Director · Screenwriter · 1933

Liliana Cavani

2: briefs
13:00: average
26 min: in total

On film.briefs2

The Night Porter

Liliana Cavani · 1974

Liliana Cavani’s 1974 art film stars Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling as a former SS officer and a concentration camp survivor who reunite in postwar Vienna. Set almost entirely in a grand but decaying hotel, it explores power, memory, and eroticised dependency through restrained performances, Alfio Contini’s underlit cinematography, and Franco Arcalli’s elliptical editing. It avoids exposition and historical context, focusing instead on behavioural recurrence and moral ambiguity.

13:00

The Skin

Liliana Cavani · 1981

Liliana Cavani’s 1981 adaptation of Curzio Malaparte’s novel *The Skin* depicts Naples in the immediate aftermath of Allied liberation, where survival depends on transaction, dignity is measured in kilos, and liberation feels indistinguishable from conquest. Starring Marcello Mastroianni and Burt Lancaster, it uses stark cinematography, dissonant music and unflinching vignettes to trace the corrosion of morality under occupation — not as breakdown but as system.