The Night Porter

A highpoint of edgy Euro cinema in 1974, Liliana Cavani’s Holocaust-themed love’n’sex story still unsettles. But to what end? Is it a genuine exploration of its subject? Or does it use its theme as a base on which to erect something tawdry? At any rate, in 1957 Vienna, a concentration camp inmate (Charlotte Rampling) encounters the former SS officer (Dirk Bogarde) with whom she had a sadistic affair in the camps. He’s now working fastidiously as a porter, but they soon pick up where they left off. Themes of guilt and captor/captive S&M tensions are touched on, as are issues relating to how extreme circumstances can produce extreme actions. But the central, sentimentalised relationship sits oddly with its more serious contentions.

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