La Notte (1961) User Reviews

Antonioni - Cinema Artiste

[dcurrie623 · 8/10 · 19 May 2006]

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).

Distant, beautiful, difficult and absorbing

[runamokprods · 7/10 · 1 May 2014]

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.

Not as engaging in it's detachted style as L'Avventura, worthwhile none-the-less

[Quinoa1984 · 8/10 · 21 May 2006]

La Notte is very content to be a film seemingly about the mundane in the bourgeois world of an Italian couple. But what makes it worthwhile is that the time that Antonioni gives for the scenes and actors to breathe- ironically enough considering their social and intimate repression- allows for some curious moments to slip through (some of his best directed). The married couple here of the great Marcello Mastroianni and face-of-a-thousand-words Jeanne Moreau are not necessarily un-happy but unsatisfied with how their lives are at this point. The husband is a very successful and admired author, and they are well off. But the question still arises, underneath as the subtext in many scenes, what's it all really worth? Two of the main set-pieces/sequences in the film revolve around Moreau walking around aimlessly through the city while her husband is at a signing party, and at a rich party at night with a spacious amount of room for the guests.

All of these little, seemingly mundane moments are not all that the film is made up of, and it is in this existential (if it is relatively speaking) crisis for this couple that what real life that's out there and real pains strike up here and there. I loved the moment where Mastroianni is confronted by a seemingly crazy girl at the hospital; is she really crazy, or just desperate for someone's affection or attention (she is later beat into submission by the nurses)? Or when Moreau sees a fight break out with some young men in the less well-off section of town, the hesitation and surprise suddenly throws the fighters off. The party itself- where-in the 'Night' of the title is revealed- has moments of dialog that strike up the symbolic points Antonioni is making. But unlike the director's previous film, the visual-side of the cinematography has its moments but not necessarily as extraordinary in its overall make-up. Yet the initial peaks of interest- both in the actors (particularly Moreau who is always a treasure) and in the final, contemplative act with Monica Vitti, endures with better results.

Maybe the least in the 'trilogy' that Antonioni made between 1960 and 1962, which still makes it more watchable than the usual art-house bores of late. There is almost TOO much room for pondering about these characters, which makes for what could be seen as 'dull', but it really isn't. Detached, maybe, but not hard to connect with if open enough, this is a very good film if not one of the director's best.

Inter-personal soul-searching in 1960s Milan

[profoundgass · 10/10 · 15 October 2007]

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.

A Beautiful Film

[turner_cinema · 10/10 · 1 September 2007]

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.

Outstanding

[Cosmoeticadotcom · 10/10 · 14 September 2008]

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 8½, 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.

where are the Antonioni's of nowadays !

[wobelix · 10/10 · 29 June 2001]

"Hush now, don't explain". That's the only thing missing in this wonderful picture of the Maestro: the eternal voice of Billie Holiday over some end-titles. Do not expect explanations, watch the actors carefully and all will be revealed. Neo-realistic ? Sure, look at the rugged camera-angles. A child cries her heart out and we never see her face fully. Of course Lidia walks up to her and strokes the little girls hair smilingly, only to loose interest immediately because of a broken down clock. Symbolism ? Just watch and feel these great actors.

The Postmodern World

[JackBenjamin · 7/10 · 18 October 2008]

When this came out, postmodern literature was hitting its prime. Nabokov, Beckett, etc. Pontano says he knows what he wants to write but is struggling with how to write it. We wonder if he even cares about art at all or if it's just a mechanism for him to get women, or to feel important.

Love is dead. We go from island to island of affection, mindless of the substance, just searching for the next pleasure. This is confirmed in the end when Pontano doesn't recognize something he'd written a long time ago. There's no artistic identity, no purpose. Do we all die like Tommaso, disconnected from friends, family? Pontano's notion of the intellectual is as an obsolete hermit, and one who considers taking a PR job -- the soul is dead in the modern world. I'm sure this is what Antonioni was struggling with.

