4. The Night Porter (1974)
Two acting greats - Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling play Max and Lucia. The two of them had a weird sadomasochistic relationship when Lucia was an inmate at the concentration camp where Max was a commander. He alternately looked after her and tortured her. Flash forward a few years, Max is now working as a Night Porter in a Viennese hotel, trying to keep a low profile from the authorities who are looking to collar him for the atrocities he got up to in the Holocaust. Lucia walks in to the hotel with her husband and the whole affair is reignited to both of their costs. A very vivid depiction of life in a concentration camp - casual murder, rape and sodomy inflicted by the guards is brought to life. Both Rampling and Bogarde have very difficult, complex roles to play and they do so magnificently. The film, directed by Liliana Cavani, makes excellent use of music - Mozart's The Magic Flute - in several segments whether it is to heighten the horrors of camp life or purvey the magnetic attraction between Max and Lucia in the opera house scene. The relationship between Max and Lucia is intense but one wonders why they are so keen to re-enact an unfair relationship in which Max was the controller and abuser and Lucia was a victim who was not able to stand up for herself. Whatever the sexual dynamics in the film, it remains a solemn and perverse little film that I would recommend to everyone.