La Notte
by Michelangelo Antonioni
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DVD details
Actor: Bernhard Wicki, Jeanne Moreau, Marcello Mastroianni, Monica Vitti, Rosy MazzacuratiDirector: Michelangelo Antonioni
Brand: Genius
Cinematographer: Gianni Di Venanzo
Writer: Michelangelo Antonioni
Editor: Eraldo Da Roma
Producer: Emanuele Cassuto
Writer: Ennio Flaiano
Writer: Tonino Guerra
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Italian (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, Color, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 122 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-05-08
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Fox Lorber
DVD Reviews of La Notte
DVD Review: The weakest entry in the Antonioni 'trilogy'
Summary: 3 Stars
A fine film, but it loses a star for being sandwiched between two far greater ones in Antonioni's so-called trilogy of the early 1960s. L'Avventura is the densest of the three, a tour de force of concentrated imagery and thematic development, while L'Eclisse is exciting for so thoroughly discarding all conventional narrative techniques, constantly disorientating the viewer in space. By comparions, La Notte is well-made but tame. Except perhaps for Jeanne Moreau's brief odyssey around town, the film's meanings are all delivered through dialogue, and the heavy-handed message of how all marriages seem destined to end in boredom could have been a mere subplot in L'Avventura. And while the other two films of the trilogy began and ended in bravura sequences, the opening of La Notte (the hospital sequence) is tiresome and borderline laughable, while the ending--relying on Jeanne Moreau reading a very long romantic letter from her husband, who doesn't even recognise it--is nearly as ridiculous. Only Monica Vitti livens things up a bit, and her character seems as exasperated as I was by the husband's hesitant stab at philandering. DVD Review: "Who wrote that?"
Summary: 3 Stars
"La Notte" (1961) tells of the unraveling marriage between a semi-successful author (Marcello Mastroianni) and his wealthy wife (Jeanne Moreau). The couple no longer communicates, and we see their growing unhappiness as a single day unfolds. Nothing particularly dramatic occurs, aside from the kind of daily events that slowly drain a decaying marriage. The couple visits a dying friend, goes to a club, and ends the evening at a party. The result is a realistic look at what happens in many marriages as love dies and resentments mount. Unfortunately, such a mundane examination of alienation makes for rather dull watching.
I don't mind slow-moving foreign films, but "La Notte" was also uninteresting and suprisingly shallow. Director Michelangelo Antonioni has explored the topic of alienation and the distance that forms between even intimate couples much better in other movies, notably the superb "L'avventura" (1960). I was really hoping to love "La Notte" considering the excellence of "L'avventura;" these two movies, along with "L'eclisse," form Antonioni's trilogy centering on the theme of "incommunicability" or isolation. However, I simply didn't care what happened to the characters - it didn't matter to me whether they would split or make their relationship work. Although the characters and situations were realistic, the exploration of their issues could have delved far deeper.
On the positive side, "La Notte" is very well acted, with Moreau effectively conveying ennui and dissatisfaction mixed with sensuality. She looks gorgeous and the fashions of the period really suit her. The movie also captures early 1960s Italy. In particular, the ending party scene evokes the time and place well and is reminiscent of other Italian movies of the time, such as Fellini's "8?" and "La Dolce Vita." Seeing the partygoers wildly swimming and frolicking in the rain is quite beautiful, although not enough to make this movie merit four stars. The movie is worth a look, though, for fans of Italian cinema or Antonioni.
DVD Review: A brutally honest depiction of the bitter end...
Summary: 5 Stars
There is a simplicity about `La Notte' that permeates every scene; but it's not a simplicity that is meant to degrade the films impact. There is something about this film that is so honest and upfront; it is easy for us to see what is taking place and easy for us to then become emotionally absorbed. `La Notte' is simply a very direct film about the apathy that consumes us at certain points of our lives and leaves us wandering aimlessly, searching for some direction.
The film takes place over an evening where self indulgent writer Giovanni Pontano and his wife attend a house party. They mingle, flirt (with other people) and ultimately conclude that their marriage is over. What is so stunning about this film is that these actors say so little yet convey so much to the audience, transcending their own scenes and becoming a part of us.