The use of architecture is wonderful. The staging shows beams intersecting human interaction, reflections in windows offering different angles, ghosts of the postmodern world. Figures receding into shadows, emerging into light. The opening descent is a reflection of the city in one of its bodies, as all the bodies in this film are just reflections of one another, in decline.

In the end they leave the convoluted architecture of the house and emerge into nature. But the nature turns out to be a golf course. We're all trapped in the world we've crafted.

Loving to depict bourgeois alienation, Antonioni shows here a couple's marriage breaking down, with Monica Vitti as a delightful foil

[crculver · 9/10 · 13 May 2017]

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni shot a series of films exploring the psychological torment of his bourgeois protagonists. In spite of the wealth and security they established, they had no idea what they wanted in life or what they were supposed to do. In spite of busy social lives, they found it impossible to truly connect with other people. LA NOTTE, from 1961, is one of these, and I think it's the very best of them.

As the film opens, one morning in Milano, married couple Giovanni (Marcello Mastroianni) and Lidia (Jeanne Moreau) visit their friend Tomasso (Bernhard Wicki) in the hospital as he lays dying. Lidia is clearly shaken by the experience and, after Giovanni leaves for an appearance to promote his new book, the camera tracks Lidia through a long, aimless walk around Milano as she processes her thoughts. Here Antonioni (anticipating his later film Il Deserto Rosso) shows the drastically changing face of Milano in the postwar construction boom, and the appearance of new tech gadgetry in everyday life, as just one more way people can feel they have nothing certain they can hold on to in this world.

Giovanni and Lidia, while never outright squabbling, have clearly grown cold towards each other. Gradually one begins to wonder if there is any life left in their marriage whatsoever. Things come to a head, however, when Giovanni and Lidia go that evening to a party at a rich industrialist's villa, and Antonioni's favourite actress Monica Vitti appears. Vitti's role as a foil to Giovanni and Lidia is powerful and moving, but I think its precise nature should be left unsaid here, as it's better audiences aren't spoiled first.

A mere description of the plot might seem like nothing happens in this film besides bored people talking and yet another mid-century European cinematic tale of adultery. But LA NOTTE is a film of incredible visual poetry, almost like the work of Andrei Tarkovsky. Even scenes that evoke the characters' boredom are shot as such beautiful tableaux that the viewer is enraptured. Antonioni often shoots his characters reflected in mirrors and the like, and there is some cinematic legerdemain here that just makes you go "wow".

Appearing in Antonioni's body of work between two similar films that are often considered a trilogy, LA NOTTE has often got less buzz than its predecessor L'AVVENTURA, with its daring plot twist, or its successor L'ECLISSE with its chic Monica Vitti-Alain Delon love affair. But I think that in terms of the picture-perfect visuals and elegant pacing, LA NOTTE deserves every bit as much praise as those other two classic films.

Beautiful Cinematography

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 15 September 2015]

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.

Beautiful night

[TheLittleSongbird · 10/10 · 30 December 2018]

It took me some time to watch any film by Michaelangelo Antonioni, being interested in his films and with knowledge of his reputation but commitments and being behind on my watching and reviewing for a while now stopped me from watching any of his output until fairly recently. As of now have not seen all of his work but enough to judge. Antonioni is one of those "highly appreciate and recognise their influence in film-making" rather than "adore and becoming a favourite" directors and can understand why he won't work for some.

Antonioni is a very interesting and deservedly influential director with a lot of his output being well worth watching to masterpiece. Yet with a style that fascinates many, with exceptional use of imagery and photography and how he explored subjects in some of his best work was ground breaking, but alienates others who consider his style as detatched, ambiguous and self-indulgent. Personally very much lean towards the former. 'La Notte', made during Antonioni's best and richest period, is one of his best, in my top 3 of his films and my personal favourite of "trilogy of alienation", the others being 'L'avventura' and 'L'Eclisse'. Despite loving 'L'avventura', which was ground-breaking, exceptionally directed and some of the best cinematography of the decade (all three applying to 'La Notte'), 'La Notte' strikes me as the more accessible film, with the characterisation deeper and clearer in my view and connected with me more on an emotional level. Also loved the film first time whereas it took me a re-watch to re-assess 'L'avventura' to hold it in high regard.

