He put on a dress similar to the one in the concentration camp for her, recalling the Nazi male ballet dancers dancing in front of the officers to show their body lines (Fascist aesthetics advocates the classical beauty of ancient Greece), the degenerate and pure heroine looking back again and again The eyes of the hero are gradually replaced by madness and persistence, and the deepest darkness under the Vienna night. When we talk about sadomasochistic movies, whether there are poignant love stories, I always think of two movies, one is Polanski's "Bitter Moon", and the other is this "Midnight Gatekeeper".
I have to say that the director of this film, Liliana Cavani, has done a very good job of completing a very stylized film, which is completely different from the 1974 Italian film. After she completed her doctorate in linguistics at the University of Bologna, she went smoothly I completed my film studies in the directing department of the Italian National Film Academy, my alma mater. As a female director with excellent skills and cultural qualities, her perspective is different from that of most male directors of the same period, full of classicism and feminism. perspective. After graduation, her experience in making World War II documentaries on Rai1 TV station and interviews with concentration camp survivors gave her inspiration for the film. The costume of this film is still the famous Italian costume master Piero Tosi, which provides unparalleled and important support for the establishment of the film's style.
In Vienna after World War II, the former Nazi officer (photographer, murder doctor) Max has been incognito as a midnight gatekeeper in a hotel after escaping from Germany, until he reunites with Lucia (Charlotte Rampling), a slave in the concentration camp. , she contributed godly acting skills in this film), at this time she was already an American wife, the twisted story of the two people started again, and at this time Max's wartime accomplices gradually discovered Lucia, which should have been long overdue A woman who was silenced.
The relationship between Lucia and Max is deformed, but it is extreme. Is it whether Max has guided Lucia's innermost self, or Lucia has been turned into a complete slave by Max by the sea? We can be sure that a A person's choice is his or her freedom, sticking to one's own choice and facing the deepest desires of love and id may not be the only reason for sadomasochism. It also contains many impulses from the superego to oneself, including the Vlovian bell-ringing reaction, these two people are full of fantasies about each other and crazy about each other, but existence is reasonable, and there is nothing wrong with love. The moving part of this film is precisely that it does not describe these two deformed people and their sins with hypocritical white leftist humanistic concerns. Everything is just the right candlelight under the night. There is a profound sinister evil, as if the detainees in the concentration camp are witnesses of their love, which is an extreme cruelty, making everyone exist like a background curtain, witnessing the poignant beauty in the extreme environment The birth and disillusionment of love.
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