La notte (1961) Reviews

• A sombre, subdued and entirely enigmatic masterpiece

  ThreeSadTigers2008-05-09

  Like many other films from director Michelangelo Antonioni, particularly those of his early trilogy looking superficially at the ideas of emptiness, alienation and personal disconnection, La Notte (1961) is less about traditional narrative storytelling and more about the rigid examination of a single theme and moment, stretched out beyond the infinite. When the film starts, we're already left with no doubt as to the fate of the couple central to the drama, with the breakup of their marriage seeming like a positive inevitability given the disconnection and spatial alienation between the two. As with his following film, L'Eclisse (1962), the most important scenes for understanding the film are those at the very beginning. Here, Antonioni outlines the basic concerns of his narrative and the personalities of his characters as they attend the hospital bedside of a dying friend. This early scene - in which the differences between the central couple are highlighted and the emotional incompatibility further stressed, is combined with a later scene, in which the man confesses to his wife on the drive home that he was tempted by the sexual advances of a patient in the very same hospital - sets the scene for the crippling emotional fall out that will be clinically examined by the director throughout the rest of the film. From this point on, the narrative of La Notte becomes an echo of this scene, in which the couple wander from one setting to the next attempting to continue the facade of a happily married couple, while the wife becomes more and more convinced of the inexorableness of their current situation. The style of the film, with its stark black and white cinematography and emphasis on the dehumanising presence of cold, concrete architecture that dwarfs and suffocates the characters in almost every single frame presents us with a world seemingly devoid of life. As with the final moments of L'Eclisse, the overall tone of the film following the wife's crisis of faith is one filled with cold claustrophobia, uncertainty and an almost ambient sense of apocalyptic dread. As Lidia wanders a disintegrating landscape of old buildings, empty streets and dilapidated relics desperately in search of the past, she finds only unfathomable ciphers engaging in either violence or triviality as a last gasp attempt to reclaim a certain joy out of the natural ennui of modern life. Unlike the gang of men brutally cheering on a vicious fist fight, or the crowd of gawping onlookers who watch fireworks being shot out of a field, Lidia is again cut off and disconnected; unable to comprehend or even gleam any sense of the most simple of pleasure from these moments, as her personal trip inadvertently takes her back to the place she once lived, so many years before. This lengthy sequence is something of a lynchpin to the story; showing how the eventual realisation that her marriage is over isolates Lidia even further from the world around her, and her vain attempts to still forge a connection with it, even if it involves revisiting the past. While Lidia wanders the backstreets and empty lots, Giovanni escapes into himself; returning to their high-rise apartment block and watching the world unfold through the window whilst failing to question just why Lidia has yet to return home. The contrast between these two sequences creates two further important factors in the shaping and understanding of this film; one of which is tied to Antonioni's primary concern of sight and perception. The director cements this notion with the opening credits, which fade in over a descending crane shot along the front of the couple's high-rise apartment building, with the vast and seemingly endless cityscape of Milan reflected within the ocean of glass that continue down and down, until we lose all perspective. Throughout the film, Antonioni has characters framed through windows and mirrors, reflected in glass or isolated by the shot composition and its relation to the production design. This continues the theme of examination, as the characters are presented as specimens, once again further detached from the audience and from themselves as abstract reflections through panes of polished glass. With this in mind, La Notte isn't the most inviting of films, with the loose structure, lengthy scenes and rigid emotions making it something that many viewers may be turned off by. Although on my initial viewing I found it rather long, I was never bored; with the great performance from Jeanne Moreau and Antonioni's always fascinating use of cinematography, location design, editing and direction keeping me enthralled from the first scene to the last. Although it lacks the alien-like mystery of L'Eclisse, the ending of La Notte is no less thought provoking or enigmatic; presenting a complicated inter-personal gesture that seems to go against everything that we might have expected for these characters, but in the end, becomes almost completely indicative of their previous personal abstractions. Although I don't want to give too much away in regards to the last ten minutes, I will say that the most important aspect of this stark dénouement is the letter that is read by Lidia to her husband as they sit sadly in the sand trap. At first we assume that the letter paints Giovanni as the sensitive romantic; unable to express his love in any other form than on the page. However, when we think about the letter, we realise just how bland and unremarkable Giovanni's writing actually is; casting light onto the previous scenes of his struggles with creativity, pontification and his status as a minor celebrity. This revelation shows the selfishness and desperation of the act to follow, and again, shows that the character of Lidia is still willing to forge an attempted connection with the world that she once knew, no matter how selfless and tortured.

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• A Beautiful Film

  turner_cinema2007-09-01

  Its better to wander into this film without knowing too much. The performances are all outstanding but the main credit must be handed to the artist behind it all Michelangelo Antonioni. It would have been quite beautiful to have seen this film when it came out, but even after all these years the themes still resonate as true. I don't want to get into the plot too much, but this film is more about feeling. The friction and differences between husband and wife are explored. Antonioni doesn't force anything, he allows a scene to play out in proper time. This film is full of symbolism and despair.

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• Antonioni - Cinema Artiste

  dcurrie6232006-05-19

  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).

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• Inter-personal soul-searching in 1960s Milan

  profoundgass2007-10-15

  This movie is nothing short of an artistic and visual triumph. Apart from being a fine example of the greatest era of European art cinema, I like to consider it an artistic statement in photography, music and architecture. The modernist, functionalist spirit of booming 1960s Milan is captured marvelously as the stars walk aimlessly around apartment-buildings and state-of-the-art houses under the sounds of cool cocktail-jazz. In fact, I think that there are at least 10-15 scenes that, if 'frozen', could be seen as high-quality artistic photographs in and by themselves. It's the marvelous cinematography and the divine stars that render such movies immortal, even though they tackle such dated issues as the relation of intellectuals with politics and money, the role of art in overcoming modernity's excesses and the vulgar conduct of the bourgeoisie. Of course, the movie is rendered timeless because its main theme - alienation and intra-marital fatigue -is equally timeless. Marcelo and Jeanne go through one night flirting with other people and trying to hurt each other as much as possible because, in fact, there is no other way one can impact on the other's life any more. They fail to do this but this is not necessarily good: They end up back where they started, indifferent and apathetic. That they finally become conscious of this development is their only gain from the night. The dying friend is the catalyst for the couple to start examining its situation, but it is the ravishing Valentina that first shook them and forced them to go out of their way, finding alternative routes and employing other people in their doomed efforts to instill some new life in their relationship. What Valentina teaches them is that accepting your existentialist apathy is a good first step in dealing with your situation. But when she bids farewell to the audience with the words 'You have exhausted me you two' while the light goes gently down, we understand that even a young, inquiring person like her has already been surrendered to the boredom of modern life. For all the confessions that follow, the main issue of the movie is already resolved: It is more of an issue if the couple will face their situation, not if they can remedy it. Their feelings have disappeared, just like Valentina's lust for life and the dying friend, who passed away during the night.

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• cold, harsh, dark, - and that's just the drinks

  Fiona-392001-07-23

  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.

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