It is a not a pleasant film. It was deliberately made to confront and deeply disturb its audience of the time, compelling them to look at ugliness associated with the Third Riech and associations with the holocaust, at the messiness of human eroticism and the absurdities of obsession, culminating in what must be described as an unpleasant and deeply disturbing outcome. There is no happiness, no pleasantness, not rational sense that the characters are behaving as people with whom the audience might identify, or act in ways an uncouched audience could be expected to understand. If a viewer has an issue that might be subject to being trigger by visuals or story, this film will trigger it. It is not, it must be said coldly, for anyone who might remotely be considered "fragile." If this is remotely you, do not watch this film. It is the clearest content warning I can offer.
The weakest perspective of film content that has emerged in these last five decades is the sense that if a film is to be considered valuable, it must be "liked." This condition is of the least importance where a film is concerned, but it is always the first we expect to see when someone gives their opinion. We rate films with numbers and with how many positive adjectives can be applied to the concept, then we suppose we have written something that describes how art is meant to work. It's ridiculous.
"Liking" is a consumer response, designed by those who make films as a consumer product. That is not The Night Porter. Films of consequence do not operate upon an axis of likeability. Many of the most consequential films in history were designed to resist pleasure, identification, comfort or even comprehension. They operate instead upon pressure, abrasion, endurance and implication — asking whether or not they were "enjoyed" is roughly equivalent to asking whether the scalpel that cuts and removes the tumour within felt "good." Films such as this one serve to unsettle, implicate, exhaust or refuse to orient the viewer in order to wrest them from an unconscious lack of awareness about the world, dragging that viewer kicking and screaming into the ugly, horrific unpleasantness of a bright, unyielding light. Filmgoers who would rather crouch in the dark of their escapism are not invited to attend.
Putting that aside. Bogarde in the film gives the performance of his career; his presence, the cruelty of his character, the intensely pathetic evil he possesses, such that he is able to literally shrink his body at will, expresses an artist with unimagined power within his craft. He is overshadowed, however, by the mere presence of Charlotte Rampling, with whom film directors fell in love with in the 1970s, expressly allowing the camera to pour over her for long minutes at a time, given her piercing stare and unimaginably beautiful features. She is hardly spoken of now, but the effort given in the Night Porter, portraying the actress not only in moments of extreme beauty but also in moments of repellant grotesquerie, was but one of numerous films in which the director was more than in love with her. Woody Allen's Stardust Memories would be another example. She is gravitational, a presence that cannot be explained. Her facial features are "perfect" but unlike any other star one might name, from Ingrid Bergman to Lauren Bacall to any of the less magnificent candidates these last twenty years, who cannot achieve the notariety of those who did it without make-up or botox injections.
But, without talking about the story or discussing its ramifications, I present it here, for those who have the wherewithal or the will to see it.
"Liking" is a consumer response, designed by those who make films as a consumer product. That is not The Night Porter. Films of consequence do not operate upon an axis of likeability. Many of the most consequential films in history were designed to resist pleasure, identification, comfort or even comprehension. They operate instead upon pressure, abrasion, endurance and implication — asking whether or not they were "enjoyed" is roughly equivalent to asking whether the scalpel that cuts and removes the tumour within felt "good." Films such as this one serve to unsettle, implicate, exhaust or refuse to orient the viewer in order to wrest them from an unconscious lack of awareness about the world, dragging that viewer kicking and screaming into the ugly, horrific unpleasantness of a bright, unyielding light. Filmgoers who would rather crouch in the dark of their escapism are not invited to attend.
Putting that aside. Bogarde in the film gives the performance of his career; his presence, the cruelty of his character, the intensely pathetic evil he possesses, such that he is able to literally shrink his body at will, expresses an artist with unimagined power within his craft. He is overshadowed, however, by the mere presence of Charlotte Rampling, with whom film directors fell in love with in the 1970s, expressly allowing the camera to pour over her for long minutes at a time, given her piercing stare and unimaginably beautiful features. She is hardly spoken of now, but the effort given in the Night Porter, portraying the actress not only in moments of extreme beauty but also in moments of repellant grotesquerie, was but one of numerous films in which the director was more than in love with her. Woody Allen's Stardust Memories would be another example. She is gravitational, a presence that cannot be explained. Her facial features are "perfect" but unlike any other star one might name, from Ingrid Bergman to Lauren Bacall to any of the less magnificent candidates these last twenty years, who cannot achieve the notariety of those who did it without make-up or botox injections.
But, without talking about the story or discussing its ramifications, I present it here, for those who have the wherewithal or the will to see it.
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