Puente entre dos vidas

I watched the film many times and thought that the film has been shot at Venezia. Now I'm wathching the film again and saw some street names, like these : Scali delle pietre, Scali del Pesce etc. I began to search these names and found that the film location is not Venezia,but it is Livorno.

If you pay attention the street names or place in the film, you could find same location in Livorno. There is very little changes after 60 years.

In a cold night, the lonely ordinary man Mario (Marcello Mastroianni) is wandering along the empty streets of Livorno after spending the day with the family of his employer. While crossing a bridge, Mario sees a beautiful woman crying and he starts a conversation with her. The reluctant Natalia (Maria Schell) finally accepts his companion to walk her home and they schedule to meet each other on the next day at the same place at 10:00 PM. The romantic and naive Natalia tells Mario that she is Slav and lives with her grandmother. They survive repairing fancy carpets and renting a room in their house. When an unknown tenant (Jean Marais) rents the room, Natalia immediately falls in love with him. However, the man asks for one year apart to raise enough money to get married with her and promising to return and meet her on the bridge where Mario met her in the previous night. She gives a letter to Mario to deliver to the stranger but Mario throws it away in the canal. On the next night, Natalia meets Mario by chance and they spend the snowing night together, dancing, chatting and drinking, and Mario falls in love with her; but while walking back home, the couple sees a man alone on the bridge.

"Le Notti Bianche" is one of the most beautiful romances I have ever seen. The melancholic, utopist and timeless love story is a different film from the genius Luchino Visconti, based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and was shot in magnificent sets that rebuilt a non- faithful quarter of Livorno in the Cinecittá in the opposite direction of the Italian Neo-Realism. The chemistry between Marcello Mastroianni in one of his best roles and the gorgeous and sweet Maria Schell with her delightful smile in the role of a dreamer is amazing and one of the greatest attractions of this lovely film. The haunting cinematography in black and white is comparable to the German Expressionism with the use of lighting and shadows. Last but not the least, the unforgettable music score of Nino Rota completes this stunning and unknown masterpiece. The DVD released in Brazil by Versátil Dstributor has restored images and perfect sound that highlight the wonderful cinematography. My vote is ten.

Title (Brazil): "Noites Brancas" ("White Nights")

This film is very good adaptation of the short novel of Fyodor Dostoevsky.Some days ago he saw "Lo Straniero" (the Stranger) adapted from the novel of Albert Camus.It seems that Luchino Visconti is fond of dramatic stories with complicated characters. In this story we have all moments of feelings: sadness of Maria waiting on the bridge, joy when they go for dancind or when the snow is falling, anger when there was misunderstanding between them. Other important thing: the photography is extraordinary: in this time Fellini, Visconti,Antonioni had the best cameramen of Italy !! Finally the performances of Marcello Mastroianni and Maria Schell are excellent: they give strength to the film.

A mythic, Venice-like city is an appropriate backdrop for a film which must have greatly offended European critics at the time who had thought of Visconti as one of the pioneers of the new realism in Italian Cinema (and indeed with Ossessione and La Terra Trema, he was!). But with this film Visconti seems to have changed his idea of what he wants in a film: instead of the pursuance of realism at all costs, we have a dream-like fairy tale about fairy tales.

Mario (Marcello Mastroianni) meets Natalia (Maria Schnell) one night, and is entranced. But as they begin to talk, over a couple of nights, he falls in love with her, and realises that she is already in love with another man. Maria is obsessed with a fairy-tale man (Jean Cocteau's leading man Jean Marais), who up and left her a year ago without explanation and said he would return in a year, and if she still loved him, he would be there for her.

This film is evocative and beautiful - i'd love to see it in a clean theatrical print - especially the snow scenes at the end.

Its a very satisfying cinema experience, and one of Visconti's most beautiful films. 8/10.

Highlights: the dancing scene! Snow scenes are beautiful, but the dancing scene stands head and shoulders above the rest of the movie. Marcello is shy and introverted - he is sitting in a night club with dreamy Natalia. When couples start getting up and busting some very cool moves to Bill Haley and the Comets' Thirteen Women, Mario becomes nervous and starts talking to her about himself, talking around the fact that he's a shy person and doesn't like dancing and physical things... he likes dreaming, solitude... But when he sees how interested Natalia is by another man pulling some mean dance moves, things change. Great scene.

Not so much a neo realist film but rather a dreamlike adaptation of a Dostoyevsky short story, this one is a beautiful story of a fairy tale romance and disappointment.

Mastroianni gives a wonderful performance as the third wheel on this love triangle. As he is the point of identification for the viewer, it is really difficult to say whether this one has a happy end or not...

Highly recommended especially for the ingenious combination of neo realist imagery and old world romantic storytelling.