The Night Porter

Part of the Special Series NACHTBLENDE

“Both less tasteless […] and much more homoerotic than I’d been expecting.”
— Liz on Letterboxd

With the at times banned THE NIGHT PORTER, Liliana Cavani created not only one of the most controversial films of the 1970s, but also a disturbingly beautiful and critical portrait of Vienna — and the film that made Charlotte Rampling world-famous.

Vienna, 1957. Twelve years after committing atrocity upon atrocity as a Nazi officer in a concentration camp, Max (Dirk Bogarde) now works as a night porter in a prestigious hotel. The sudden appearance of Lucija Atherton (Charlotte Rampling) complicates his attempt to conceal his war-criminal past. Max and Lucia know each other from the camp, bound by a relationship incomprehensible to outsiders. In their case, the extreme perpetrator-victim power imbalance manifested itself in a violent yet passionate sadomasochistic liaison.