eShop USA > DVD > The Night Porter (Criterion Collection Spine #59)
The Night Porter (Criterion Collection Spine #59)
List Price: $29.95Our Price: $21.99 You Save: $7.96 (27%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
DVD Layers: 2
DVD Sides: 1
EAN: 9780780022829
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0780022823
Label: Criterion
Languages: Italian (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 MonoEnglish (Subtitled),
Manufacturer: Criterion
MPN: 90
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Letterbox
Publisher: Criterion
Region Code: 1
Release Date: March 28, 2000
Running Time: 118 minutes
Studio: Criterion
Theatrical Release Date: October 01, 1974
Related Items: Featured Listmania!
Editorial Review:
For those who like their love stories dipped in decadence, Liliana Cavani's dark and disturbing 1974 drama--about a concentration camp survivor who fatefully comes face to face with her ex-Nazi captor and lover--has held up quite well over the years despite its sensationalistic tone. It helps that the mysterious, cobra-eyed Charlotte Rampling plays the survivor, Lucia, and that the unctuous and languid British actor, Dirk Bogarde, is former SS officer Max, a now-benign night porter at the Vienna hotel where the pair coincidentally collides. There is a haunted hollowness to these characters that resigns them to relive the sordid past that tragically binds them. Criterion's DVD offers the film in its best available condition, and the color has been restored to enhance its symbolic significance. The Night Porter uses landscape as character, and its desaturated tones evoke memory of the Holocaust and a shady 1950s Vienna plagued by post-World War II guilt. In fact, this is a film full of shadows and shame, and Max and Lucia are victims of this frightening world in which nothing can be trusted and around every corner lurk spies in their house of forbidden love. --Paula Nechak
In Liliana Cavani's scintillating drama, a concentration camp survivor (Charlotte Rampling) discovers her ex-torturer/lover (Dirk Bogarde) working as a night 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 cruelty and decadence of Nazi culture.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Examing evil, embracing cruelty
Examining the very essence of evil, grappling with the demons attached to memory. The Night Porter is a sordid tale of a concentration camp survivor coming face to face with her devastating past--her ex-torturer/lover. The lurid, graphic images simmer and boil over in her mind, scalding the fragments of her sexual psyche.
This story locks you in, you become trapped and pressurized with such an overwhelming intensity. The couple soon recreate their sadomasochistic relationship as ... Read More
Rating: - Interesting and sad in a way...
So "The Night Porter" is a film of psychology, violence, and past.
The story is about a man working in a hotel as a night porter in 1957. He is working with some men from WWII about trying to clear his past as an SS doctor working on horrible acts during the war, so that he can move on with his life.
While he is at work one night, a woman comes into the hotel that he recognizes as one of his internment camp victims that he created a sadomasochistic love affair with. She is torn ... Read More
Rating:  - Disappointing
I had pretty high expectations for The Night Porter. The reviews are good and the premise seemed interesting. I often enjoy daring and provocative films, so I gave it a shot. Once it started, I kept waiting for it to develop and it never did. I kept saying to myself, `Finally, now we're getting somewhere...oh wait, never mind.' It just dragged on with little or no purpose. And I felt like it was edited by an 8th grade audio-visual club. The dubbing was bad, the writing/acting was labored and the direction ... Read More
Rating: - Like no other film I've seen
Being 21-years-old at the time of this review, I had never seen many of the decadent films to come out of Europe during the 1970s, let alone any that dealt with the Nazi Party or The Holocaust. After a good deal of reading online, I ordered "The Night Porter" from Amazon, and decided to give it a try.
Needless to say, I've been haunted for days.
Lucia (Charlotte Rampling in an outstanding performance) arrives in 1957 Vienna, along with her composer husband. A Holocaust survivor who ... Read More
Rating: - Some movies better not be rewatched.
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
When I first saw Liliana Cavani's controversial film about sadomasochistic love affair between former Nazi officer Max (Dirk Bogard) and a concentration camp survivor Lucia (Charlotte Rampling)whom he used to abuse sexually and physically during the WWII, it had a shock value. I saw it in Moscow in the middle of 80s, and when our friends brought the tape to watch I thought it was a screen adaptation of the Irwin Shaw's novel "Nightwork" which is ... Read More
Related Categories:
| |
 |
