Recent Cinematic Images of Nazism: The Night Porter and Seven Beauties

RECENT CINEMATIC IMAGES OF NAZISM: THE NIGHT PORTER AND SEVEN BEAUTIES By Ralph Berets Ralph Berets is an Associate Professor at The University ofMissouri, Kansas City. He teaches courses in Modern Fiction, Film and Psychology and Literature He has published articles on violence infilm, the relationship betweenfilm andfiction, and on various contemporary authors, such as Bellow, Camus, and Fowles. There are many similarities between The Night Porter directed by Liliana Cavani, and Seven Beauties, directed by Lina Wertmuller, particularly in the parallels developed between Nazi degeneracy and contemporary decadence. Both films present portraits of the Nazi mentality by developing the relationships between what happened in World War II and what is occurring at the present time. Each film begins with the present, moves back to the past, before returning to its "present" again. In The Night Porter the present is the late 1 950s in Vienna. Seven Beauties is more immediately set in the time ofwar and the period just preceding it when Mussolini was assuming power, but this film also ends after the war and carries its message into the present era. The Night Porter opens with a definition ofplace and character as we see Max, the night porter, performing his duties in a Vienna hotel that seems to cater almost exclusively to patrons seeking to satisfy their sexual perversions. Several encounters are presented before the film arrives at its dominant focus: the mutually destructive relationship between Max and Lucia, a former concentration camp prisoner. Seven Beauties begins with documentary footage of German and Italian battles, and speeches by their leaders. This sequence is undercut by a sound track that mocks the seriousness of the imagery, but also establishes the tone ofthe portrait to follow. The first introduction we have to Pasqualino, the central character, reveals him as an escape artist who will do anything, even rob the dead, in order to survive. The rest ofthe film illustrates Pasqualino's survival tactics. The major action in The Night Porter takes place during the present when Max and Lucia share his room to torture one another, with flashbacks reminding the viewer of how this mutually destructive relationship began. Seven Beauties is fairly evenly divided into sequences that provide background information about Pasqualino's character and sequences that demonstrate his ability to survive even in the most brutal environment. Since the film ends after the war is over, the impact shifts to those who survived the conflict and what their world will look like. It is not a pretty picture, for everyone associated with Pasqualino has sold himself/herself for survival. His mother, his seven sisters and his fiance are all prostitutes like Pasqualino, selling their bodies for the sake of living another day. The directors perceive their central characters in radically different terms. Cavani's world is dominated by males. Few females appear, and when they do, they are either too old to be useful, or too young to be aware. Only Lucia, as she appears in 1957, is given any substance, and she is deliberately portrayed as almost emaciated, because she is emotionally and morally empty. In contrast, Wertmuller's world is populated by female 49 characters who are both robust and dominant. Pasqualino is surrounded by women. He has no father, but a mother and seven sisters. The commandant, in a very uncharacteristic German concentration camp, is also a woman who rules with absolute authority. Pasqualino is dependent on her for his survival. When he is in the mental hospital, a woman provides for his promotion to anotherjob and later for his release. Wherever Pasqualino turns, there are women upon whom he is dependent and from whom he needs support. Although much ofWertmuller's film is set in the concentration camp, this experience becomes meaningful only after Pasqualino's past and his personality have been clearly established. The frightening aspect ofthis portrait is the realization that Pasqualino is an ordinary man with ordinary limitations who conceptualizes himselfas someone far above the norm. The code ofhonor he ascribes to is a mockery ofvalues, which substitutes appearance for integrity. Max and his cohorts in The Night Porter project a similar image. Wertmuller forces the audience to recognize qualities that Pasqualino...