The Night Porter (1974)

          Disturbing and provocative, the Italian film The Night Porter belongs to a small subgenre of movies exploring the sexual depravity of Third Reich officers. Yet instead of taking the obvious route by simplistically portraying black-hearted Nazis exploiting innocent victims, co-writer/director Lilina Cavini presents a more complicated vision in which predator and prey become symbiotic; accordingly, The Night Porter can be taken literally or as a cruel metaphor representing the human tendency to embrace humiliating entanglements that generate electrifying sensations.
          The story takes place in 1957 Vienna, where Max (Dirk Bogarde) works the night desk at a posh hotel. One evening, he spots a beautiful woman in the hotel’s lobby, and recognizes her immediately as Lucia (Charlotte Rampling). Over the course of several flashbacks, Cavini reveals the nature of the couple’s relationship during World War II. Max was part of a group of SS officers who transformed prisoners into sexual playthings, and while Max grew infatuated with Lucia (he refers to her as “my little girl”), she succumbed to his aristocratic handsomeness despite his sadism. Now, years after the war, Lucia is married to an American orchestra conductor, and Max is associated with a cabal of former Nazis who purge war records in order to shield themselves from war-crimes prosecution. Initially, Max worries that Lucia will expose him, but when he confronts her, their old psychosexual attraction rekindles—so Max hides Lucia from his fellow Nazis, creating a private world of pain and pleasure.

          The first movie that veteran Italian filmmaker Cavini made in English, The Night Porter is challenging and perverse, with the film’s glossy surfaces and classical-arts milieu (ballet recitals, orchestral performances) communicating the thorny concept of sophisticated savagery. For instance, Max is a fastidious gentleman with immaculate grooming and manners, but he also derives erotic glee from hurting Lucia. Similarly, Lucia is something other than a mere victim; she finds satisfaction in subjugation. Throughout the film, Cavini toys with traditional associations. In the picture’s most famous scene, Rampling serenades a group of Nazis while wearing an officer’s cap, black leather opera gloves, and men’s trousers tethered to her rail-thin body with suspenders; Rampling’s casual toplessness and Cavini’s brazen mixture of contradictory signifiers elevates the scene into a study of abnormal desire.

          Despite consistently graceful camerawork and editing, The Night Porteroccasionally succumbs to excess—the pacing is precious and slow—and some viewers will find the central relationship impossible to accept. Plus, Bogarde and Rampling are so icy that we mostly observe their dynamic from the outside, rather than getting drawn into their passions. Yet while The Night Porter probably alienates as many viewers as it intrigues, it’s inarguably a bold film bursting with artistry, ideas, and integrity.

 

The Night Porter: GROOVY

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

          Go figure that a movie about a military operation that was thwarted by excessive ambition would itself be thwarted by excessive ambition. Based on the doomed World War II campaign code-named Operation Market Garden, which was staged in late 1944 by Allied forces eager to maximize the gains of D-Day by ending the European component of the war with a push across Holland into Germany, A Bridge Too Far features one of the most impressive all-star casts of the ’70s, in addition to spectacular production values and a few powerful depictions of heroism and tragedy. Furthermore, the movie deserves ample praise for bucking war-movie convention by dramatizing a campaign that didn’t work. And, indeed, the theme evoked by the poetic title—sometimes, just one X factor stands between glory and ignominy—comes across in several key performances. Yet occasional glimpses of effective storytelling do not equal a completely satisfying movie, and A Bridge Too Farfails on many important levels when analyzed in its entirety.

          The movie is hard to follow, because it tracks too many characters in too many locations, and because, quite frankly, director Richard Attenborough fails to give greater dramatic weight to crucial moments. Everything in A Bridge Too Far is presented with almost exactly the same measure of gravitas, so Attenborough squanders interesting potentialities found throughout the movie’s script, which was penned by two-time Oscar winner William Goldman. Clearly, Attenborough and Goldman were both stymied, to a degree, by the sheer scale of the undertaking; producer Joseph E. Levine made it plain he wanted this movie to equal the 1962 epic The Longest Day, another all-star war picture based on a book by Cornelius Ryan.

          Yet while The Longest Dayhad the advantages of a triumphant subject (D-Day) and a receptive audience (moviegoers still embraced pro-military themes in the early ’60s), A Bridge Too Far is a far different creature—a story of battlefield hubris made at a time when America was still reeling from the traumas of the Vietnam War. So, even if the movie possessed a clearer narrative, chances are it still would’ve been the wrong movie at the wrong time.

          Having said all that, A Bridge Too Far has many noteworthy elements. The subject matter is fascinating, since Ryan’s book itemized the innumerable strategic errors made by the Allies in planning Operation Market Garden—beyond problems of scale, since the campaign involved things like an air drop of 35,000 paratroopers, the plan was so contingent upon component elements that if any one piece of the plan failed, the whole campaign would collapse. Therefore, the movie is a study of men who represent the margin of error that Operation Market Garden cannot afford—whether they’re Americans, Brits, or Poles, the soldiers in this movie try to achieve the impossible even when it’s plainly evident success is beyond their grasp.

          The most vivid moments involve Sean Connery and Anthony Hopkins as British officers trying to hold the Dutch town of Arnhem for days on end despite a crippling lack of reinforcements and supplies. Robert Redford dominates a key sequence in the third and final hour of the movie, playing an American officer who leads a seemingly suicidal charge across a heavily fortified river in broad daylight. Maximilian Schell makes an elegant impression as a German commander capable of mercy and ruthlessness, while Dirk Bogarde is appropriately infuriating as Schell’s opposite number on the Allied side, a British general who refuses to acknowledge the possibility of failure.

          Unfortunately, many promising characterizations are merely sketches: Actors Michael Caine, Edward Fox, Elliot Gould, Gene Hackman, Hardy Kruger, Laurence Olivier, Ryan O’Neal, and Liv Ullman each have colorful moments, but all are badly underutilized. And as for James Caan, his entire showy sequence could have been deleted without affecting the story, since his subplot feels like a leftover from a World War II movie actually made during World War II. Ironically, though, his are among the film’s most memorable scenes.

A Bridge Too Far: FUNKY