Liliana Cavani’s Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter, 1974) is unanimously considered as one of the most controversial films in the history of Italian cinema.
Set in 1957 in Vienna, the story focuses on a chance encounter between Max (Dirk Bogarde), a former SS officer in a concentration camp, and Lucia (Charlotte Rampling), one of the prisoners with whom he had a sadomasochist relationship during the war.
Soon after they meet again, Max, now working as a night porter in a hotel, and Lucia, who married in the meantime an orchestra conductor, revert to their previous “master-subject” interdependent relationship.
In the meantime Max’s comrades try to convince him they must get on with their pathetic and farcical mock trials that involve bringing all the surviving witnesses to testify and eventually destructing incriminating evidence and eliminating the witnesses, absolving in this way the criminals.
Cavani tells the story via flashbacks that reveal to the viewers the nature of the relationship between Max and Lucia.
When it first came out the film shocked and horrified many critics, somebody even called it a "propaganda" film.
But, as Cavani explained, the story was inspired by an interview with a concentration camp survivor and the plot actually tried to tackle the theme of evil analysing how it was practiced and even "taught" in the lagers.
The story was impeccably told also from a costume design point of view: before working with Liliana Cavani on this film Piero Tosi created the costumes for Luchino Visconti’s La caduta degli dei (The Damned, 1969), a film that helped him with the background research for The Night Porter.
Tosi and Cavani ended up spending an entire month looking at images and pictures and watching documentaries. Tosi was particularly inspired in his costumes by the images taken by the German photographer August Sander.
At a certain point in the film Max remembers in one of his flashbacks Lucia wearing only a pair of trousers, suspenders, long leather gloves and a beret with a turquoise mask on top of it (see second image in this post) singing for a group of SS officers.
In his perverted and hallucinated fantasy Max compares their “love” story to something Biblical and the prisoner to a sort of Salomé.
Lucia’s look in this specific scene often turned into an inspiration for different fashion designers who tried to look at the fetishistic side of the film, at the leather and the berets in a nutshell, emphasising the perversity of the Max/Lucia relationship.
References to this film appeared for example in John Galliano’s Autumn/Winter 2000-01 Haute Couture collection for Christian Dior (though after his Nazi rants they assume a darker and even more disturbing meaning…).
During the recent catwalk shows Marc Jacobs went down The Night Porter way in his collection for Louis Vuitton.
Critics thought the men opening the doors of four ornate elevators at the back of the runway were porters at a grand and glamorous hotel, but they actually looked like perfect hints at Max and at his job.
In fact, some references to Cavani’s film and Piero Tosi’s costume designs were so clear that Jacobs should pay them the rights for stealing the looks.
Sheer pencil skirts, sculpted jackets with round shoulders and fur-sleeves, patent leather bustiers, rubber skirts, patent trench coats and fetishistic dominatrix-like lace-up boots prevailed, but all were matched with peaked berets covered in the LV trademark logos or recreated in patent PVC or in a furry material.
Believe it or not, some critics talked about “doormen’s berets”, but it was clear from the miniature masks worn on top of the berets à la Lucia in the Salomé scene that they were references to Cavani’s film.
Lucia wears a turquoise mask on her beret; Jacobs’ models wore red masks on grey/black berets; golden ones on yellow furry berets and turquoise ones on red berets.
The masks – together with platform pumps and handcuffs – also reappeared in the printed dresses.
There were further Night Porter references in the high-waisted jodhpurs that called to mind uniforms, in the bags (the 1958 top-handle Lockit bag – even this year seemed a very apt reference since The Night Porter takes place in 1957...) affixed to the models’ wrists via handcuffs and in the handcuffed models (View this photo) clad in see-through PVC macs.
Some critics interpreted as French maid’s uniforms the superficially naïve and childish dresses with white plasticised Peter Pan collars while they seemed to be hints at the childish dress Max gives to Lucia and at the dress she buys in Vienna that reminds her of that specific dress.
It’s interesting to see how the fashion industry seems to be able to capture (or rather pilfer...) only the most superficial aspects of specific films.
Controversial and transgressive, The Night Porter caused quite a few problems to its director (in Italy the film was censored) when it came out, yet Jacobs seems to have found in its looks and in its pathological sexuality a recipe for excellent sales (I wonder, shouldn’t Liliana Cavani and Piero Tosi sue him?)
The Night Porter somehow used the lager as a social allegory, a pretext to analyse evil and human nature; Jacobs used The Night Porter to sell a collection.
Jacobs, the master of superficial ideas that sell well (to an equally superficial audience), said that the fetish aspect in this collection came from women’s “inexplicable” obsession with bags.
Yet fashion and fetishism always went well together and always sold well (fashion is after all a sexual fantasy…).
There were critics who stated that Jacobs was brave to use such a film after the Galliano scandal and, anyway, this was all tongue-in-cheek, as the designer himself claimed.
Yet, in my opinion, there is nothing provocative or ironic in all this, though there is a lot about marketing: Louis Vuitton will be setting up a summer pop-up shop in Cannes, opening just in time for the 64th Film Festival.
The shop will sell ready-to-wear and accessories in a decor inspired by the seaside and cinema (at the same time French Vogue will have a film issue in May to coincide with the Cannes Film Festival…).
I wonder, will the LV shop also sell PVC berets that will allow us to pretend we are Lucia/Salomé singing in a concentration camp? Hopefully not, but by now the damage has already been done and, in a few months’ time, we will see a lot of silly fashionistas and other assorted criminal fashion icons wearing miniature masks on berets or as headbands without knowing where they came from. In the meantime Marc Jacobs will move on looking for an old idea just waiting to be pilfered and turned into the next big thing...
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Posted by: Alison Nastasi | April 04, 2011 at 03:38 AM