'La Notte' again looks wonderful, the locations are strikingly atmospheric and on a cinematography level it is one of the best and most vivid films of the 60s. The stunning opening shot is unforgettable. Some of Antonioni's best and most accomplished directing can be seen here too, approaching the subject in a thought-provoking and brutally honest yet sincere manner that doesn't try too hard or come over as pompous.

You couldn't ask for better performances with Jeanne Moreau in particular giving one of her best ever performances, with the wandering around the streets scene being a telling piece of acting. Not once is it obvious that she apparently didn't care for the role. The characters came over as interesting, with a clear empathy for Lidia and Giovanni portrayed from Lidia's viewpoint is far more complex and nowhere near as shallow as he may appear to be for some, and the look into the various relationships is insightful and provokes a lot of thought in a way that one does not expect before watching, it has been criticised for ambiguity which isn't shared by me.

The script is both sympathetic and unforgiving in equal measure and the story made me think, approaches its subject with sophistication and complexity and connected with me emotionally. The pace is deliberate but never dull or troubling which is remarkable for a film with many silent passages.

All in all, a masterwork. 10/10 Bethany Cox

passage

[bravo-7 · 7/10 · 26 August 2002]

This movie reflects the boredom and restlessness of a couple in transition. As with most of his films, this is told from the woman's point of view. Lidia makes a feeble effort of hold on to her relationship with Giovanni but he's so bored, he gives her nothing to hold on to. When they visit a friend who's dying in hospital at the outset of the movie, Lidia sees in that friend the emotion and feeling that should be present in her husband. That visit sets up the passage they take though the night, first at a reception, then at a nightclub - where they witness a sexy cabaret act that points out the lack of passion in their life -then to an all night, mindless society party. They both dabble at liasons at the party and, come the dawn, Giovanni makes a stab at emotion and reconciliation. Too late (she reads a love letter to him that he wrote to her years ago and he asked "who wrote that?") and Lidia tells him that she doesn't love him and he doesn't love her either. Despite the slow unfolding and heavy symbolism (the city of Milan overtakes the couple and prison bars are reflected everywhere) and Giovanni's sleepwalking, this movie held me entranced. Movies about feelings - especially when no words are spoken - aren't made anymore and the movie world is poorer for it.

In desperate need of editing

[jacobs-greenwood · 4/10 · 13 January 2018]

... as it beats you over the head with its premise that marriage (life?) is boring. While many reviewers here have used words like masterpiece to describe it, La Notte is a one-note song played over and over again for more than 2 hours by director Michelangelo Antonioni. The film could easily run 90 minutes (or less) and still make its point.

The first half features several long, largely dialogue-less scenes of the married couple (Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau) meandering, separately or together, to show that they're obviously bored with each other and probably life in general. This transitions into "the night" which starts at a nightclub featuring an unusual 'acrobatic' performer, whose 'feats' with a wine glass are seemingly endless.

The rest takes place during a socialite party at the expansive estate of a wealthy capitalist. As a successful writer, Mastroianni's character is deemed an intellectual among the businessmen in attendance, and a catch among the women. Moreau is less social, more of a loner really, who resists the temptations of dalliances, unlike her husband.

A sombre, subdued and entirely enigmatic masterpiece

[ThreeSadTigers · 9 May 2008]

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.

A wonderful movie...

[pacey82 · 10/10 · 23 December 2005]

This wonderful movie was directed by the great Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni and the leading actors are 'Dolce Vita' star Marcello Mastroianni (as Giovanni, the writer), Jeanne Moreau (his wife) and Monica Vitti (Valentina).

