Le professeur

In Italy, the gambler and professor of poetry Daniele Dominici (Alain Delon) arrives in the seaside town of Rimini and is hired to teach for four months in the Liceu replacing another teacher. His relationship with his mate Monica (Lea Massari) is in crisis and he spends most of the time with his new acquaintances and gamblers Giorgio Mosca (Giancarlo Giannini), Marcello (Renato Salvatori) and Gerardo Pavani (Adalberto Maria Merli). In classroom, he meets the gorgeous nineteen years old mysterious student Vanina Abati (Sonia Petrova), who is Gerardo's girlfriend, and he feels a great attraction for her. They meet and know each other outside class, and they fall in love for each other. Their relationship leads to a tragic end.

"La Prima Notte di Quiete" is a cold, melancholic, cruel and tragic story, with magnificent performance of Alain Delon, perfectly developing the character of a desperate atheist man in existentialistic crisis. The beautiful cinematography and the music score are cold, as the environment of Rimini, Sonia Petrova is one of the most gorgeous actresses I have ever seen and is also perfect in the role of an young woman with a hidden past. The personal dramas are disclosed and developed in a slow pace and are very sad. Unfortunately there is no other movie available on VHS or DVD in Brazil of this great Italian director Valerio Zurlini, who seems to have been forgotten by our national distributors. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "A Primeira Noite de Tranquilidade" ("The First Night of Tranquility")

This is forgotten Italian master Valerio Zurlini's third best film after "Family Diary" and "Le Soldattese." It features one of Alain Delon's very best performances and an equally good supporting one from Giancarlo Giannini. Delon plays a hard-drinking and gambling professor of poetry who is fascinated by the sullenness of a beautiful student(Sonia Petrovna) and gradually falls in love with her. He finds out through his gambling buddies that she is involved in a pornography-prostitution operation of some kind. Zurlini's great film uses a slightly over-the-top melodramatic style to delve deep into the existentialist despair of Delon's character as he hangs around the discos of a very liberal and swinging early '70s post-sexual-revolution Italy, depressed by all the empty people around him desperately trying to distract themselves any way they can. The underlying Antonioni-like theme of people trying to distract themselves and merge into a crowd rather than individuate and painfully grow is very similar to that of "Desert of the Tartars," a film that couldn't be more different than "The Professor" on the surface. Dario Di Palma's deep-focus color cinematography in this film is one of the most breathtakingly gorgeous displays of virtuosity this side of Carlo Di Palma's soft-focus work in Antonioni's "Red Desert."

Daniele Dominici (Alain Delon), a kind, melancholic and probably depressed teacher in his late forties, becomes the new substitute teacher at a high school in Rimini. He shares his life with Monica (Lea Massari), another depressed person, but he seems more interested in escaping from his relationship than cultivating it, finding refuge in a group of local layabouts between cards, discos and parties.

At school, Daniele develops an almost instantaneous interest in Vanina (Sonia Petrova), the most melancholic student - and, coincidentally, also the prettiest. One might wonder if that "melancholy" would have affected him as much if Vanina had not been so attractive. The girl, despite her young age, seems to have a dark past, including an ambiguous boyfriend Gerardo (Adalberto Merli), a shady guy who drives her around in a Ferrari.

Between a cultural exchange in Monterchi and a depressing party at the disco, the passion between Daniele and Vanina grows, even if their relationship seems accelerated by an editing that seems to narrow the story into the space of a week or so. When Vanina is sent away from Rimini by her mother, a convincing Alida Valli in a shrew version, Daniele decides to follow her, after a turbulent love interlude in a melancholic shack on the beach. But life, always ready to put everyone back in their place, does not offer a happy ending.

The plot does not shine for originality, given that literature, cinema and even rock music are full of stories of sex (or love?) between teachers and students ("Don't stand so close to me", just to name one example), and these stories rarely have a happy ending, but it is partially redeemed by the setting in a wintry, decadent and squalid Rimini. And, of course, by the handsome Delon, whose unrivaled charm is here emphasized by a rumpled look and a soft cashmere coat that adds an irresistible touch.

Cons? The excessively sentimental, morbid and obsessive tone, with cultural pretensions right from the title, and a 70s soundtrack that stands out for its jarring, almost unbearable, notes of trumpet and saxophone.

Not a masterpiece, but if you are curious to find out if Delon was a good actor, this film could be a starting point.

I'm starting to gain more appreciation for Alain Delon after seeing some more of his 1970s work, because he's an actor who proved himself willing to take on more challenging and unexpected roles as he got a little older. I don't think age affected his looks too much (he's almost 40 here, and kind of made to look a little rough/disheveled, but is still typically dashing), but his roles earlier did sometimes feel a bit heart-throbby, admittedly still broken up by films like Le Samourai.

He's really good in Indian Summer, and the rest of the movie is pretty good as well. It's slow but effectively melancholic; not a fun film, but it works well as a character study.

Valerio Zurlini is not a household name but he is a director I love, Here he has the great Enrico Medioli as his writing partner and Alain Delon as his leading man. Cold, arid, fascinating tale. From Delon's substitute professor to Sonia Petrova's beautiful student nobody ever smiles, or very rarely. The wonderful Giancarlo Giannini is the one that brings the color and the joy and Alida Valli provide us with one hell of a scene. Rimini is also a character, a cold Rimini, out of business and an air of Fellini's I Vitelloni in the air. Very rewarding in its desolation.