Controversial Nazi S&M film The Night Porter (1973) gets a late-night TV airing on Boxing Day (BBC2, 2315).

Former Nazi top brass Max (Dirk Bogarde) is hiding out as a hotel night porter in late 50’s Vienna. He and other SS colleagues working in menial jobs alongside him dream of a future Fourth Reich.

When world-reknowned Jewish musician Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) books into Max’s hotel for the Vienna leg of a concert tour, they recognise one another immediately – Max was concentration camp guard to Lucia’s half-starved inmate 10 years previously. Their sexual relationship – which had been conducted in the camp on a no-choice basis for Lucia - starts where it left off.

This is difficult stuff. The personal is never more political than in the hands of auteurs like Cavani and Pasolini (whose Salo: 120 Days Of Sodom I have flagged up elsewhere on the site). On the other hand the film prefigures and contextualises the BDSM/swastika fetishland row that raged on these pages very recently and rears its head regularly in other forums.

As far as I’m concerned this one comes highly recommended by the Radio Times – ‘contains violence and nudity’, warns their reviewer. So, if you’ve done your duty with the rellys by Boxing Day night, tell ‘em you’re off to bed and take the portable with you. This film’s best watched in the privacy of your own duvet, unless your aunts are known for their love of arthouse porn.