Abstract
The theoretical, critical and popular responses to Liliana Cavani's 1974 film Il Portiere di Notte link the film's visual appeal to its alleged political and historical transgressions; according to many viewers, the film's attractiveness fuels its repulsiveness. This essay challenges this indictment of the film's beauty, analyzing the film's surfaces in order to reframe the relationship between the film's visual style and its political interventions. In Il Portiere di Notte, Cavani transforms the holocaust from an event into a mise-en-scène. For Cavani, costumes emerge as a mediating term between the surfaces of the mise-en-scene and the cinematic screen. A close reading of the role of costume and fashion in Il Portiere di Notte, particularly the role of the SS uniform, destabilizes the assumptions about spectacle and power that circulate in the film's reception and points to the possibility of recuperating Cavani's film as both an example of a feminist countercinema and a theorization of cinematic spectatorship.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.