The Night Porter
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Synopsis
In this unsettling drama from Italian filmmaker Liliana Cavani, a concentration camp survivor (Charlotte Rampling) discovers her former torturer and lover (Dirk Bogarde) working as a porter at a hotel in postwar Vienna. When the couple attempt to re-create their sadomasochistic relationship, his former SS comrades begin to stalk them. Operatic and disturbing, The Night Porter deftly examines the lasting social and psychological effects of the Nazi regime.
Picture 8/10
Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter receives a much needed upgrade from Criterion, who present the film in its original aspect ratio of about 1.85:1 on a dual-layer disc. The new transfer—made from a mix of the original 35mm negative and a 35mm interpositive—is presented in 1080p/24hz.
Though a marked improvement over the old non-anamorphic DVD, I guess I’m a little mixed on this new presentation. It’s certainly sharper than the old DVD, with finer details and textures coming through far clearer. Edges are sharp and well-defined, and all of the compression noise, jagged edges, edge-enhancement, and other artifacts found on the old transfer are all gone, with the transfer looking more natural and filmic in nature.
The print is much cleaner, though some of the hairs and other bits of debris noticeable at the edges of the frame in the previous DVD are still there, suggesting these were present during filming. The film is fairly grainy, getting heavier at times, but it’s not distracting and thankfully looks naturally rendered, and I didn’t notice any clumping or blocky patterns.
Where I’m unsure about the transfer is admittedly the colour presentation. I have a feeling that the colour scheme here is closer to what was intended, but they do have a washed out look to them. Some sequences, primarily flashbacks, have a greenish tinge to them as well. It’s certainly a dreary looking film, even drearier than the DVD but considering the film’s subject matter I’m sure it’s intentional. Where I’m mostly bothered, though, are the black levels. They look okay generally speaking, but shadow delineation can be rather lousy, with details consistently getting crushed out. This can really throw off the balance in some scenes of the sequences.
In all the transfer is significantly better than the DVD, so for those stuck with that disc the Blu-ray is certainly worth getting for the upgrade, though I was still disappointed with a couple of aspects of it.
Audio 6/10
The film’s mono track is presented in lossless linear 1.0 PCM. It’s not a show track at all, and is a bit flat but fidelity is noticeably better in comparison to the DVD, and both dialogue and music sounds better. The track has also been cleaned up a bit more and noise and damage isn’t a concern.
Extras 5/10
Criterion’s previous DVD had no special features other than a short and disappointing essay by Annette Insdorf. Criterion more or less remedies that here with a couple of supplements. The big one would probably be Cavani’s 1965 made-for-television documentary Women of the Resistance. The 50-minute documentary goes over the women fighters that were involved in the Italian resistance, giving a great overview over their contributions to the cause. Cavani also manages to get a number of first-hand accounts from survivors. It’s an absolutely fascinating documentary, though quite harrowing at times: the film opens with letters condemned women write to their loved ones, knowing they are about to die, and then some of the firsthand accounts, particularly when we get to a portion about the torture the women had to endure when captured, leaves an impression. There’s also some details about various missions they participated in, including one involving the attempt to break out prisoners, as well as some battles. It’s a great documentary, nicely assembled together, showing an aspect of the resistance rarely shown. It’s disappointing Criterion doesn’t include other TV documentaries by Cavani.
(The documentary is also accompanied by an introduction by Cavani, running about 5-minutes. She simply covers how the project came to be while also recalling the impact of some of the interviews.)
Criterion also includes a new interview with director Liliana Cavani. I was really looking forward to this feature but it turned out to be a big letdown. Running only 8-minutes Cavani simply talks about the production, going over casting (interestingly she had considered casting Mia Farrow in the role that eventually went Charlotte Rampling) and talks about the film’s photography and the ending. She also talks a little about the reactions to the film, with the Catholic Church reacting most poorly to it (not surprisingly I guess) and then expresses some annoyance at how some critics seem to indicate Rampling’s character is Jewish (she’s actually not and is the daughter of a social activist, Cavani trying to show that there were a number of people of different types terrorized by the Nazis). It’s a somewhat disappointing interview, only touching the surface of the film. I think I was hoping for something a little more in-depth.
Insdorf’s essay doesn’t get carried over but the included fold out features a new essay by Gaetana Marrone on the film that I found quite a bit more satisfying in its analysis of the film and Cavani’s work. There’s also the reprint of a more satisfying interview performed with Cavani, that was done for the magazine Films and Filming in 1975, where she talks more about the film’s themes and subject matter.
Overall, though an improvement over Criterion’s barebones DVD, it’s a disappointing set of supplements. The insert provides some decent analysis and the included documentary is a great inclusion, but I guess I was hoping for a more scholarly slant to a film that can easily divide audiences.
Closing
The new Blu-ray certainly improves over the old DVD in every way, with better audio and video, as well as some supplementary material, but the presentation still looks a little off, at least in blacks, and the film still seems to be open to more scholarly materials. Worth the upgrade for sure, but still a bit disappointing.
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