Review of The Night Porter

Word-of-mouth from Europe created such hype that American moviegoers salivated for its release in the U.S. "Even more outrageous and erotic" than "Last Tango in Paris" was the verdict I'd heard from my few privileged friends lucky enough to savor its "charms" when they saw it abroad. But when Avco-Embassy finally picked it up for domestic release, it hardly made a ripple. To begin with, this art-house lunacy about a Nazi commander's S&M relationship with a beautiful Jewish prisoner(Charlotte Rampling, the only worthwhile element in a way-overlong two-hours) that is resumed some 30-years-later when they accidentally meet at an elegant party, and resume their affair (get out the jelly jar, whips & chains, broken glass, etc.) was laughed off the press-screening at Embassy. Furthermore, the studio's expectancy of an automatic "X"-rating (a great way to mount a publicity hullaboo in the early 1970s) was dashed when the jolly folks at the MPAA let it slip by with an 'R' rating (sans cuts). And so what were audiences left with? A film of sublime idiocy with each scene of kinky Nazi atrocities attempting to out-do the one before, and leaving audiences in a state of uncontrolled hilarity. The filmed bombed in the U.S., despite the dyspeptic performance by poor Dirk Borgarde, the wretched-excess directorial work of the hideously overrated Liliana Cavani, and the film's only asset, the excellent work of the always fascinating Ms. Rampling, even in meretricious tripe such as this. If you're truly in the mood for films depicting the actrocities of the Third Reich, allow your neglected dog to take this one out in the backyard and bury it, and rent instead Visconti's "The Damned" or--for that matter--any of the "Ilse She-Wolf of the S.S." delicacies. But skip "The Night Porter." Believe me, you'll have more fun at your neighbors' tupperware party.