The Night Porter

Detailing another relationship between Dirk Bogarde as Max (title character) and guests at a Vienna hotel, 1957, he’s summoned by Bert (the Italian dancer and leading choreographer Amedeo Amodio), who appears to have been among his captives at a Nazi concentration camp, in director Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter, 1974.

We’ve learned, through flashbacks, that the title character (Dirk Bogarde as Max, employed in a Vienna hotel, 1957), has a Nazi history, which two of his associates (Philippe Leroy as Klaus, with the monocle, and Gabriele Ferzetti as Professor Fogler), who have checked-in for a mysterious private event, are discussing, in The Night Porter, 1974.

Now shooting at the Volksoper opera house in Vienna, during a performance of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” staged by the husband of Nazi concentration camp survivor Lucia (Charlotte Rampling), further flashbacks from director Liliana Cavani reveal more of her past with the title character, Dirk Bogarde, also in the audience, in The Night Porter, 1974.

Evocative but geographically incoherent, Dirk Bogarde (title character) traverses Vienna, taking in Maria-Theresien-Platz, Hofberg Palace and Josefsplatz before arriving at the fictional Hotel Zur Oper, opening director Liliana Cavani’s provocative English-language, Anglo-Italian financed international hit The Night Porter, 1974.

Not much background about Max (Dirk Bogarde, title character), at the desk of a Vienna hotel in 1957, has been revealed, but he sure takes notice when Charlotte Rampling appears, the refined spouse of a visiting American conductor, and director and co-writer Liliana Cavani uses her first flashback, early in The Night Porter, 1974.