I remember when I saw `The Purple Rose of Cairo' and Cecilia (Mia Farrow's character) is just so enamored by the film she is watching, in particular Tom Baxter, who becomes so real to her that he walks off the screen and into her life. That feeling is the same feeling I got while watching this film, especially with regard to Jeanne Moreau, who after watching this and `Jules et Jim' I must conclude it a screen goddess. Both Moreau and Mastroianni are fantastic here, using their subtleties to spark a genuine connection to the audience. There are scene of silent stares and soft whispers and it is in those scenes that these two lost souls come to life in all their anguished glory. They breathe a life into Giovanni and Lidia that is so evident yet never overwhelming.
There are no Hollywood hysterics here and no manipulated breakdowns; just pure honesty.
As Giovanni and Lidia float through the rooms of this gigantic home they come face to face with would-be lovers and friends; most notably Valentina Gherardini, the daughter of the host. As played by Monica Vitti, Valentina is seductive and playful yet mature for her age, all knowing as she contemplates her next move with Giovanni. Her interactions with him are key to understanding the state of the Pontano's marriage, and their own affections appear simulated and emotionally vapid.
Moreau walks away with this film though; her blank stare reading so far into her own confusion.
The film is essentially about the alienation that one undergoes when they are at the end of all they know and all they understand. As their marriage crumbles before their eyes, Giovanni and Lidia retreat into themselves, and even though they venture into the lives of others and even contemplate making a life with someone else, they are restrained due to their confused loyalties. They don't love one another, yet something inside them won't let them love anyone else; not even themselves.
DVD Review: Outstanding
Summary: 5 Stars
La Notte (The Night), the 1961 film by Michelangelo Antonioni, and the second of his Alienation Trilogy, after L'Avventura and before L'Eclisse, is a huge artistic leap up from its predecessor film. It's not so much that L'Avventura was such a bad film- it's not. It has its moments, and a good premise that swiftly decays into anomie and melodrama, whereas La Notte, even at an hour and fifty-five minutes in length, is a highly focused, layered, and concentrated, adult drama about the ennui that occurs in a marriage of dilettantes where all of one's life has been plotted out beforehand, yet happiness still eludes its participants. Yet, La Notte is not Italian neorealism, in the vein of what dominated that country's cinema in the prior decade, and this is clear from this film's opening shots, of slowly scaling down the side of a skyscraper to the strains of an otherworldly jazz-like score. The straight lines of the building and the reflected isolation of the city of Milan, dead in its modernity, evoke the suffocating sterility of the Precisionist painters, and a barred prison-like feel that permeates the film from start to finish. The film was shot in a gauzey black and white, that smears beautifully both polar colors into a stark and desistant gray. There is probably no bleaker landscape in film that than which may be called Antonionian. The sight of decaying urban areas, along with the odd film score, and the moments of lunacy and borderline surrealism, lends the whole film a hermetic quality. It is as if the film is its own world and apart from that which the viewer experiences every day. It could be set almost at any time in the last century, and in almost any major urban area. Not even Ingmar Bergman captures emotional desolation so well, for that director's obsessional penchant for close-ups of the human face are too irresistibly inviting to imbue emotion into, whereas Antonioni spurns close-ups for immuring and trammeling his characters in complex visual compositions.
