‘THOSE THAT THE GODS WISH TO DESTROY, THEY FIRST MAKE MAD’*: AN ANALYTIC DISCUSSION OF THE DEPICTION OF SADO‐MASOCHISM IN THE FILM THE NIGHT PORTER

Abstract

abstract While the film The Night Porter, which was originally released in 1974, ostensibly portrays a detailed account of the development of a sado‐masochistic relationship, it may also be read as a political metaphor. The film’s director and writer, Liliana Cavani, explicitly links the two protagonists’ obsession with each other as originating in an earlier shared experience within a concentration camp. This is to become re‐enacted years later following a chance meeting. This paper is a detailed psychoanalytic exposition of the development and nature of that relationship, but read within the context of a political and sociological framework. It notes how Cavani uses visual symbolization to represent the increasing perverse control and symbiotic complicity between Max, the Nazi guard, and Lucia, the young Jewish woman. The film’s power lies in the implicit: it is an allegory of a society’s descent into barbarism, and a portentous critique of authoritarianism, however expressed.