The film is about a couple played by Moreau and Mastroianni, whose marriage is likely to come to an end soon. The love they felt disappeared and they are still together just because of the fear of changing their life. The film shows a day of their life, when their friend Tomaso dies, Giovanni gets an offer to write a book about the history of a big company, he flirts with the daughter of this factory's owner, and their marriage does come to an end. Antonioni tries to express the thoughts of the characters with excruciatingly designed pictures that take their time in all of his films, and this ambition is very successful in this movie.

masterpiece from the master

[suvakovs · 10/10 · 2 March 2002]

After I watched this great movie for the second time I can say it is a true masterpiece. In comparison with "Le Mepris" by Godard. Lot of the credits should go to Tonino Guerra for the impeccable script. Images, script, actors, everything is superb...

Antonioni's best movie

[cmccann-2 · 9/10 · 28 August 2013]

After the success of L'avventurra (1960), Michelangelo Antonioni made the second entry in his trilogy on "modernity and its discontents" - La notte (1961). The film concerns Giovanni and Lidia Pontano, a bourgeois couple who realize their marriage has lost its spark over the span of a night. Improving on l'avventurra, La Notte is an affecting cinematic poem about alienation in modern times.

The film concerns Giovanni Pontano (Marcello Mastroianni), a writer who's recently penned a best-selling novel, and his wife Lidia (Jeanne Moreau). Amidst a background of technology, futuristic skyscrapers, and industry, they go through the motions of their marriage - the romantic fervor which once defined it now a distant memory. The Pontano's are eventually invited to an upper class party, where Giovanni runs off with the host's daughter Valentina (Monica Vitti). When Lidia learns of Giovanni's infidelity, the two must ultimately confront the truth of what their marriage has become in the picture's poetic climax.

Mastroianni, Moreau, and Vitti all give fine performances. The cinematography of Antonioni and DOP Gianni Di Venozo perfectly illustrates the film's themes, placing characters against their highly modern milieus and articulating what Adorno described as the alienating effect of technology on the modern consciousness. Meanwhile, the screenplay by Antonioni and Tonino Guerra is La notte's driving force, it has the power of a highly affecting novel, every minute hurtling towards the film's inevitable conclusion.

In summary, La Notte elaborates on themes present in L'avventurra, in my humble opinion improving on its predecessor film. An all-time favorite of both Stanley Kubrick and Ingmar Bergman, those looking for a film experience that is thought-provoking, emotional, and artful would do well to seek it out.

They Are So Sad

[Hitchcoc · 9/10 · 16 March 2016]

I have say, I overlook my own prejudices when I view films by Italian filmmakers, at least in the golden era. Marcello and Jeanne are so dark, from the makeup used to accentuate the sadness in her eyes, to the bleakness of making it from one day to the next. Apparently, going to lavish parties with other depressed people isn't helping much. The illness and death of a friend brings things down further. Marcello seems to have the same presence in many films. He is on the surface a cad, but an artistic one. He is submerged in existential depths and enjoys nothing. Jeanne Moreau almost never smiles. She knows that to keep her husband, she has to go along with his games, and even then, he accepts her on his own terms. How can we really relate to these rich, selfish people who have nowhere to go. They make mundane seem desirable. The film is lavish and the cinematography stunning. The performances are just right and yet the characters they play are not very sympathetic.

LA NOTTE (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961) ***

[Bunuel1976 · 7/10 · 24 August 2006]

This was Antonioni's second in his "incommunicability" trilogy, preceded by L'AVVENTURA (1960) and followed by L'ECLISSE (1962), all featuring his then "muse" and companion, Monica Vitti. I have to take back what I said about their films together in my review of MODESTY BLAISE (1966) because Vitti, with her hair dyed black, looks ravishing here (although her role is ostensibly a supporting one).

