I caught this movie on IFC the other night but just as I got toward the end of the film I fell asleep. Could someone please tell me what happened in the final scene?, I know they were becoming very weak from not being able to get any food but what is so haunting about it?.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
The two continue to hide themselves in Max's apartment. As it becomes clear that his SS comrades have sealed all possible methods of aid from them, Max grows desperate. They finally decide to sneak through a window in the night(Max in his full Nazi uniform) with little regard for the danger that surrounds them. Max and Lucia then enter his car while Bert watches on. Bert follows them on through to the morning to a bridge where he shoots them both. Roll credits.
shareThen they are picked up by a kindly grandma who takes them to the emergency room, they recuperate and emigrate to Canada and live happily ever after. :)
It may as well have ended that way - why do these sorts of movies always end bad? As if it's one of those urban legend horror morality tales. It would have been better if they'd got away.
It ends like this because otherwise the whole meaning of the film would be spoiled. It ends like this because in the 50s, 60s and 70s, there were in the western world TWO big movie industries, not one : Hollywood and Cinecittà . The first was (and still is) the Dream Industry. The second was (but no longer is) the Reality Industry.
In 1957, after a hard battle of wills between comedy director Mario Monicelli and movie producer Franco Cristaldi over the final scene of the satirical mega-hit "I Soliti ignoti", the happy end was abolished from popular farce. After that, things in Cinecittà started to happen very, very fast. The other comedy masters (Risi, Comencini, Germi, Loy) immediately followed suit. But this was a turning point for the whole industry, not only for the comic section of it. In the early sixties, thanks to directors Rosi, Petri, Damiani and Pontecorvo, the happy end was eventually bumped out from thrillers and political dramas too : and believe me, the suspense is much more taking when the spectator can no longer be sure that the hero (often not so heroic) will survive the script, or has no certainty anymore that Mafia and corruption will be defeated in the end. Free at last, Italy's amazing army of master screenwriters all engulfed into the breakthrough that was suddenly opened. During the sixties and early seventies, the fierce competition (that's Hollywood) was fastly losing ground on the Italian market. And logically, at that : compared to the American recipe, theirs was something new. Their public was huge and not too interested anymore in rosy, reassuring fairy-tales.
"Shocking" the spectator also became more and more a commonplace goal. For one thing, "more realism" also means - sometimes - more violence : as in Sergio Leone's westerns. Elio Petri, after his masterpiece thriller Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (a perfect script with a superb final twist that is certainly not "happy") said : "Making a movie consists into throwing the reels in the spectator's face. " And millions of spectators had Petri's reels thrown at them - and wanted more of it!
Liliana Cavani was a relative newcomer among the crowd of Italian directors when she made The Night Porter. Following a certain path, a certain logic that was at work back then, she came out with a movie that was more disturbing than anything made before. Not that much from the "graphic" point of vue, like they say in puritan countries - even though Portiere di notte is certainly "graphic". But it is, first and foremost, the exploration of a cas-limite (oups! my English!) of moral disarray, something like the most bizarre love story ever filmed. But there is much more about this movie than the pure intention to shake the spectator from his dangerous comfort - among other things, the restless soulsearching that marked postwar Italy about the meaning, the definition(s), the consequences and the causes of fascism and totalitarianism.
When it comes right down to it, made as it was in Unholywood, in the midst of a crazy upswing of creativity that for a while gave this one-of-kind country the dimensions of a continent, such a movie COULD NOT end otherwise : for it would have been a breach of the most evident, the most commense-sense narrative rules that were in full force back then - likeliness, verisimilitude, realism...
Besides, never mind the extraordinary rendition of the characters by Rampling and Bogarde, I can't say as a spectator I feel much empathy for a sado-masochistic couple. Yet, when in the dead of night they pretend to escape, with Rampling so weak that she seems about to fall at every new step, and the merciless neonazis arrive in their car to shoot them like animals, and Riz Ortolani's haunting melody rises again, I suddenly feel submerged with an irrepressible wave of compassion for those strange people.
Cordialement,
Arca1943
Great reply...
Can you also explain why the nazis didn't kill the girl right away when they found her at his apartment?
Can you explain the phone call in the beginning of the final scenes? The guy recieving the call acts as if it was he who called. Just one of many bad scenes throughout the movie.
Can you explain why they shot both persons in the end scene? Wasn't the "apartment scene" about waiting for the guy to hand over the girl? Yes, I know they shot him but that didn't follow the conversation between the nazis.
About reality vs dream...
Asian movies have a tendency to have these kind of endings so it still exists but I get your point.
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'Can you also explain why the nazis didn't kill the girl right away when they found her at his apartment? '----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've just watched the movie on DVD and loved it.
I assumed the reason is because they still expect Max to hand her over to them. Bear in mind that he disposes of Mario very easily, allbeit he has a few guilt pangs about it. Their conversation is very revealing when Max says he never told anyone how Mario had survived the ordeal...and that he was also a 'collaborator'...Mario replies saying that Max should not compare himself to him. After all, even though a collaborator, Mario was a victim of the Nazis and chose his own way through the ordeal and yet still ends up dying at their hands.This shows the exsisting group of Nazis that Max will come through in the end and either kill Lucia or hand her over.
