Gateway to the Night—The Night Porter (Il Portiere di Notte, I 1974)

Il portiere di notte/The Night Porter (1973) is one of the most discussed scandalous films of the 1970s. Initially launched in the shadow of the commercial success of L’ultimo tango à Parigi/The Last Tango in Paris (I 1972, Bernardo Bertolucci), the film was condemned by the Italian state as ‘pornography’ and even banned at times, but over the years, it proved to be a controversial cult film. The Italian director Liliana Cavani (*1936) combined motifs of a sadomasochistic melodrama with the historical subtext of the Nazi era—especially with a view of the concentration camp system. The following article shows which radical concept of autonomous femininity the director implements at the same time.