"The dark and melancholy story of a former teenage Nazi concentration camp inmate, Lucia, and the S.S. officer who was her torturer/lover, Max , who accidentally meet again in a Vienna hotel in 1957 where Max works as the night porter. They resume their sadomasochistic relationship, although Max's former S.S. comrades have something different in mind for them. The story unfolds like a gruesome dance of death."
"In responses to The Night Porter, Cavani was both celebrated for her courage in dealing with the theme of sexual transgression and, simultaneously, castigated for the controversial manner in which she presented that transgression: within the context of a Nazi Holocaust narrative. The film has been accused of mere sensationalism: film critic Roger Ebert calls it "as nasty as it is lubricious, a despicable attempt to titillate us by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering." Given the film's dark and disturbing themes and a somewhat ambiguous moral clarification at the end, The Night Porter has tended to divide audiences. It is, however, the film for which Cavani is best known."
"The Night Porter", Liliana Cavani (1974)
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