Liliana Cavani

The Night Porter

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A naked Lucia dances for the SS

Problematical movies Exhibit A – The Night Porter. The story of a former guard at a concentration camp who meets up with an erstwhile prisoner some years later and starts a sexual relationship with her. Roger Ebert thought it “nasty”, Pauline Kael considered it “offensive” while Vincent Canby of the New York Times went for “a piece of junk”. Kael also described it as “veneered with redeeming social values”. Is it though? Even that is up for debate. The director Liliana Cavani based the film, so she said, on a conversation she had with a woman who’d been in one of the death camps and had fallen for a member of the SS. … Read more

Francesco

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Mickey Rourke as Francis of Assisi

So who wants to see Mickey Rourke playing St Francis of Assisi? Not many people is the answer. Liliana Cavani’s Francesco wasn’t a box office hit when it debuted in 1989, didn’t rake in awards at the festivals and has largely disappeared without trace. But Mickey Rourke dressed in a simple brown habit as the founder of the Franciscan order of monks, isn’t that an offer too good to refuse? In flashback, it’s the story of the Italian Francis, or Francesco, told by a group of disciples who have gathered after his death to get down on paper/parchment/vellum/whatever the remarkable story of the man they had followed. As they pick over the facts … Read more