Alone in Vienna: “The Night Porter”

Last updated on: January 6, 2021 at 2:55 pm by Eve Tushnet

Alone in Vienna: “The Night Porter” 2021-01-06T14:55:33-04:00 Eve Tushnet

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I don’t intend to issue a verdict on this movie, which is about the secret postwar love affair between a former Nazi torturer and one of his victims. It’s the kind of premise where I think most people go in, if they go in at all, saying, “Convince me that this was worth making,” and I have a lot of criticism for the film but did also end up thinking that that isn’t the right approach to it. So here are certain smaller judgments of elements of the movie.

# The camera is often intensely emotional, as vs. the strict moral camera of Salo*. The movement of the camera emphasizes that we are becoming more intimate with one of the two central characters (sometimes when a camera closes in on an actor you feel like it’s trapping them, but here it’s more like the camera is attracted, even becoming complicit) or else that we’re moving further away from understanding them. There’s a lot of complex or conflicted movement, where the camera pulls in one direction as the actor moves off at a different angle (I think this is right–I should have taken notes). These movements are compelling, interesting. They also pretty much convinced me all the more that Pasolini had an insight that no other filmmaker has even attempted: an understanding of how to make a movie about exploitation which isn’t exploitative. I don’t think Cavani actually wanted to do that here! I think the panting camera was part of her goal! But contrast the Nazi cabaret scene in this movie with basically any shot of sexual violence in Salo and you’ll see what I mean.

* which I am still not telling you to watch, even though it’s one of the greatest movies ever made. Also sorry for not doing the accent; it makes the text around it weird.

# The one aesthetic choice I just think fails by its own standard is the decision to put Charlotte Rampling in green zombie makeup for her flashback concentration-camp scenes. (Or is it all lighting? She looks like a spring green Crayola, is my point.) I understand that you can’t in fact starve people for realism but this was painful to watch in the exact wrong way.

# Apparently I only watch Dick Bogarde in movies where he’s part of an unsettling, enmeshed relationship with shifting and unexpected power dynamics? This movie handles him much better than The Servant. He’s so alive in the present-day scenes, and deadened in the flashbacks. I have more to say about that below but for now I’ll just say that his acting is stellar.

# The circle of Nazis who put one another “on trial” in order to defend and absolve themselves is a genius idea, and bizarrely prefigures the real-life “catharsis as self-justification” captured in The Act of Killing. Everything about this circle and its ingrown, obsessive reenactments, its need to stay locked in one another’s sordid company, worked for me and gave real, strange insights into the nature of guilt and conscience.

# The plot decision to pull Bogarde’s Max out of that barbed-wire circle by way of a different enmeshed, secret relationship is also excellent. That feels right. And the relationship between Max and Rampling’s Lucia (I had to look up their names on imdb because their roles here are not about their individuality) gets at something I find really compelling: the creation of a private world in which moral judgment is suspended. A doomed rapt paradise of two, where the intensity of the connection between the inhabitants is created by the knowledge that there’s something wrong with this world, something outside of truth; but that maybe also there’s a kind of truth here that is not attainable in the public, moral world.

I will watch a million of these movies and maybe that was my problem. The Night Porter splits neatly into halves, with the second half taking place more or less entirely in this doomed private world of the lovers. And I just felt like I had seen every single scene many times before, in other movies about the doomed private world. If you have seen Dead Ringers and Heavenly Creatures and Secretary and Drugstore Cowboy and Shoplifters and that Jennifer Lynch movie about the kid being raised by a serial killer** and… I just don’t think this movie added anything to that except the Holocaust, and if that’s all you add then you probably shouldn’t have added it. (That’s only a criticism of this aspect of the movie; as I said, the secret Nazi circle stuff is powerful and needs its history.) You’ll notice that I didn’t even name the greatest examples of this kind of story, like Withnail & I, because those are distinctive enough that their scenes feel different, whereas The Night Porter‘s threatened-secret-world scenes seemed generic, existing solely to fill their spaces in the narrative.

** I know all these movies were made after Porter! Probably some of them were even influenced by it. But my point is more about you the hypothetical reader who loves Doomed Private World tales, not Liliana Cavani the filmmaker.

# I suspect I was left so cold by this section in part because the movie gave us more of Max’s interiority in the present-day scenes and (slightly) more of Lucia’s in the flashbacks. This seems totally backwards! The times when the audience would struggle most to understand or see into them are obviously the Nazi when he’s Nazi’ing, not when he’s guilty and lost, and the ex-prisoner when she’s seeking passion with her former torturer, not when she’s suffering at his hands. I know part of the point here is that other people are closed doors to us. That’s part of the suspension of judgment I think the movie intends to provoke. But the characters became so blank at the difficult points that it was hard to suspend not judgment but disbelief–hard to watch and think about the people, instead of about the artificiality of the situation. I think there must be a way to keep a character blank even to herself, yet in such a way that the blankness seems like a mystery and not just a necessity of the plot. I didn’t love Lust, Caution and can’t recommend it, but Tang Wei as Wong Chia Chi makes somewhat similar choices with more flashes of selfhood in the abyss.

Well, I know others saw things in this movie that I have missed here, and I would like to hear about them. It’s a film I’d read much more about even if I never rewatch.

Art

Liliana Cavani

Pasolini is me

Previous Post

January 4, 2021

Why Be Grateful to Be Gay?

Next Post

January 9, 2021 Search and Rescue: John Edgar Wideman's "Writing to Save a Life"

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Art Best-Of Gay Catholic Whatnot Mackerel-Snapping self-obsessed Too much is never enough Uncategorized

Select a Month November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 August 2022 July 2022 May 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002 February 2002 January 2002

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

In the New Testament what is the last book?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Luke Matthew Titus Revelation