La notte (1961)
(The Night)
Country: IT/FR
Technical: bw 121m
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau, Monica Vitti, Bernhard Wicki
Synopsis:
A Milanese writer has a crisis of faith about his work; meanwhile his wife is smitten with a more profound existential malaise that calls into question the whole basis of their relationship.
Review:
Whereas Mastroianni's role is in many ways a retread of the character he had just played in La Dolce Vita - or was about to play in Otto e mezzo - the film is far more about Lidia. In this it has much in common with the other films Antonioni made around this time with Monica Vitti as the principal, and Moreau is superlative at conveying the doubts and contradictions of her character, at one moment clinging to the past by revisiting old haunts, at another half-heartedly flirting with the idea of infidelity. The ending, as so often, is ambiguous: as she confronts her husband with a love letter he once wrote her and that he no longer recognises as his work, he stifles her protestations that they no longer love each other with kisses that are just desperate and awkward enough to fail to be convincing.
(The Night)
Country: IT/FR
Technical: bw 121m
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau, Monica Vitti, Bernhard Wicki
Synopsis:
A Milanese writer has a crisis of faith about his work; meanwhile his wife is smitten with a more profound existential malaise that calls into question the whole basis of their relationship.
Review:
Whereas Mastroianni's role is in many ways a retread of the character he had just played in La Dolce Vita - or was about to play in Otto e mezzo - the film is far more about Lidia. In this it has much in common with the other films Antonioni made around this time with Monica Vitti as the principal, and Moreau is superlative at conveying the doubts and contradictions of her character, at one moment clinging to the past by revisiting old haunts, at another half-heartedly flirting with the idea of infidelity. The ending, as so often, is ambiguous: as she confronts her husband with a love letter he once wrote her and that he no longer recognises as his work, he stifles her protestations that they no longer love each other with kisses that are just desperate and awkward enough to fail to be convincing.
(The Night)
Country: IT/FR
Technical: bw 121m
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau, Monica Vitti, Bernhard Wicki
Synopsis:
A Milanese writer has a crisis of faith about his work; meanwhile his wife is smitten with a more profound existential malaise that calls into question the whole basis of their relationship.
Review:
Whereas Mastroianni's role is in many ways a retread of the character he had just played in La Dolce Vita - or was about to play in Otto e mezzo - the film is far more about Lidia. In this it has much in common with the other films Antonioni made around this time with Monica Vitti as the principal, and Moreau is superlative at conveying the doubts and contradictions of her character, at one moment clinging to the past by revisiting old haunts, at another half-heartedly flirting with the idea of infidelity. The ending, as so often, is ambiguous: as she confronts her husband with a love letter he once wrote her and that he no longer recognises as his work, he stifles her protestations that they no longer love each other with kisses that are just desperate and awkward enough to fail to be convincing.