Hans: Then you can't have forgotten that your Max was an obedient Sturmscharführer. Remember?

      Lucia: I don't remember.

      Hans: I certainly can't oblige you to remember if you don't want to.

      [clears his throat]

      Hans: I'm only here to ask you to testify, to find out... if the situation in which you find yourself is of your own choice.

      Lucia: I'm all right here.

      Hans: Yes. You both want to live in peace, right? One lives in peace... when one is in harmony with one's close friends, when one respects an agreement. Tell Max that. We could have denounced him to the police for the murder of Mario. But we didn't. Max is ill. He mustn't be too far away from us! He's locked you up here. We could go to the police about that, too, no?

      Lucia: I'm here of my own free will. This chain is because of you, so none of you can take me away.

      Hans: If we wanted to carry you off, would this chain stop us? You poor fool. A chain can be cut. None of us is thinking of violence.

      Lucia: Hmm, I know how your, your witnesses end up. Max told me.

      [Lucia crawls out from under the table, away from Hans]

      Hans: Max doesn't know what he's saying or doing. His mind is disordered.

      Lucia: [crawling into the bathroom] Get out. Go away. Go away!

      [slams the door]

      Hans: If you change your mind, if the chain grows heavy... call me.

    • Connections
      Edited into Bellissimo: Immagini del cinema italiano (1985)
    • Soundtracks
      Don Juan
      (uncredited)

      Music by Christoph Willibald Gluck

    User reviews102

    Review
    Top review
    7/10
    Room service at a Hell of a cost.
    The Night Porter is a tough, confrontative but rewarding psychological thriller about two people thrust together under very different circumstances to what it was they were both experiencing the first time they met. In the present day, that is to say 1950's Vienna, they are an extremely wealthy female Countess and a shrewd, brash male boss of a small group of staff that do well to keep a luxurious Austrian hotel running as well as it does. What they once were, however, is a male who was fairly high up in the Nazi pecking order of a concentration camp and one of the many female inmates inhabiting it. In short, the film is a depiction of power play and sadomasochism - but a power play and such wherein both parties seem to enjoy playing both the roles of the dominant and submissive. When they meet much later on, and much deeper into their newfound relationship these years later, they enjoy the dynamic that comes with it: one half of the twosome allows themselves to be chained up and spoon fed under these controlled conditions, whereas the other needs to constantly be aware that their identity and history are both at threat of being exposed in an instant.

    Dirk Bogarde plays Maximilian, or "Max" to most around him; the said character in charge of a group of staff at a Vienna hotel in 1957 whose job it is to meet, greet and help new arrivals of an often affluent nature. Max strikes us as a bit of an animal, badgering and ordering his crew around as if with some sort of experience in running a tight ship and getting what he wants. Upstairs, the quarters wherein the live-in staff rest sport pictures hanging from the wall depicting separate images limited exclusively to topless women and two duelling boxers going at it in a ring. This overwhelming presence of sex and aggression apparent in this collection of images will come to define the central pairing we observe play out. This pairing, consisting of Max and one other, is complete with the hotel's latest arrival: a young woman named Lucia Atherton (Rampling), who arrives with what we presume to be her usual entourage but immediately makes us aware of something not quite right when she spies Max behind the front desk and vice-versa as she stands there in the lobby. His nervous behaviour during the immediate thereafter is distinctly different enough to suggest something has truly thrown him, whereas Lucia's experiences of PTSD that evening (as she flashes-back to her time in Wartime Europe) allude to a greater truth.

    It is out of these beginnings that the two come together and go through the tryst that they do. It is one built on an enforced power exchange of the past that was initiated by a greater power beyond either of their control as well as the fresh control over the participant, whose role in any work or casual relationship is usually of a dominant nature, the "submissive" participant now has. The pair of them were based at the same Concentration Camp during World War Two, he has a guard; she as an inmate. We observe how he would shoot live rounds at and around Lucia's person where it's inferred many other inmates have already lost their lives. To this extent, it is a game; someone playing out their designated role of aggressor and forcing the other through metaphorical hoops for their own pleasure.

    Away from the central tract are Max's peers: a large group of other war criminals hiding out in the Austrian city who meet around large tables in grand drawing rooms when they need to discuss something. They object to her presence, but Max wants her to stick around. Another aside arrives in the form of an odd, homo-erotic tie he has with a man named Bert (Amodio); a dancer who performs near-nude routines in the sanctuary of his own abode in front of him. He too is dissatisfied at Max's presence in his own life when Lucia comes along.

    Issue and controversy will always come with a film such as The Night Porter. It's a film dealing with very morbid triggers for sexualised urges, but it's a film distilling all of this through this back story of a prisoner/inmate Stockholm syndrome situation that is initiated in a Concentration Camp. One scene which will kill the film stone dead for those whom do not take to it arrives during an opera; a sequence with both parties present, although away from each other, and peppered with these flashbacks of varying sexualised activity in the camps whilst the tenor's performance acts as a deeply juxtaposed overture to what we're seeing. The point being we're not supposed to know whose flashbacks they are; whose memories are being shown and thus, remain unsure as to whether each of the person's reactions sync up with how much they're enjoying the evening or the fact their head's are being reignited with "pleasurable" instances from the past. In 1995, Katherine Bigelow would direct "Strange Days" wherein there was a scene depicting a rape. Through the certain means therein, rapist and rape victim could be conjoined in their experience and could both systematically share the pain and pleasure, agony and ecstasy of what the other was feeling. It could be argued Italian director Liliana Cavani was using similar ideas of power dynamics and enforced shifting emotions all of twenty years earlier, and in films that did not need fiction technological USP's to do so. The film has upset some, as did Strange Days; I happened to find it a quite engrossing and really rather well made drama.
    helpful•3
    0
    • johnnyboyz
    • Feb 9, 2013

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • October 1, 1974 (United States)
    • Countries of origin
      • Italy
      • France
    • Languages
      • English
      • German
      • Latin
    • Also known as
      • Nocni portir
    • Filming locations
      • Vienna, Austria
    • Production companies
      • Lotar Film Productions
      • Les Productions Artistes Associés
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

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    • Gross US & Canada
      • $633,298
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

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    • Runtime
      1 hour 58 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Mono
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

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