The film's detractors might well dismiss it as "a miserable film about miserable people" but that would be negating its undeniable rewards - though its relentless solemnity does come perilously close to unintentional hilarity! Aesthetically, it's a very beautiful film (right from the memorable credits sequences, with the camera panning down a skyscraper while dissonant sounds emanate from the soundtrack) which, according to "Ciak", a renowned Italian film magazine, was one of Stanley Kubrick's favorites. In retrospect, this doesn't come as much of a surprise since its influence can clearly be seen on his final opus, EYES WIDE SHUT (1999), what with the lengthy party sequence of the Antonioni film (which takes up the entire second half) and the two leads' largely unfulfilled sexual odysseys which, eventually, bring them closer together.

The film won the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival and both female leads also emerged as winners of various awards. Though Antonioni was also criticized for rendering Marcello Mastroianni dull, I thought that he gave a fine performance; undoubtedly, the most important Italian star of his generation, he managed to divide his career neatly between "auterist" films and more popular entertainments. Of course, Jeanne Moreau was also the top French actress of her time; actually, this proved to be both actors' only time working with Antonioni before they eventually lent their services to his comeback film BEYOND THE CLOUDS (1995), following a debilitating stroke which has left him speechless to this day (now 94 years old, he's still active and I consider myself extremely fortunate to have seen him - indeed, he was seated in a wheelchair just a few paces away from me! - at the 2004 Venice Film Festival where he was 'presenting' his latest offering, the three-parter EROS). Bernhard Wicki, a director in his own right, appears towards the beginning as a dying friend of Moreau and Mastroianni whom they visit in hospital; it is here, actually, that Marcello has his first fling - with a nymphomaniac patient - thus setting the plot in motion!

La notte

[letig1994 · 8/10 · 28 October 2016]

La notte is usually said to be the second of the so-called "existential tetralogy" together with L'Avventura, L'eclisse and The Red Desert.

Like L'Avventura, La Notte as well has a central theme a love story, but a story of a couple (wonderfully played by Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau) going through a deep crisis, that has almost come to an end. From the emptiness of their house, we move to a likewise empty party. The night setting is what allows the characters in the film to move away from the borders of their personality and degenerate, do things that the night itself can hide and that keeps for itself.

In fact, when the sun rises, everything is much calmer and the light shows things in a different way, even the couple's relationship. Like Antonioni once said during an interview: "you don't need much to collapse, to surrender"… it's easy to forget about the things that surround us.

Antonioni always reminds us that talking isn't necessary, that silence is a big lesson we can learn from.

"...life would be tolerable if not for its pleasures..."

[elvircorhodzic · 7/10 · 30 April 2017]

LA NOTTE is a drama that focuses on a crisis and infidelity in a marriage.

A prominent writer and his beautiful wife visit their dying friend in a hospital in Milan. His new book has just been published, and their friend, despite his heavy pain, praises his work. Writer's wife, visibly shaken, leaves a hospital in tears. However, her husband, who has stayed a little longer with their friend, has found himself in a lewd game of a seduction with a young and mentally ill girl in the next room. Later, he sees his wife crying but does not comfort her. As they drive off, he tells her about his "unpleasant" encounter with the sick woman and is surprised when she dismisses the incident. Spouses are emotionally moving away from each other. However, they attend together a swanky party thrown by a millionaire businessman...

The story is based on alienation, lack of love and misunderstanding in the High Society. Mr. Antonioni has, in an explicit way, introduced a failed marriage. However, that "empty" game in the lives of wealthy people gradually becomes boring. That world, which is full of an elegance and styles, it is very tedious and lonely. The protagonists have condemned themselves to an excessive alienation. Each bright moment in their lives is actually an escape from the actual situation. However, they will have to face the truth.

This story is not overly exciting, but it is very suggestive. The main protagonists are constantly emphasize the emotional exhaustion, boredom and internal anxiety. Characterization is quite superficial.

