ABSTRACT
In Liliani Cavani’s provocative The Night Porter (1974), set in Vienna in 1957, Max (Dirk Bogarde), an ex-Nazi SS officer photographer reunites via a chance meeting in the elegant Hotel zur Oper with Lucia (Charlotte Rampling), gentile daughter of a Socialist, his 15-year old “possession” in a concentration camp. Now the wife of an American orchestra conductor, Lucia eventually masochistically surrenders to Max’s interest in his former “little girl.” The much older Max serves as a malignant oedipal father who in the guise of a protector sadomasochistically teases, tortures, and rapes her. His previous “protective role” in selecting her out from the death chamber line-up contributes to binding her to him as though Max would protect her, as a witness, from the surviving Nazis in Vienna.
The function of flashbacks and the complexity of sadomasochism beginning with Freud and onward and Lucia’s vulnerability to fatal re-traumatization are discussed. The paper ends with contributions from Primo Levi and Susan Sontag’s comments on the Nazis. She concluded with “the color is black, the material is leather, the seduction is beauty, the aim is ecstasy, the fantasy is death.”
