LA NOTTE (1961)
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Writers: Michelangelo Antonioni, Ennio Flaiano
Stars: Jeanne Moreau, Marcello Mastroianni, Monica Vitti
Runtime: 115 minutes
Plot: A day in the life of an unfaithful married couple and their steadily deteriorating relationship.
Review: Unfolding over the course of a single day and the titular night, La Notte opens with a pointed reminder of mortality, as Giovanni and Lidia visit a terminally ill friend in the hospital. Their respective body language in the poor fellow's room makes it abundantly clear that communication between them is shaky at best; it's no surprise when Lidia excuses herself, crying alone outside, or when Giovanni allows himself to be briefly seduced by a female patient with apparent mental problems. After an interlude apart, during which Lidia wanders the streets by herself and visits their old neighborhood, the two head out for a night on the town—first stopping by a local nightclub to watch the risqué floor show, then hitting a ritzy party being held by a wealthy businessman who Giovanni, a celebrated author, knows slightly. At the party, they again mostly go their separate ways, though the dawn will see them having to make tough decisions that will shape both their futures.
La Notte is the middle film in Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni's loose trilogy on relationship ennui. What Antonioni conveys is inseparable from the ways in which he does it. On its face, La Notte is a simple day-in-the-life of an emotionally cold marriage between Giovanni, a successful writer played with suave aloofness by Marcello Mastroianni, and his wife Lidia, whose passionate yet mysterious beauty could only be realized by French legend Jeanne Moreau.
Though the film is "old", there's nothing dated about its beguiling inspection of love and modernity, proof that the best art can be both timeless and a recognizable document of time and place.
Reviewed by S.M. Intisab Shahriyar
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