Executscan Expected more

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Antonius Block Towards the end of 'La Notte', a married couple (Jeanne Moreau and Marcello Mastroianni) are walking across the fairway of a golf course. They are as emotionally distant as the two trees they approach which stand side by side, not touching. Behind them stretches the past which has led them to this point, their marriage failing, and before them is a very uncertain future. The entire film builds up to this moment, and it's powerful.We get a first insight into Mastroianni's character when he can't resist a mentally ill woman's advances after leaving his dying friend in a hospital, with his wife waiting in tears below. It's a very surprising moment, and it's underlined by director Michelangelo Antonioni when he later shows Mastroianni not interested in the least when Moreau is naked and getting out of the bathtub. In one moment after another from then on, through their dialog, his obvious interests in other women, and her ennui, we find just how poor their relationship has become. I have to say, this film was a little slow in the first half as Moreau wanders through the streets of Milan, having left her husband's book signing. I mean, if there's anyone I would like to see wandering around, stopping young men from fighting, watching bottle rockets get set off, meeting a variety of people, etc it would be Moreau, who is absolutely exquisite, but I did wonder where this was going. However, the ponderous nature of this sequence conveys the malaise in her relationship, and her wandering aimlessly in life, not knowing where to turn.That evening, there is a scene in an erotic nightclub, where Mastroianni is intent on watching a couple of scantily clad dancers, barely paying attention to his bored wife. I thought Antonioni was clumsy in filming this sequence, my least favorite, and the fact that the dancers were black contortionists seemed, I don't know, unnecessarily salacious and stereotypical. I suppose the degree to which the female dancer writhed around is being juxtaposed with the sterility of the couple's interaction, so again, there is a point.Where the film really picked up for me is at the party at a filmmaker's mansion. Mastroianni meets and pursues his host's daughter (Monica Vitti), right under his wife's gaze, and she meets and is pursued by a young man (Giorgio Negro). There are some beautiful images captured here, my favorite of which was Moreau and Negro driving slowly in his car, rain pouring down and streaming across the windows. They're soaked from having been out in the shower, and we see their animated faces, together in the little cocoon of his car, through light and shadow, wondering if this is the start of something new for her. Another is Mastroianni and Vitti playing a silly game on a floor, first with just the two of them, and then with many other party-goers. There is a moment when we see their reflections in a pane of glass, as if they're not real, and simply shadows of themselves. Reflections of one sort or another are a recurring motif in the film.The party itself gets a little wild, with guests jumping in the pool in the rain, which creates some indelible images, but what I loved were the quieter scenes. Moreau saying she doesn't feel the least bit jealous, even as he practically flaunts his infidelity, and that's the biggest problem. The poetry of Vitti's recording:"From the living room today you could hear dialogue from a film on television. 'If I were you, Jim, I wouldn't do that.' After that line, the howling of a dog, slow and sure, rising in a perfect arc and trailing off in a great sadness. Then I thought I heard an airplane, but there was silence, and I was glad. The park is full of silence made up of sounds. If you press your ear to a tree and listen, after a while you'll hear a sound. Perhaps it comes from within us, but I prefer to think it's the tree. Within that silence were strange noises that disturbed the soundscape around me. I closed the window, but the noises persisted. I thought I'd go crazy. I don't want to hear useless sounds. I want to pick them out throughout the day. Same with voices and words. So many words I'd rather not hear, but you can't escape them. You must resign yourself to them, like the waves when you float on your back in the ocean."And then Mastroianni's letter, which is brilliant:"When I awoke this morning, you were still asleep. As I slowly emerged from my slumber, I heard your gentle breathing, and through the wisps of hair over your face, I saw your closed eyes, and I could barely contain my emotion. I wanted to cry out, to wake you up, because you slept so deeply you almost seemed lifeless. In the half light, the skin of your arms and throat appeared so vibrant, so warm and dry, that I longed to press my lips against it, but the thought of disturbing your sleep, of having you awake in my arms again, held me back. I preferred you like this, something no one could take from me because it was mine alone - this image of you that would be everlasting. Beyond your face I saw my own reflection in a vision that was pure and deep. I saw you in a dimension that encompassed all the times of my life, all the years to come, even the years past as I was preparing to meet you. That was the little miracle of this waking moment: to feel for the first time that you were and always would be mine, and that this night would go on forever with you beside me, with the warmth of your blood, your thoughts, and your will mixed with mine. At that moment I understood how much I loved you, Lidia, and the intensity of the emotion was such that tears welled up in my eyes. For I felt that this must never end, that all our lives should be like an echo of this dawn...with you belonging to me but actually a part of me, something breathing within me that nothing could ever destroy except the dull indifference of habit, which is the only threat I see. Then you awoke, and with a sleepy smile kissed me, and I felt there was nothing to fear, that we'd always be as we were at that moment, bound by something stronger than time and habit."Now it seems pretty surprising he would forget he had written that (!), but that fact emphasizes just how far he's drifted. The sentiment he expresses - to hold on to that moment in a relationship - and the sad feeling it evokes hearing it read out loud, is very touching. In life there are few absolutes - friends will die, relationships will stagnate, and other people may come along, but can those powerful early moments of love be sustained, if one clings to them?

jacobs-greenwood ... 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.

