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Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter) (1974)

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Average Rating: N/A
Critic Reviews: 4
Fresh: 1 | Rotten: 3

audience

71

liked it
Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 4,870

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Movie Info

Max (Dirk Bogarde) is a discreet, unassuming night porter working in a posh hotel in Vienna in 1957, tending to the guests' needs, from cold water to a bed-warming gigolo. Then Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) arrives at the hotel, on the arm of her husband, an American composer, and Max's past comes flooding back to him. It turns out Max was an S.S. officer at a Nazi concentration camp where Lucia was a beautiful young prisoner. She became, in effect, Max's sexual slave. Now, years later, their

R, 1 hr. 55 min.

Drama, Art House & International, Cult Movies

Liliana Cavani

Cast

All Critics (20) | Top Critics (4) | Fresh (13) | Rotten (7) | DVD (4)

A strange, brooding tale.

July 16, 2008 Full Review Source: Variety | Comment
Variety
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With a little application and imagination I suppose one might read themes of political and philosophical import into this work, but Cavani's style remains stupidly literal and gaga.

July 16, 2008 Full Review Source: Chicago Reader | Comment
Chicago Reader
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The movie's visual virtues are negated by infinite absurdities -- particularly by the sentimentality with which the director views this luckless couple.

May 9, 2005 Full Review Source: New York Times | Comment
New York Times
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The Night Porter is as nasty as it is lubricious, a despicable attempt to titillate us by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering.

October 23, 2004 Full Review Source: Chicago Sun-Times | Comment
Chicago Sun-Times
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Not rich in plausability of plot or character development, but tonally interesting in places.

July 16, 2008 Full Review Source: Empire Magazine | Comment
Empire Magazine

People can read artistic significance into anything and lots of people have read gobs of it into this, but it is a silly movie with lots of perverse sex and no redeeming values, artistic or otherwise.

July 16, 2008 Comment

A strange and unforgettable picture that questions deeply the psyches of torturers and the tortured.

July 16, 2008 Full Review Source: TV Guide's Movie Guide | Comment
TV Guide's Movie Guide

Somewhere along the way, the film's handling of serious themes, and its attempts to examine the Nazi legacy in terms of repression and guilt, both sexual and political, get lost amid all the self-conscious decadence.

January 26, 2006 Full Review Source: Time Out | Comment

It retains a certain importance -- as much for understanding the history of film as for its intrinsic merits.

March 1, 2004 Full Review Source: Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC) | Comment
Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)

Groundbreaking might not be the right word, but it's certainly the right sentiment.

October 28, 2003 Full Review Source: Filmcritic.com | Comment
Filmcritic.com

A estranha relação entre o casal de protagonistas transforma o filme em uma experiência nada agradável - o que não quer dizer que ele não mereça ser admirado como belo estudo de personagens e por revelar sombras assustadoras da natureza humana.

October 9, 2003 Comment
Cinema em Cena

A compelling and disturbing testament to the enduring power of evil and the complexity of human nature.

May 24, 2003 Full Review Source: Film4 | Comment
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter)

If I assembled a list of my favorite sadomasochistic Nazi co-dependency films made prior to 1975 that featured topless dancers is SS uniforms, this would definitely be in the top five.

January 20, 2009
flixsterman
Randy Tippy

Super Reviewer

perversely sweet. i think it is of interest that an italian director chose 1950s Vienna as a setting for the re-enactment of a sado-masochistic affair from concentration camp days. it seems the ss officer and his 'little girl' cloister themselves, potentially out of shame, and their existence leads to an inevitable

April 7, 2008
bookmunki

Super Reviewer

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Foreign Titles

  • Der Nachtportier (DE)
  • The Night Porter (UK)
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