La noche

This is a hard film to sit through. Which is not to say it isn't worthwhile, or good, or even a masterpiece, but that the state of mind of the characters involved is hard to cope with - they are depressed, aimless, drifting, unable to make any emotional commitment in an atomised, alienating landscape that is, in the words of Henri Lefebvre, full of signs but absolutely no symbols. The symbols have been all used up, exhausted, just as the couple's love has been all used up. The truth of this film resides for me in its final scene when Moreau (Lidia) reads the old love letter out to Giovanni as a cold morning mist snakes around the golf course. It talks about waking up next to her and possessing her so completely that she is no longer herself, but part of him; utterly owned, 'an image I want to keep forever.' But now the image is tarnished, forgotten, and the woman is alone, abandoned -free of her cage, but utterly lost in the dark mean streets of modernity.

Challenging and emotionally muted on 1st viewing, I still found this largely a very interesting portrait of a bourgeois marriage crumbling, observed during one afternoon and night.

The couple visit a seemingly dying friend in the hospital, attend a book signing for the husband's new novel, stop at a nightclub where they barely even react to an erotic floor show, and then head to a party for a rich industrialist who is celebrating the first win by his new racehorse, Both Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau do terrific work as the deadened and estranged couple. He no longer even identifies with his own writing, feeling it's just a product, like that made by the industrialist. He's even lost his sense of lust. She no longer feels love for him, and seems locked in loneliness and depression. It's a tough movie to take, grim, humorless, almost as dead feeling as its leads, but that would seem to be the point.

My only problem, as I've occasionally had with Antonioni, is that well before the end I felt I had gotten these themes clearly and powerfully, and there was, after that, a certain sense of hammering home ideas that had already been expressed beautifully with a lighter touch (there's a key reveal near the end that I saw coming a mile off). But the images (of course) are striking and memorable, as are the performances, and the sad gloom that hovers over this world of people who seem to have it all, and yet feel so little.

It's not because of films like this that Antonioni is great for me, it's because he tutored with them and grew wiser for his later more important works. Because having dissected with simple precision the crushing dilemmas of whether or not love is possible, realizing this ineffability of human connection, he could see this was not the end of our suffering and if this was not the end, we could still not rule conclusively that we have no chance to attain peace in this life.

After he concluded with the two lovers willingly not pursuing their feelings at the end of L'Eclisse, he turned inwards, and with each subsequent film he peered under one more veil of false perception. But what was he trying to look into in La Notte, what does he find here?

La Notte is a step behind L'Eclisse, naturally. Here love matters, or is thought that it should, to the bitter end. The finale is overbearing with pessimism then because love fails to be that saving grace, that we're still alone, consumed by our desires. But that's not all of it either.

Even when Mastroyanni painfully knows that the love he cherished has vanished with time and habit, he still clings to it. Even a dragging routine is preferable than the emptiness of solitude. This is how love functions here, as a shelter that soothes the existential pains, or a mask that mercifully obscures them.

But these people are not simply lost adrift in faceless crowds and cold rooms, they're clinging on the craving of desire for their salvation. When I say that the mind is not transcended yet in these films of Antonioni's alienation phase, it's because it still dictates desire, the terms under which a meaningful life should be pursued.

But to show that love is not our saving grace because it's subject to the whims and tedium of time would be to concede that we are merciless at the hands of higher forces beyond our control, that we're not masters of our fate. It was important in this aspect to go a step beyond, to show us characters become aware of the emptiness of desire by willingly giving up on it. But for that we'd have to go ahead to L'Eclisse and Il Deserto Rosso.

By itself La Notte may seem like it's laboriously pondering to say too little. As part of an oeuvre though, it has a place that can't be dismissed lightly.

La Notte is very content to be a film seemingly about the mundane in the bourgeois world of an Italian couple. But what makes it worthwhile is that the time that Antonioni gives for the scenes and actors to breathe- ironically enough considering their social and intimate repression- allows for some curious moments to slip through (some of his best directed). The married couple here of the great Marcello Mastroianni and face-of-a-thousand-words Jeanne Moreau are not necessarily un-happy but unsatisfied with how their lives are at this point. The husband is a very successful and admired author, and they are well off. But the question still arises, underneath as the subtext in many scenes, what's it all really worth? Two of the main set-pieces/sequences in the film revolve around Moreau walking around aimlessly through the city while her husband is at a signing party, and at a rich party at night with a spacious amount of room for the guests.

All of these little, seemingly mundane moments are not all that the film is made up of, and it is in this existential (if it is relatively speaking) crisis for this couple that what real life that's out there and real pains strike up here and there. I loved the moment where Mastroianni is confronted by a seemingly crazy girl at the hospital; is she really crazy, or just desperate for someone's affection or attention (she is later beat into submission by the nurses)? Or when Moreau sees a fight break out with some young men in the less well-off section of town, the hesitation and surprise suddenly throws the fighters off. The party itself- where-in the 'Night' of the title is revealed- has moments of dialog that strike up the symbolic points Antonioni is making. But unlike the director's previous film, the visual-side of the cinematography has its moments but not necessarily as extraordinary in its overall make-up. Yet the initial peaks of interest- both in the actors (particularly Moreau who is always a treasure) and in the final, contemplative act with Monica Vitti, endures with better results.

Maybe the least in the 'trilogy' that Antonioni made between 1960 and 1962, which still makes it more watchable than the usual art-house bores of late. There is almost TOO much room for pondering about these characters, which makes for what could be seen as 'dull', but it really isn't. Detached, maybe, but not hard to connect with if open enough, this is a very good film if not one of the director's best.

I just finished viewing this on DVD and I kept thinking - can anyone imagine someone making a picture like this these days?

Of course, this film was a product of a time and a place and a sensibility that is now long gone. But be that as it may, this is an excellent film about a married couple who have fallen out of love. OK, no one will be viewing this looking for escapist entertainment. However if you are looking for what the Cinema can do without a blue-screen to enlighten, engross and even (dare I say it) entertain while at the same time shedding some light on human relationships - this film comes highly recommended. Excellent cast too!

With his refinement and cinematic artistry, Antonioni was definitely hitting on all cylinders during the early 60's doing stories that would probably raise a loud 'HUH?' at a Hollywood pitch session - then or now.

While I don't rate this at quite the same level as L'Aventura, this is up there with the best of his films (IMHO).