The plot, however, of La Notte is very simple, yet the simpleminded are those most wont to dismiss the whole film as being `simple', even though it is one of the most complex and realistic films ever to depict a marriage. It follows one day, from early morning to the next early morning, in the life of a couple. Giovanni Pontano (Marcello Mastroianni- just off his superstar-making turn in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita) is a famed and highly lauded novelist, who also makes a living writing magazine articles. He has enough money to live comfortably in a chic Milanese high rise apartment tower, replete with a domestic, and all the modern amenities of that era's present. His wife Lidia (Jeanne Moreau), whom he's been married to for almost a decade, cannot stand him any longer, and comes from a wealthy family.... The writing, by Antonioni, Ennio Flaiano, and Tonino Guerra, is masterful, and whereas the screenplay in L'Avventura sometimes felt as if it was a bad soap opera, especially in the second half, this film crackles with depth, realism, and dialogue that is first rate. Antonioni never forcefeeds his viewer what he wants them to think, and lets things remain open for personal imbuement. The cinematography Gianni Di Venanzo is not as spectacular as the island scenery that dominates L'Avventura, but it is far more intense and deliberate. The acting by Marcello Mastroianni, as Giovanni, is outstanding, and far richer and deeper than his more lauded performance in Fellini's 8?, a few years later. Jeanne Moreau is not an emotional zombie, for we see, in her reactions to the streetfight and Roberto, that, despite being a spoiled brat, she does have some depth. And, we see the same thing in Monica Vitti's character, Valentina, for she is merely a younger version of Lidia. Were Giovanni to choose her over his wife, doubtless, in a decade, this film would play itself out again, with Vitti as the new Lidia, and a younger sexier stand-in as the new Valentina. The acting in this film is so much `realer' than the fluff Hollywood puts out, even back then, because the actors are not projecting themselves into roles, but letting the roles take them over. Whereas a Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts is always that persona in a slightly different role, Marcello Mastroianni and Monica Vitti, equally huge international stars in their day, are always actors first, and stars second.
Yet, the most frustrating thing about this film is how few critics, famed and online anonymities, appreciate just how drastically better this great film is over its predecessor, in all ways. Yes, L'Avventura may have made Antonioni a `name', but La Notte made him a great filmmaker. Those that find this film too slow, or claim it has no `action', simply will never get what real art is about. They live in a stupor devoid of the pinpricks that a work of art like this can give. Fortunately, the characters within the frame are not so hopeless, and in the scars that their pricks bear to the viewer, the engaged and intelligent viewer, in turn, will know not only what to salve, but where.
DVD Review: Upperclass Angst
Summary: 4 Stars
La Notte links Antonioni's 'L'Avventura' and 'L'Eclisse' together in its stark and very beautiful portrayal of the disintegration of a marriage. Although less magnificently esoteric than the great 'L'Avventura,' Antonioni's film is a necessary piece of the trilogy. Marcello Mastrioanni is the self-absorbed intellectual writer who falls for the beautiful Monica Vitti at a black and white party. His narcissism permits his own unfaithfulness to his wife. Jeanne Moreau's performance is probably the most interesting in the film; her weathered face bears the mark of a used and worn trophy, her aged beauty is no longer satisfactory for her husband, and her intellect has long since been forfeited for the sake of his ego. Antonioni was one of the most interesting filmmakers of the 1960's. His uncanny ability to incorporate setting and landscape into the thematics of the work was perhaps unprecedented. In La Notte, the story unfolds primarily in the modern house-party, which is both luxurious and stifling. Perhaps what bothered audiences most about this film was Antonioni's failure to achieve the aching sublimity of L'Avventura's final sequence, or the astonishing radicalism of the final moments in L'Eclisse. Nevertheless, for all of its shortcomings, La Notte is a remarkable film.
Description of La Notte
Antonioni's study of alienation and moral decay chronicles a day in the life of a middle-class couple whose marriage has been destroyed by mutual indifference and impenetrable loneliness.Continuing the "alienation trilogy" that began with L'Avventura and ended with L'Eclisse, Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte is a visually arresting, emotionally numbing exercise in chronic ennui. The film's anesthetizing effect is entirely intentional; Antonioni's central couple (Marcello Mastroianni as a self-absorbed novelist, Jeanne Moreau as his bored and wealthy wife) wallow in their own emotional desolation, constantly drifting--and in Moreau's case, literally drifting--from one disaffected scene to the next. Antonioni's pained study of modern detachment is richly supported by his visuals, often placing his isolated characters in a harsh landscape of empty glamor and even emptier emotions. Driving the point home is Monica Vitti as Marcello's would-be mistress; in their aimless lassitude, neither can muster the necessary passion. It's all too superficial to register with any lasting dramatic impact, but La Notte remains the fascinating work of a master, redefining how movies reflect the many facets of humanity. --Jeff Shannon
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