La Nuit

If you've arrived here at "La Notte" then chances are that you've enjoyed "L'avventura" and are thinking about continuing the journey through Antonioni's loose trilogy (L'avventura, La Notte, L'eclisse). But even if you came here first, don't worry because it's a trilogy in style & theme only; you can watch each one as a standalone since the plots have no relationship to each other.

"La Notte" is probably the most difficult to watch largely due to the deliberately wooden performances of our 2 protagonists Lidia (Jeanne Moreau) and Giovanni (Marcello Mastroianni). The 2 actors themselves later said that they didn't like the film, and that's probably because their performances were very constrained, emotionless and almost zombie-like throughout most of the film. But this is Antonioni's strategy; he wanted emotions to be internalized by the actors while being externalized by their surroundings.

And that's the key to understanding and enjoying this film. Rather than looking at the actors' faces for cues on how everyone feels, you must look to the settings they're in, the architecture of the buildings through which they pass, and the meticulously arranged decor of the rooms for hints of what's going on in their heads. This is part of the groundbreaking style that Antonioni is famous for in all his films, but it is perhaps the most extreme here in "La Notte".

The plot itself is almost irrelevent, so I won't waste your time talking much on that point. I'll just say it's the story of a mutually dissatisfied couple as we follow them for a 24 hour period. Together as well as individually they pass through extraordinary events (a visit to a dying friend, an extremely bizarre seduction by a mental patient, a walk through a depressed part of town, an encounter with a violent gang fight, and ultimately the bulk of the story at a fantasy-like party full of the Italian elite).

Although the marvelous Monica Vitti appears in this film, she is only a supporting character. Jeanne Moreau is the true center of the story albeit a frustrating one since her face is entirely devoid of emotion the whole time. This contrasts against the profound sadness and chaos we gather she must be feeling inside but doesn't show.

If you prefer your films with more of a human element, I would say definitely start with the Monica Vitti films (L'avventura and L'eclisse) where she has a way of projecting tremendous emotion even without moving a muscle on her face. "La Notte" is more of a display of fantastic visuals and stunning mise en scène rather than any acting theatrics.

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).

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.

A day in the life of an unfaithful married couple and their steadily deteriorating relationship.

Bosley Crowther had some kind words for the film, which also won a slew of awards: "Too sensitive and subtle for apt description are his pictorial fashionings of a social atmosphere, a rarefied intellectual climate, a psychologically stultifying milieu—and his haunting evocations within them of individual symbolisms and displays of mental and emotional aberrations. Even boredom is made interesting by him. There is, for instance, a sequence in which a sudden downpour turns a listless garden party into a riot of foolish revelry, exposing the lack of stimulation before nature takes a flagellating hand. Or there's a shot of the crumpled wife leaning against a glass wall looking out into the rain that tells in a flash of all her ennui, desolation and despair." To me, it all comes down to the cinematography. The casting of Jeanne Moreau and Monica Vitti was important, but the way we get that nice, stark and defined black and white is what I love to see. At a time the Americans had largely switched to color, some of the best in Europe were able to push black and white to the next level.