La Notte

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  May 10, 2009

  ebs90

  I have a privilege. Usually, the objection against Michelangelo Antonioni's work is that it's boring, or too slow, or just plain not entertaining. This criteria is what I cannnot identify with. I find Antonioni fascinating. Two or three hous can pass without my mind wandering awa...( read more)y. In fact, I tend to get the urge to see each film twice (Blow-Up is the only one of his works that I have not loved).
  
  La Notte, like L'Eclisse, is contemplative and metaphorical. It is about a stable couple falling victim of habit, therefore becoming bored with each other. However, it is a much more optimistic film than Eclisse.
  
  Giovanni and Lidia are a married couple. He is a decently well-known writer and she is also some kind of intellectual. I was under the impression that they might have found each other stimulating and understanding in the past, but that they've presently fallen in a rut. The sickness and possible death of a close friend triggers a re-evaluation of the things that keep them together, of where they are going, and what they need.
  
  They are bored, and out of touch with each other and their desires. They're bound by a false sense of responsibility. Their relationship is a farse, because they're simply too bored and too lazy to revitalize it, but continue to cling to it, sending each other subtle hints of their deception. So the first half of the film transcurs, in quiet alienation.
  
  The second half of La Notte takes place, all in all, in a party at a friend's villa. It is an elegant, decadent party, full of people with potential and ideas, but who are too comfortable in their space to step out and do something actually relevant. It's a party of outspoken intellectuals and their spouses having conversations about money and principles; music, dancing, thinly veiled libertinage. It's a fascinating, thorough exploration of a contained environment, the rawness of which seeps through gestures and indiscretions.
  
  During this evening Giovanni and Lidia progressively drift apart, looking for temporary diversions. This search yields interesting, but ultimately pointless results. For example, Giovanni encounters Valentina, a beautiful and also bored young girl. He considers her. He flirts with the idea of her as a novelty more than with her, really. "You need a girl to start over", she says. Lidia has a similar but equally simplistic escapade. The night goes on. Antonioni's rhythm is gorgeous, hypnotic, smooth.
  
  Every scene in La Notte has a cadence and a flow that is entirely the director's. The episodes seem natural and yet otherworldly, suspended in time and terribly important. The irony at the end is that nothing really mattered. Perhaps that's the lesson.
  
  Needless to say, the cinematography and the composition are fantastic. It's a pleasure to just look at them. I loved how two people were often onscreen and yet no one was onscreen really, because they weren't looking up or we can only see their hands and legs. The alienation theme permeates the entire film.
  
  Jeanne Moreau gives Lidia a comforting humanity. Her character is, by itself, so incomprehensible for the most part, so difficult to decipher, and yet she makes it undeniably realistic. Mastroianni plays, as he often did, an anti-hero, an insecure and self-obsessed man -only that, in La Notte, he figures out a way to redeem himself before the film ends.
  
  The entire film is worth the torrid ending that, quite honestly, burns like fire after almost two hours of quiet and cool.
  
  Why is Antonioni still relevant? I think I might have figured the anwer to that question for me. Just as there is hardly a moment of silence in our daily life, there is hardly silence in cinema anymore. Precisely because we're accustomed to dynamism and noise, silence and slowness doesn't sell. However, introspection is necessary, and it's better in silence, and Antonioni builds an appropriate mood for it.
  Perhaps world cinema needs more silence more often.

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  September 3, 2007

  mariosundar

  The beauty of an Antonioni film is that every scene of his is so rife w/ speculation that every one of us viewing it can infer whatever our psychological upbringing permits us to. La Notte is a part of his trilogy, definitely the weakest among them, but surely worth a viewing for...( read more) it's lead actors. Jeanne Moreau definitely steals the show w/ one spectacular performance, even overshadowing Mastrioni (Fellini's favorite actor) and Monica Vitti (Antonioni's fav actor). Although, I've gotta say, Monica Vitti is definitely one of the most beautiful actresses of ALL TIME! Skip this movie if you're not an Antonioni fan.

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  June 26, 2007

  Cinema101

  9/10
  
  The second installment in Antoinioni's "alienation trilogy", as many have said already, La Notte is noticeably the lesser of the three. It's my second least favorite of his films (Red Desert would be my least favorite), but a masterpiece regardless of the fact. The film fol...( read more)lows a seemingly disinterested couple (Moreau and Mastroianni) as their marriage slowly dissipates into stale apathy, the "apathy of habit." The intensely reserved yet profound screenplay with it's lack of dialogue and slow plot under any other director would probably put many to sleep. Antonioni's films on the other hand, and La Notte is a good example of this, make the viewer work and force him to find meaning through keen observation and patient thought, even hours afterward.
  
