The shock that greeted the affair between Dirk Bogarde’s SS officer and Charlotte Rampling’s
Holocaust survivor looks dated 46 years on, but the film is an intriguing period piece
Mixed feelings are the only ones possible about the rerelease of Liliana Cavani’s 1974 shocker The Night Porter, a ripe piece of upper-middlebrow arthouse scandal in its day. The extremes of critical responses – disgust or contrarian acclaim – have both dated, although it is undoubtedly well acted by Dirk Bogarde, who brings his habitual wintry aplomb.Bogarde plays Max, a fastidious, elegant, mysterious man working as a night porter in a hotel in Vienna in the late 1950s. He is impeccably turned out and attentive to the guests, although the work is clearly a little beneath him. One evening a certain guest arrives: Lucia, played by Charlotte Rampling, the beautiful, shy young wife of a visiting
American conductor, working on the State Opera’s current production of The Magic Flute. Their eyes meet, and they recognise each other with an ecstatic chill. Lucia is a Holocaust survivor, and Max is the fugitive SS officer for whom Lucia conceived a Stockholm-syndrome fascination when he coerced her into a grotesque, sado-masochistic relationship.
Lucia’s husband now has to leave Vienna for his next engagement; Lucia is staying in the city, ostensibly to go shopping, but really so she and Max can resume their dark, obsessive affair. Only now it is Lucia who has the upper hand.