I watched this again yesterday evening , so thought I'd have another go at writing about it! It's a fascinating, troubling, difficult to like film in the tradition of Luchino Visconti's films (particularly The Damned, but also the death wish just for the chance to die in the presence of beauty of Death In Venice. Though it is interesting to hear in Cavani's interview that she doesn't think much of Visconti's film!) about a compulsive relationship begun under the Nazi regime between a guard and a prisoner, and then continued in late 50s Vienna when the guard (now working as a night porter in a hotel) and the prisoner (now a glamorous wife of a celebrated composer) accidentally meet again.
This is really about private vs public ideologies. Things that were tolerated, even carried out on a much wider scale under Nazism are now seen as deviant and signs of sick minds post-war. Ironically by the Nazis themselves, who seem to believe that having gone through 'trials' (in order to collect evidence and 'file' witnesses) that they have been somehow cleansed of their past lives and previous deeds. The trials serve both the practical purpose and a pseudo-psychiatrically therapeutic one (perhaps that ironic psychiatric angle is the reason for the Viennese setting!), yet in the early sections of the film Max is interacting with the various members of the hotel who all themselves seem psychologically damaged by the parts they played during the war (say Bert, who likes dancing. Or the countess lying decadently in bed, waiting to be serviced) and the underlying ideology remains, just waiting to bubble up to the surface again.
The main relationship is less aberrant for the sadomasochistic relationship but for the way it is exposing the hypocrisies of the post-war society in which everyone is superficially innocent, yet all are corrupt and complicit under the surface, which only gets emphasised in the final scenes of the couple under siege in their flat. Nazism provided the accoutrements, the uniforms, the trappings of 'legitimacy' in the flashbacks (which in the fantastic opera scene beautifully feels as if it mixes up which character is having the flashback, despite Max predominantly having the flashbacks elsewhere), but once they have gone the central compulsive relationship is still there. Even if it gets dressed up again in significant uniforms or dresses to try and recapture the past.
I'm torn between wondering if the audience is meant to see it as somehow proving that it was something 'more than' just a relationship under Nazism and that there was a core of, albeit abusive, human connection there. Or whether it was just an opportunity to return to a past era. All the other characters cannot, and do not, want to return to that era. All of their ties have been severed with their previous actions (though psychologically their actions will never leave them), but Max and Lucia in their encounter are given the opportunity to return, and to die together rather than live apart again.
Lucia is the most interesting character of the film in her complicity. Given a way to escape at every turn, she still chooses to stay and eventually die with Max. 'Choosing to' is perhaps the most significant power shift in the relationship, from being a victim to in some ways staying around to destroy Max by her presence. It is a difficult character to wrestle with, as Lucia does willingly die and seems to be compulsively attracted to her previous torturer. There seems to be a suggestion in the flashbacks of Lucia maybe getting her first sexual awakenings through Max, albeit in a horrible and twisted fashion, so perhaps there is a suggestion that this initial awakening of her sexuality in such a fashion was so impactful that she wishes to explore it further outside of the camp. That perhaps Lucia realises that she cannot escape from her past either, and willingly accepts being a victim. But a dominant victim, whose presence pushes all those around her into re-recognising their wartime roles. Eventually in a way she and Max ironically condemn the attempts of their peers at putting the past in the past and moving on by getting re-dressed up in their wartime clothing for their final walk to be executed.
There are a few other aspects of the film to be unpacked, particularly the sense of androgyny in the characters, as suggested by the paired flashback performance scenes. But I still need to think about those aspects more to come to a conclusion about them. In some ways I agree with djproject above. This is an eye of the beholder film to a fault: it purposefully feels as if it holds back on fully laying out 'motivational' aspects to the characters, with the audience filling in some of that element instead. Though that feels as if it well illustrates the idea in the film of two individuals driven to have a relationship, for their own reasons perhaps difficult to understand within themselves, in the face of the wider society trying to fit them into particular societal roles (as important as the relationship enraging the ex-Nazis to a murderous extent is the far more downplayed way that Lucia abandons her husband and hides from the police he sends to look for her). At what point does the private relationship between two individuals impact on the wider society, and vice versa?
One of the most interesting things to hear in Cavani's interview was that she was considering either Rampling or Mia Farrow for the part. I wonder if Mia Farrow was down to Rosemary's Baby, itself a film with a few troubling flashbacks in it? Rampling's cropped hair in her flashback scenes of Night Porter also seems similar to Farrow's hairstyle in Rosemary's Baby. It was also interesting that Cavani had an idea of wanting Rampling from seeing Guiseppe Patroni Griffi's film adaptation of
'Tis Pity She's A Whore. That's a film (with a great Morricone score) that is also a tragedy about a compulsive relationship that destroys all around them, or rather forces society to destroy the central couple in response to their incest.
improved over the UK edition.