  
  
  His films blow-up and exaggerate the mostly overlooked problems of our society and personal lives. We can't help but criticize the characters on the screen but we also can't help comparing ourselves to them. And it's when we do that that we find a tidal wave of meaning in his films.
  
  I saw Antonioni's Blow Up recently and now with La Notte I noticed more than ever before just how powerful silence can be and how affectively Antonioni uses it in his films, and in many different ways.
  
  Of course, La Notte has some of the most exquisite cinematography I've ever seen, but that goes without saying.
  
  This maybe the lesser film of the trilogy but, as part of one of the best film trilogies of all time, it's still a landmark film and a thrill to watch.

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  March 26, 2007

  binky013

  Lidia (reading): When I awoke this morning, you were still asleep. As I awoke, I heard your gentle breathing. I saw your closed eyes beneath wisps of stray hair, and I was deeply moved. I wanted to cry out, to wake you, but you slept so deeply, so soundly. In the half light ...( read more)your skin glowed with life, so warm and sweet, I wanted to kiss it, but I was afraid to wake you. I was afraid of you awake in my arms again. Instead I wanted something no one could take from me, mine alone, this eternal image of you. Beyond your face I saw a pure, beautiful vision, showing us in the perspective of my whole life, all the years to come, even all the years passed. That was the most miraculous thing: to feel, for the first time, that you had always been mine, that this night would go on forever, united with your warmth, your thought, your will. At that moment I realized how much I loved you, Lidia. I wept with the intensity of the emotion, for I felt that this must never end. We would remain like this all our lives, not only close, but belonging to each other in a way that nothing could ever destroy, except the apathy of habit, the only threat. Then you wakened and, smiling, put your arms around me, kissed me, and I felt there was nothing to fear. We would always be as we were at that moment, bound by stronger ties than time and habit.

  Giovanni: Who wrote that?

  Lidia: You did.

  The night does end, both literally and figuratively. The writer who wrote with such passion of his love, at some time somehwere in the past, has become, like his wife and his marriage, a victim of time and habit, and can no longer recognize his own words of passion.

  I really don't think this is an indication of the times so much as it is a sadly timeless story about the course of love in some marriages destined to dissolve because of the "apathy of habit."

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  January 22, 2007

  bort16

  Although not as good as L'Avventura or L'Eclisse, La Notte, the second film in Antonioni's Alienation trilogy about the shallowness bourgeois love is still a wonderful film. Centering around a husband and wife on the brink of separation over a day and a night, the film has incre...( read more)dibly beautiful cinematography, and the final half hour is masterfully crafted and very powerful.

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  November 13, 2009

  ElCochran90

  - Who wrote that?
  - You did.
  
  La Notte (1961)
  
  Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
  Country: Italy / France
  Genre: Drama
  Length: 122 minutes
  
  ...( read more)lCochran90/?action=view¤t=LaNotte.jpg" target="_blank">
  
  Michelangelo Antonioni is a complete master of elegance and a brilliant student of female passions. The second part of Antonioni's unofficial "Incomunicability Trilogy" is titled La Notte, a wonderful essay on love triangles and its predominant effects on a modern burgeois society. However, it is much more than a love triangle story: it is a psychologically challenging Italian masterpiece of the man's eternal struggle for eliminating his necessity of building a relationship with several women after creating the false illusion of boredom because of a clear confusion of the terms "love" and "lust". Through deep character development and a delicious craftsmanship, La Notte takes us into a journey of inevitable perdition, confusion and lost priorities, referencing romantic cinema classics in the process.
  
  Giovanni Pontano is a famous novelist who visits his best friend Tommaso Garani with his unsatisfied wife Lydia in Milan. Later on, Giovanni decides to attend to a promotion party for his new book held by billionaire tycoon Mr. Gherardini, falling in love with her daughter Valentina and jeopardizing his marriage after Lydia finds out about the affair. If this wasn't enough, Lydia, in the middle of her desperation, begins his search for another man and flirts with a playboy named Roberto. Michelangelo Antonioni won the Golden Berlin Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival of 1961. The film also won 3 Silver Ribbons for Best Score, Best Supporting Actress and Best Director given by the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists in 1962.
  
  At first glance, the plot may suggest a conventional melodrama of extramarital affairs. Nonetheless, Antonioni's delicacy converts such plot description in a burgeois feast for the senses, resulting in a fully-developed essay about the unsatisfied human condition. A gracious musical score accompanies a filmmaking style and a seducing editing that seems to have been based and influenced on the burgeois transition that Fellini suffered since the direction of one of his best films, La Dolce Vita (1960). Once more, a glorious (urban) cinematography decorates the passionate power of such honest portrayal of unfulfilled romantic needs, and the top notch cast enlightens such dramatic mastery with Marcello Mastroianni as the materialist writer, Jeanne Moreau as the existentialist wife and Jeanne Moreau as the beautiful daughter of a powerful public figure.
  
