THE NIGHT PORTER Movie Review

Il Portiere de Notte

This pathetic trash was considered hot, chic stuff when it was unveiled in art theatres in 1974 (there were lines down the block in New York). It's a soft-core continuation/exploitation of the associations Visconti made between degenerate sexuality and fascism in his 1969 The Damned. Charlotte Rampling is the woman who was sexually abused as a girl when she was imprisoned in a concentration camp; Dirk Bogarde is the Nazi who abused her. Years after the war they meet in Vienna, and they can't wait to get it on. They take turns wearing his old uniform, and at first the only real problem in their relationship is deciding who gets to use the riding crop on any given night. Things get a bit stickier later on, but you'll probably be gone by then. That The Night Porter is offensive and insulting goes without saying, but it's so jaw-droppingly inept that it almost fails to achieve even that.

NEXT STOP … The Damned, Seven Beauties, Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS

1974 (R) 115m/C IT Dirk Bogarde, Charlotte Rampling, Phillippe LeRoy, Gabriele Ferzetti, Isa Miranda; D: Lilian Cavani; W: Liliana Cavani; C: Alfio Contino; M: Daniele Paris. VHS, LV HMV, GLV, NLC