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.
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.