What's the probability of something like that happening?
To discourage Germans and in particularly members of his elite SS Himmler instituted tough laws against ‘Rassenschande’, the pollution of the race through contact with Jews and other inferior "races" that imposed severe punishments for those who violate them. Fear mixed with Nazi indoctrination was usually enough to prevent the majority from indulging in such sexual relationships yet, that doesn't mean it didn't happen because human nature and sexuality in particular can be tricky, complicated and immune to irrational logic.
When one thinks about it, Max/Lucia's relationship, the way it was portrayed in Cavani's movie, it is not very realistic in the historical context. Maybe that is the reason why Lucia's role is ambiguous in more than one way.
There's truth to what you said. It was very atypical however similar incidents happened in reality. The most famous case of such a relationship was the one of the most feared Auschwitz murderer, young Rapportführer Gerhard Palitsch who had a love affair with a beautiful Jewish prisoner Katja Singer and with a Latvian prisoner Vera Lukans. One of the female prisoners made a statement:" She(Katja)was like a camp star...had many admirers...how come she fell in love with him!?". He was not only feared and hated by the prisoners but also despised by many of his peers, even by Rudolf Hoess(he also had an affair with an Italian prisoner Eleonora Hodys)who called him "a distasteful person in every respect, the most cunning and slippery creature", which eventually resulted in his demise. Charged with a sexual misconduct and corruption he was stripped of his duties and ended up in the same Auschwitz dungeon in which he personally tortured and executed prisoners. Later he was transferred to another prison in Matzkau where he was killed. In this sense his end resembles the fate of Max---he was murdered by the very people he once served.
Do you know whether Max/Lucia's relationship is based on an actual personal account, that is, a personal testimony of a former prisoner's very similar emotions to those of Lucia's?
This is from an article based on the interview with Cavani regarding her inspiration for the "NP" story:
Cavani deliberately infuses Lucia's identity as victim with ambiguity, as she does with the oppressor's character, further blurring the line between victim and oppressor. When discussing the factors that inspired her to create The Night Porter, Cavani referred to two interviews she conducted with Italian women of the Resistance for her 1965 television documentary, La donna nella Resistenza. One survivor returned to Dachau each year during her vacation for reasons she could not clearly articulate, stating only that her incarceration was the most important experience of her life. The other, a woman who had survived Auschwitz, remarked to Cavani, "'Don't believe that every victim is innocent.'" Cavani uses these two stories to create the character of Lucia: Lucia's return to Max's embrace signifies "the psychological grip of the past [that] locks characters into repetition compulsion" like that of the woman who returns to Dachau, and Lucia's willingness to be Max's mistress, a choice initially made to better her chances of survival, also taints the "innocence" associated with survivorship, in that she slept with, and in a sense, collaborated with, the enemy/oppressor. Cavani states that the two women's stories best illustrate the point she wanted to capture in her film: "In reality, I was searching for an explanation for the ambiguity of human nature" which she claims to have discovered "in fetishism, in the power of masochism...in the violence that arises within us, from all that is hidden in the unconscious." How these issues relate to the Holocaust in particular Cavani does not address in her discussion of the film, nor does she state how or why eroticism is the chosen vehicle for representing this interrogation of ambiguity in human nature. It is as if the Holocaust is secondary and dispensable, a simple stage-set, for the author's meditation on "the ambiguity of human nature" through the presentation of perverse eroticism.
Submission to power is one of the natural human instincts
I was referring to a sexual submission, a sexual/mental power game.
Biologically a woman is made a receiver. A man can rape a woman but it's rather impossible, given male physiology and body strength, for a woman to rape a man. Female strength lies in our mental and sexual power to dominate a male, to make him want us to the point of obsession which renders him vulnerable and that's just what Lucia did with Max. We see his total weakness and helpless enslavement to his fetishistic love for a fragile female underneath his external power that stems from the concentration camp circumstance and hierarchy.
A Bogarde Web site includes the following excellent analysis of the film: "Cavani ... incorporates sexual psychology into a rhapsodic view of human obsession tending towards mysticism ... the contract of love entered upon by Bogarde and Rampling -- psychotic, born of weakness rather than strength -- is a contract of death. It awaits only their reunion to be completed ... But, in the very midst of depravity, there is ecstasy and tenderness and the selflessness that is also found in 'normal' love."
Does it state anywhere in the movie that the head belongs to the prisoner who used to torment her?
Yes, when Max is telling the Countess about their love story being biblical(Salome and John the Baptist)not romantic he mentions that fact.
I thought that towards the end of the movie Lucia would come to a realization, that she'd wake up from the past, from her childlike state and become a more mature woman.
Well, I got the feeling she wanted to move forward and away from the past and transition their relationship to normal as the balance of power between her and Max was restored. If they had such a chance then maybe later she would change. Instead they remained in a regressed state, being prisoners of his apartment, starving, suffering, desperate, trapped in a concentration camp like setting. The oppressor became a victim and that's what Cavani wanted to show--- they were both victims of an inhuman reality that distorted their minds.
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ctcoffman
17 years ago
This is a fascinating discussion, and I'm sorry I missed it. The thread is almost two years old. But I'm going to comment anyway; I had some very different impressions of the film from some of those who commented. I will say right off that I think Liliana Cavani created a masterpiece here.
