9. Maximilian Theo Aldorfer - The Night Porter (1974)
Max is a former Nazi who worked in a concentration camp. He is on the Nazi hunters books as a wanted war criminal. To evade scrutiny, he has a quiet job as a night porter in a Viennese hotel and he is in contact with other former Nazis that are also wanted and are lying low in Vienna. Max's world is turned upside down whenever a woman called Lucia comes into his hotel. Lucia was a concentration camp inmate and Max had a complex sadomasochistic relationship with her - offering her protection with one hand and degradation with the other. The pair reignite their passionate affair but this is to the ire of the secret Viennese former Nazis. The Night Porter is strange film, with Dirk Bogarde playing Max as the main focus of the film. Trying to evade scrutiny, we are shown many flashbacks to the death camps where Max is shown to be a sadistic, remorseless killer and torturer. This contrasts with his subservient, meek role as a hotel night porter and it goes to show you never know where evil dwells. The group of ex Nazis sticking together is a psychological and factual continuity from World War Two. Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) decides to leave her husband and shack up with Max. Is this a case of Stockholm Syndrome? The film shows us that the face of evil is often banal and all sorts of weird relationships can spring up in the most desperate of circumstances. A true insight into Nazi depravity - just think of the scene where Lucia sings a Marlene Dietrich song in Nazi regalia and as a gift, Max hands her the decapitated head of someone who annoyed her, and her whole face just falls. The film is remarkably good at portraying the horror of the concentration camp and it uses beautiful, evocative melodies (from Mozart's Magic Flute) to highlight the horror. Max is a very complicated character, the appearance of Lucia forces him to think of the death camps and strongly propels him into her arms when she appears. A seemingly inoffensive man was a perpetrator of crimes against humanity