Robert J. Maxwell I was called away after about 45 minutes so I won't comment on the entire film. I did see it years ago but don't remember enough detail to justify much in the way of observations.Mastroianni, a well-known writer, and Moreau are married but their relationship is adrift in Milan. They don't argue or fight. They're just quietly beginning to lead separate lives.It's all pretty desperate though, underneath the politesse. Together they visit a close friend dying painfully in the hospital. They bring him a few gifts but don't have much to say, except for the patient who occasionally squirms with agony. This is some hospital, by the way. Here is the patient receiving morphine, yet the staff allow his visitors to bring him a bottle of champagne -- which Mastroianni shares but Moreau does not.When Marcello leaves, alone, a young woman who is a patient approaches him in the corridor and pulls him into her room, kissing him avidly, biting his thighs, throwing off her clothing and spread-eagling herself on the bed. She pulls the hesitant Marcello down to her just as the nurses burst in and begin to slap the woman robustly.Driving Moreau home, he describes this incident to her, but she's not particularly interested.There follows a full ten or fifteen minutes while the camera follows Moreau on a walk around the streets of Milan. She glances at a man slouching against a wall. He glances back. She engages a taxi and tells the driver to wait while she continues her aimless stroll. She witnesses a fist fight. She witnesses some amateurs in a field experimenting with homemade rockets. She crosses street. She says a few words to a wailing little girl. That's it. About fifteen minutes of it.Even after watching what amounts to an introduction, it's clear what Antonioni is getting at, but the introduction is dull.The photography is not. Each shot is exquisitely framed in black and white. The location shooting is evocative. Milan can be as crummy as any other industrial city. I've never been particularly impressed by Jeanne Moreau's talent, although she may be a nice lady in real life. But Mastroianni is always good -- handsome, but not too handsome; reserved but not too much; and infallibly polite. He can handle either drama, as here, or comedic roles, as in the hilarious "Big Deal on Madonna Street." His best performance, and perhaps his best film, was as the journalist in "La Dolce Vita", wallowing in a trough between two gigantic waves that finally wash him up on a sea shore where he can no longer hear the angels sing.It's extremely well done for what it is. But "what it is" is problematic, and to the extent that it's not, it's depressing. I took a sensitive young girl on a date to see "L'Aventura" and she was devastated by the rampant anomi. It turned more intense with the final shots of empty streets in "L'Eclisse." It's definitely worth seeing. I can't imagine that anything resembling a film like this, a mystery really, would be greenlighted today, certainly not by the MBAs in Hollywood. "Sawbones 5" -- that's their style.

chaos-rampant It's not because of films like this that Antonioni is great for me, it's because he tutored with them and grew wiser for his later more important works. Because having dissected with simple precision the crushing dilemmas of whether or not love is possible, realizing this ineffability of human connection, he could see this was not the end of our suffering and if this was not the end, we could still not rule conclusively that we have no chance to attain peace in this life.After he concluded with the two lovers willingly not pursuing their feelings at the end of L'Eclisse, he turned inwards, and with each subsequent film he peered under one more veil of false perception. But what was he trying to look into in La Notte, what does he find here? La Notte is a step behind L'Eclisse, naturally. Here love matters, or is thought that it should, to the bitter end. The finale is overbearing with pessimism then because love fails to be that saving grace, that we're still alone, consumed by our desires. But that's not all of it either.Even when Mastroyanni painfully knows that the love he cherished has vanished with time and habit, he still clings to it. Even a dragging routine is preferable than the emptiness of solitude. This is how love functions here, as a shelter that soothes the existential pains, or a mask that mercifully obscures them.But these people are not simply lost adrift in faceless crowds and cold rooms, they're clinging on the craving of desire for their salvation. When I say that the mind is not transcended yet in these films of Antonioni's alienation phase, it's because it still dictates desire, the terms under which a meaningful life should be pursued.But to show that love is not our saving grace because it's subject to the whims and tedium of time would be to concede that we are merciless at the hands of higher forces beyond our control, that we're not masters of our fate. It was important in this aspect to go a step beyond, to show us characters become aware of the emptiness of desire by willingly giving up on it. But for that we'd have to go ahead to L'Eclisse and Il Deserto Rosso.By itself La Notte may seem like it's laboriously pondering to say too little. As part of an oeuvre though, it has a place that can't be dismissed lightly.