First, the gang of Nazis is absolutely essential to the story and the to the development of the central characters. The counterpoint between Max and Lucia's affair and the efforts and aims of the group illuminates the themes and characters clearly. The point is that these men are making a concerted effort to overcome their past by eradicating potential witnesses, and through solidarity with each other -- they are all still unrepentant Nazis. They "believe" in what they have embraced, and wish to free themselves of any guilt about it.
Max is different, because he's uninterested in ideologies, believing in nothing -- all he cares about are his private obsessions and compulsions. He is also aware that there is probably something "wrong" with all of them, perhaps especially himself, though he also doesn't care to address it. He can't identify with their "proud cause"; he's accepted the fact that he's beyond the pale, though mildly uncomfortable about it (this explains why he works at night -- not because he has a guilty conscience, but because he is afraid of being "seen" for what he is). He is a total sociopath with a veneer of "gentility" -- a purely criminal aristocrat.
This is already evident at the outset -- he's a maverick, an anarchic character. But the tension between him and his cronies becomes inflamed by the arrival of Lucia, which reawakens his passion for the camp prisoner who became his lover. Lucia is equally aroused, because they shared a consensual S&M relationship in the camp and it was obviously more intense than anything either of them ever experienced elsewhere. The other Nazis view her very existence as a dangerous threat, as a witness -- but the real danger is in the way she completely subverts Max's loyalty to the others, setting him in an antagonistic relation with them which intensifies during the course of the film.
Everyone seems to have missed the way Lucia exerts her own dominance over Max, causing him to totally separate from the other Nazis who want desperately to get rid of her. She has much more control over him emotionally than is immediately evident. Not only Bert, but all the "gang" come to view Lucia as more than a dangerous witness, but a woman who has snared Max's soul and this is why Bert says at one point "I've lost him."
Max's already shallow allegiance to the Nazi camaraderie of his group quickly collapses as he descends further into his erotic game with his lover. Not for ethical reasons -- Max is completely amoral and rotten -- but because he bonds so completely with Lucia that anything outside which threatens their relationship is anathema to him.
The power of women who are outwardly in a victimized position but able to exert sexual dominance is made effectively explicit in the flashback episode where Lucia sings in the camp. It's obvious that the other Nazis (which include members of the "group") are hypnotized and enthralled and also disturbed and intimidated by her sexuality, and that she exerts considerable power in this scene. (It's really the centerpiece of the film, and so it's quite right that this image of her became the one that identifies "The Night Porter.") When Max rewards her with the head of her tormentor, she is clearly aghast, but recovers quickly, accepting the insane token of his "love" as part of the game that she is playing for keeps. This is the turning point, when they become completely conspiratorial partners and are existing together in their own anarchic universe.
Their "love death" seems absurd and bleak, but they surrender to it willingly as the only option, considering the impossibility of continuing to exist in the outer world without betraying each other. What's interesting is that Max is transformed into a very different character by the end of the film, and he has no power of choice any more. Survival is not even interesting to him. In the beginning, he seemed incapable of passion about anything, but now he is willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of it -- because of Lucia.
What the whole context of the story reveals, for me, is how flimsy the male trip of dominance and power that infused Nazism really is, behind the facade of omnipotence that the Nazis assumed. In the story, Lucia usurps and threatens their feelings of potency and turns Max into a helpless slave, despite her own apparent erotic subservience. Twisted though their love may be, it has a certain power. And there is a paradox in that Max is partly the result of Nazism, but he becomes something that even his fellow Nazis cannot tolerate -- his extreme and impassioned anarchism threatens their existence.
The film is really daring in presenting a sadomasochistic relationshiip between a Nazi and a camp prisoner without coming to a clear moral conclusion about it. It wasn't really received well, but to me it is just one of the best films ever made. Almost every detail is perfect and Bogarde and Rampling are superb. Bogarde served in WW II as a soldier in the liberation of a Nazi camp incidentally, an experience which motivated him, according to an interview, to make this film.
It's a really disturbing work but every time I watch it I find something else about it that fascinates me. I totally disagree with most of the criticisms posted about it here. It's a nearly flawless film. There is nothing weak or superfluous in the story or its construction -- that is quite wrong! Watch it a few more times! It's subtle enough to require repeated viewings.
Despite my disagreement however with some of what was said, I really enjoyed the stimulating and thoughtful comments here about it (also the other thread about the music!). I think it's a difficult work and will always elicit divergent opinions. I only know that when I saw it in 1974 I found it compelling but confusing -- I didn't know what to think. After 25 years I had a very different impression. I now think it's quite brilliant in every aspect.
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cocotime
17 years ago
You all have provided great answers :) love this thread.
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mondrian-2
17 years ago
Yes I agree this was a beautifully complex discussion of a beautifully complex film.
I was of two minds about watching the film but now I know I will give it a good try.
The discussion reminds me of some of the controversy around Terry Gilliam's TIDELANDS which was also really disturbing in subject matter. I saw that movie at an art house with a film festival audience and a third of the people walked out. Somehow a child's sexuality is an utterly intolerable unthinkable thing, even though she initiates it, whereas Nazi sex-ploitation is actually easier for us to stomach.
It makes me think sexual morality is in some way a matter of fashion.
At any rate I appreciate these directors "rubbing our noses into" things we would rather not think about.
If fiction cannot give us a synthetic experience to sort out and try to cope with psychologically, I don't know what it's for.
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