Jeanne Moreau as Lidia is a woman who emotionally dying. Her mood goes from bad to worse. Her eyes understand and accuse at the same time. Marcello Mastroianni as Giovanni Pontano is a bit silly character as her husband. He is lost in his art and the emptiness of their marriage. His performance is very pale. Monica Vitti as Valentina Gherardini is a pleasant phenomenon in the latter part of the film. However, she is a dark and impersonal character, who did not bring a change in the rhythm.

The biggest flaw in this film is the absence of one character as a "relief valve" or perhaps some moderate catharsis at the end.

The Disillusionment of Maturity

[DAHLRUSSELL · 8/10 · 29 March 2007]

I think this should have been called ENNUI. It could not even be called ambivalence, because the main character is Moreau, who frequently states that she is ready to die.

At best, this is somewhat a treatise on that time in a woman's life when she really starts to think that all men ARE the same, and that it's all a pretty hopeless affair. This is, at least, what we are presented with both in Moreau's character, and Mastroianni's behavior.

Sunk in a mire of numb boredom and a moody self reflection that Moreau often specialized in, this film only comes alive when Vitti is on screen. She is luminous and really fascinating, even though her character is also disenchanted and bored.

This world of idle rich is often portrayed in films of this period, infantile sensation seeking out of a deep lack of individual creativity. All of these films suffer from a real difficulty of making these people interesting, identifiable and certainly difficult to make them likable.

The window we are given into Moreau's somnambulance is through Bernhard Wicki, and the "secret" of their relationship which is hinted at and finally unveiled in her last speeches.

This is a film about the disillusionment of maturity. For a fairly short film, it makes for viewing that feels long. Peggy Lee sang it all in much less time with, "Is that all there is."

The Cold and Depressing End of a Relationship

[claudio_carvalho · 7/10 · 8 September 2007]

In Milan, after visiting dear friend Tommaso Garani (Bernhard Wicki) that is terminal in a hospital, the writer Giovanni Pontano (Marcello Mastroianni) goes to a party for the release of his last book, and his wife Lydia Pontano (Jeanne Moreau) visits the place where she lived many years ago. In the night, they go to a night-club, and later to a party in the mansion of the tycoon Mr. Gherardini (Vincenzo Corbella). Along the night, Giovanni flirts with Valentina Gherardini (Monica Vitti), the daughter of the host, and then he receives a proposal to work for him in the area of communication and write the history of his company. Meanwhile, Lydia flirts with the playboy Roberto (Giorgio Negro). In the morning, Lydia tells Giovanni that Tommaso died and she does not love him anymore.

"La Notte" is the story of the end of a marriage though a cold and depressing narrative. Using a magnificent black and white cinematography, and the awesome performances of Jeanne Moreau, Marcello Mastroianni and Monica Vitti, Antonioni discloses the bored relationship of Giovanni and Lydia giving hints that their marriage is completely wasted, like for example when Lydia asks for the sponge in the bathtub and Giovanni mechanically gives it to her without any excitement; or when she dresses a new and elegant dress and Giovanni does not compliment her, like any woman would like to listen to. When Lydia tells him that she does not love him anymore and he insists that he still loves her, she reads the poem that he had wrote for her in the past and he does not recall his authorship. This film is low paced, sad and indicated for specific audiences only. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Noite" ("The Night")

Agonizingly slow....

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 20 November 2012]

Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau star as a married couple whose relationship is fizzling. That's pretty much the entire film.

I know that this film is considered a classic by many people 'in the know' and it's something film critics would go gaga over, but I couldn't help but thinking that this was the most insufferably dull movie I've seen in a long time. Sure, it might be a realistic depiction of a couple as their relationship disintegrates...but so what?! It's ponderous and unpleasant to watch and it felt like an endurance contest to complete. Too many times, you see Moreau or Mastroianni just walking about town...SLOWLY...doing NOTHING!!! Now I know many consider this deep or amazingly realistic--I consider it to be about as captivating as watching paint dry. No...watching paint dry is MUCH more interesting.