In a few of the earlier scenes they talk about Max's deviant nature - it seemed to me that Lucia wasn't the only person that he had had this sort of relationship with hence their willingness to wait for him to perhaps kill her himself when he'd had his sadistic fun (as I imagine he did with others). What they didn't count on was the fact that he actually loved Lucia.
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'Can you explain the phone call in the beginning of the final scenes? The guy recieving the call acts as if it was he who called. Just one of many bad scenes throughout the movie. '
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My take on this is that Max had called him earlier at the hotel where they had worked together...also Max is a superior officer to the caller and the caller is doing his SS 'duty' and so returns the call. For Max however, this call is the final denial of any comradship and he knows he is totally abandoned by the SS survivors because they have cut off all of his sources.
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'Can you explain why they shot both persons in the end scene? Wasn't the "apartment scene" about waiting for the guy to hand over the girl? Yes, I know they shot him but that didn't follow the conversation between the nazis.'
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The clue lies in the fact that they had already shot at Max and could have killed him. However, I believe it is a warning of their intention and if Max delivered the girl to them all would be forgotten. It is intended to be a very serious warning.
It is interesting that Max is such a neat man...note his cleaning of the table when he proposes that he and Mario go fishing together ( and then kills him) and how he is dusting the table before the final scene. To me, this indicated that he was going to kill Lucia... as well as his inner smile when he gets her up off the bed and puts her dress on...to me it fitted with his S/M characteristics.
The final scene of course ends on a bridge. This indicates a number of things to me. One, they could have crossed to 'freedom' but the nature of their relationship makes this impossible.
Two, he intended that they commit suicide. Why else do you park a car on a bridge? This fits with the Nazi 'ethos' (in his mind he made fools of them all when he made them salute on the rooftop) and because of his love it has become his only option. Then, there is also the imagination of the sadist... will he propose to her that they die like a 'Romeo and Juliet' but allow her to jump from the bridge first and not jump himself...I believe he intended this until I saw that he was also dressed in his SS uniform - but I also thought he may just push her off the bridge and return to his 'normal' life.
For me the question is why didn't they shoot them when they came out of his apartment? The answer lies in the fact that he was wearing his uniform and somehow he also had 'power' over them. The discussion with the ballet dancer (who loves Max) when he says he has given him up spells out the end for Max and this is resonant in the fact that he is shot first, then Lucia. Finally, it's a story about how terrified the surviving Nazis were of being caught and brought to trial and executed for their horrendous crimes and how they would kill one of their 'own' to survive...that's what the earlier telephone call was about.
A facinating movie - one of the best out of the 70's and in my top 20...brilliant performances by everyone and beautifully directed. Hope that's answered your questions...it's my take on it anyway.
"I can't say as a spectator I feel much empathy for a sado-masochistic couple"
What rot. Sure, it's a movie and the characters are fictional but why are people involved in a sado-masochistic sexual relationship unworthy of your compassion? An opinion, yes, but a very misguided one. Nothing wrong with what people do behind closed doors as long as it's consensual, legal and safe. Don't know where I'd be without the occasional whipping, bwahahahaha...
~ I don't drink...wine
In response to Blaise's comment of "What rot. Sure, it's a movie and the characters are fictional but why are people involved in a sado-masochistic sexual relationship unworthy of your compassion? An opinion, yes, but a very misguided one....,"
Maybe its OK for people to do what they want consensually and safely behind closed doors, but its also OK to disapprove of such things. I disapprove of certain actions portrayed in this movie yet I still appreciate many things about the movie, and still have some compassion for those whom I disapprove of. And if someone else doesn't feel empathy for them, well, they should be allowed to express that view, and shouldn't have to be insulted.
[deleted]
And you also have to take into consideration that when she began this type of relationship with him, it was to save her life. Hardly CONSENSUAL. And he can't be seen as healthy either since some of his enjoyment now has got to be caught up in the memories of the extreme REAL power he had over her in that situation, or else why the re-enactment? If this is just about him being in love with her now, and wanting to have a life with her, why would he need to re-visit that stuff? Consensual, healthy BDSM is not based on one person having the power or authority to damage another person and get away with it, or to lure someone into that kind of relationship based on another kind of power dynamic, i.e. job or survival, past or present. Depictions like in this movie result in the great amount of confusion about what is and isn't OK in BDSM. Movies like this blur the issue and make it tough for some people to see, but I think what some of the "disapproval" above may have been trying to get at was: consensual is fine, but these people in this movie are still *beep* up.
shareWhen Lucia sees Max again in the hotel, the relationship is on her terms. She chooses it. I doubt I'll get a response since this message is so old, but I wanted to clear that up. Lucia is not without agency when she decides to re-enter into her affair with Max.
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"It's better not to know so much about what things mean." David Lynch
it ends like this because its realistic.
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