Vacuous rubbish (Il Portiere di notte [The Night Porter] (DVD))

Member Name: pan

Product:	Il Portiere di notte [The Night Porter] (DVD)
Date:	03/04/02 (214 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Not many

Disadvantages: Read the review

Dirk Bogarde is Max an SS officer, Charlotte Rampling one of his victims. Now, after the end of the war, Max is the seedy night porter of a hotel in Vienna, living in the shadows and in fear of being found by the authorities searching for war criminals. She is the wife of a successful conductor on tour in Europe. When she and her husband arrive in Vienna they come, unwittingly, to stay in Max’s hotel. After a tense few days Bogarde and Rampling renew their sado-masochistic sexual relationship.

She is, of course, a potential key witness should Max ever come to trial. When his Nazi friends discover that she and Max are together again they demand that she be eliminated. It’s what they have been doing for some time, conspiring to murder all the potential victims of their crimes.

It’s a crass story, badly acted and poorly scripted. A few erotic images involving SS uniforms, rape and torture and thrown in to spice things up a bit and cause the inevitable controversy that flared up after the film’s release in 1974. But the plot is unbelievable and becomes increasingly ridiculous as the film plods along to its inevitable conclusion.

I hate this film. I hate it for its pretensions, which are numerous. I hate it because people treated it seriously, affording it a respect it does not deserve.

Does it shed any light on the nature of sado-masochistic relationships? No, we never really see a relationship, just some Godawful fumbling around and some moody sex scenes which lack any erotic charge whatsoever.

D we learn anything about the relationship between Nazi iconography and sexual fetishism? No, the images tell us nothing. Read Susan Sontag’s ‘Fascinating Fascism’ or read some of the gay writing about Nazi imagery and sex instead.

Do we learn anything at all about the nature of fascism? Nope.

The film may have attempted to tell us something interesting but it has failed on a
ll fronts. Sure, the controversial nature of the subject matter was enough to get the film noticed, but ultimately is has nothing interesting to say – not even as soft-core porn.

Summary: