Liliana
Cavani
The Night Porter
In another leap of artistic faith, and encouraged
by a thumbs up from Visconti about his disciple Liliana Cavani,
Bogarde accepted the role of Max, an ex-Nazi camp guard who falls
in love with his victim, an inmate in the camp in The Night
Porter (Il Portiere di notte,1973). But first, Bogarde
laboured with Cavani on the plot and theme of the script to make
it a film he wanted to do. He had no wish to play “another
degenerate, this time an SS officer in a concentration camp.”
(An Orderly Man, 134) He wanted to focus on the “essence
of the thing,” the inherent “love story,” and
“not on the political polemic, ” he told Cavani. ”I
suggested that under all the welter of polemic there was just
a very simple, very moving story of two people, a man and a woman
who had come together in Hell, had discovered an extraordinary
love there in the mud and the filth of the camp, rather like a
tiny flower thrusting through the brutality and degradation of
a battlefield.” (140) Nevertheless, the film would be his
most controversial, often misunderstood film. Whatever the reaction
of certain audiences, his portrayal of Max, unexpectedly reunited
with the object of his obsession, memorably played by a young
Charlotte Rampling, is unforgettable. Powerful and erotically
disturbing, Bogarde is at his most compelling and daring in what
is now a cult film. Despite screening difficulties in Italy, Bogarde
noted with wry satisfaction, ‘It was a colossal success
here in France. One of the major women’s magazines has just
voted it their film of the month.’ (Castell, June 1974,
387)
|