  Despite the fact that it may be easy to state what characters are to blame, the reasons are not to obvious. Antonioni's complexity goes beyond what we may catalogue as a perfectly congruent heartbreaking story. The film opens with an eagle-eye perspective of the city of Milan amidst the sunlight, so Antonioni may also be one of the directors who want to express the exact opposite ideas of the film in its introduction and in its conclusion. In other words, the beginning means exactly the opposite to what the ending means. We are introduced to what are famous personalities within the plot and we follow their actions through a single day. Whereas Giovanni's popularity has achieved to make him surrender against the power of money and worshipping, Lydia is just an acquaintance for the rest of the fans. Such event is clearly demonstrated in the party sequence, which almost covers the second half of the film. The title, consequently, may indicate the viewer that the key events and the conclusion take place during the night, especially when lunacy, arrogance and alcoholism take over the people's souls once the rain starts to fall, screaming, laughing and jumping inside the pool. Even so, this is false. A best friend that is hospitalized and is near death is just only the motor used to clearly establish the rotten personality of Giovanni who hides his most degrading faults inside his novels. During the day, such hospital vist takes place. It is during the day when he is easily seduced by a mentally sick woman. Lydia, on the other hand, witnesses rockets being fired towards the sky while visiting the old area of Milan where they had lived once. Monica Vitti, one of the best Italian actresses that have ever graced the big screen, was the perfect choice for incarnating a seemingly peaceful and harmless femme fatale. She is a woman who does not care about the consequences of her actions; she just has fun and takes the best out of the moment. Naturally, she does not have any love priorities, not to mention her confused perspective of morality, but this characteristic is the one that seduces the psychological witness of Giovanni.
  
  Despite how literal the ending may seem, it is not. Director Michelangelo Antonioni should not be underestimated. La Notte suggests a new beginning, redemption and renewed love, but Antonioni has the peculiar narrative characteristic of transforming his stories into cinematic cycles. Therefore, the ending is open to personal interpretation, just like in his next films L'eclisse (1962) and Il Deserto Rosso (1964). All in all, La Notte is one of the best Italian films of the decade, featuring one of the most audaciously sexy scenes shot during the decade. Extraordinary performances and a multi-talented script make of La Notte an experience to be reflected on, not to mention that the running time felt half-an-hour shorter than it really is.
  
  96/100

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  September 3, 2009

  rogeriosm

  A masterpiece carried on by Antonioni, with the most valuable assistance of his cinematographer, who delivers mind blowing photography. "La Notte" explores the boredom and shallowness of bourgeoisie like no other -- it surpasses even Fellini's "La Dolce Vita", once it goes deeper...( read more) into the character's feelings and values. Marcello plays both. And what great actor he is.

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  August 26, 2009

  jimbotender

  Cinema of shadows and silences and wits and stares.Antonioni reveals the most unbearable feelings of a "loving" couple and smashes the counter-culture of the upper-class.Mastroianni and Moreau are sizzling,but what of the true meaning behind all this?Reuinion through loneliness?T...( read more)oo easy...

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  August 4, 2009

  yrsocrazy999

  esse filme foi o responsável pela minha paixão definitiva pelo marcello mastroianni (sua forma de falar, de andar, de atuar, seu charme, os olhinhos perfeitos, tudo). e com a mme. moreau e monica viiti lindona no elenco... difícil não gostar.
  quanto ao resto (a.k.a. o FILME), pen...( read more)sei em muitas coisas, mas acho que essa ideia aqui pode ser bem resumitiva: muitas vezes pensei estar vendo uma versão romântica, melhorada e mais curta de "la dolce vita".

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  February 23, 2009

  Phonex

  The middle section of Antonioni's trilogy on bourgeois alienation, La Notte covers twenty-four hours in the breakdown of a 'typical' middle class marriage. The husband (Mastroianni) is a novelist with a block, spineless, out of touch with his own instincts; the wife (Moreau) is a...( read more) bored socialite who understands her own predicament but doesn't know how to get past it. Scene after scene is introduced solely to make laboured points about their emotional/ social/philosophical problems; Antonioni's intimations of a broader political context are startlingly shallow. It's impossible to discern the relevance of this kind of film-making, which is doubtless why nobody (including Antonioni) practises it any more.

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