Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
After his triumph with L’Avventura in 1959, Antonioni returned in his next film, La Notte (1961), to his pet themes of alienation and melancholia among characters lost in a world dominated by objects, technology, and conspicuous consumption. Here, Antonioni depicts a married couple who have gradually faded to pale reflections of their former selves and their once passionate relationship.
Historical Background:La Notte (1961) was the middle film in the great trilogy of alienation films that first brought Michelangelo Antonioni to international attention. It was preceded by the masterpiece, L’Avventura (1959) and was followed by Eclipse (1961). Antonioni's other best known works include the bleak Red Desert (1964), his first color film, and his three English-language films: Blow-Up (1966), Zabriskie Point (1969), and The Passenger (1975), starring Jack Nicholson.
The Story: Giovanni Pontano (Marcello Mastroianni) and Lidia (Jeanne Moreau) are a troubled couple. Both are feeling detached and depressed. It doesn't help that their mutual good friend Tommaso Garani (Bernhard Wicki) lies dying in a hospital. They stop by to pay him a visit and try to cheer him up. Tommaso is reviewing his life, to an extent, wondering whether it's been well spent, as dying people are wont to do, but Giovanni and Lidia, though physically healthy, are equally in doubt about the value of their own lives. Giovanni is a world-renowned author, about to attend a book signing for his latest work, but that small measure of success lifts neither his spirits nor those of his wife.
Lidia, though masking her distress, excuses herself from her friend's hospital room so that she can have a quiet cry outside. Giovanni leaves a few minutes later but while exiting the facility, is accosted by a young, female mental health patient (Maria Pia Luzi), whose libido is so overheated that she's ready to grab any man out of the corridor – not that Giovanni is just any man, but she would have apparently settled for less. She's a lovely young woman, despite her derangement, and Giovanni soon finds his phantom resistance quickly overwhelmed by the thrill of her passion. Fortunately, a couple of nurses rush in to break up the developing tryst before anything significant can happen.
Giovanni and Lidia drive into the city, amid a steady current of traffic and noise. Once there, Giovanni heads to the book signing while Lidia goes off on her own in a taxi. Giovanni caters to his adoring fans, with signatures and witticisms, while Lidia pays a visit to Sesto San Giovanni, a rundown neighborhood where both she and Giovanni had grown up. She strolls about, coming across a crying child and, then, a broken clock scattered among a pile of trash. She spots two young men having a fight among a throng of onlookers and intervenes after one of the fellows gains the upper hand and is wailing relentlessly on the hapless loser. Lidia is still an elegant lady, though she's lost the blush of youth, and wherever she goes, men look at her admiringly, especially because she's walking alone. Lidia is well aware of the ogling and seems to enjoy the reminder of her ability to turn a head or two. She watches some adolescent boys shooting rockets in a nearby field. Finally, she calls Giovanni for a ride home and tells him, when he arrives, "Same old field, kids are still firing rockets."
Back at their apartment, Giovanni and Lidia remain apathetic but Lidia has just enough initiative to suggest that they go out for the evening. They've got an invitation to a party of up-scale socialites being hosted by the Gherardinis. At the last minute, Lidia suggests that they go somewhere alone together instead and Giovanni agrees. They are soon sipping cocktails at a striptease club, which one images to have been more his choice than hers. There's little conversation between the two and Giovanni is a good deal more attentive to the dancer than to Lidia. Lidia suggests they go to the Gherardinis' party, after all.
At the party, Giovanni and Lidia are soon separated. Giovanni gains the attentions of a variety of admirers, male and female alike. After all, a prestigious author is someone special with whom to hobnob. Lidia encounters an old friend but later wanders around the periphery, still moody and dejected. When she briefly encounters her husband, she informs him about a very attractive young woman inside, resignedly anticipating her husband's propensities. True to form, he is soon seeking out the potential prize, who is the eighteen year-old daughter of the host and hostess, Valentina Gherardini (Monica Vitti). Giovanni turns on the charm, doing his level best to seduce the gorgeous young creature. Meanwhile, Lidia gets caught in a downpour near the pool, which quickly evolves into some of the folks jumping in the pool, clothes and all, and some being pushed in. During the excitement, Lydia shows a rare bit of animation and soon acquires a would-be seducer of her own.
All that remains of the film is for viewers to discover if either of these feeble attempts at regaining that old spark called passion will succeed and what effect the efforts will have on the floundering marriage between Giovanni and Lidia. There's a touching scene, near the end, in which Lidia reads an old love letter to Giovanni that sparks his curiosity about who wrote it to her.
Themes: More than anything else, La Notte is a film about the death of passion. Giovanni and Lidia are a middle aged couple who have presumably been married for many years. They grew up in the same neighborhood, so one might imagine they were even high school sweethearts. Their relationship has lost its pizzazz, in large part because each of the two participants in the relationship has lost their zest for life. There are some external factors that are contributing. As the film opens, they are about to lose a man who has been a dear friend to each of them, Tommaso Garani. They visit him at his deathbed in a hospital. Tommaso is quite naturally having second thoughts about the value of the life he's led. For Tommaso, it's one of those crises of dying, but it also feeds into the midlife crisis that both Giovanni and Lidia are experiencing.
Lidia is not genuinely happy with who she is as a person. Tommaso was one of the few people in her life who valued her and preferred to talk about her than about himself. Lidia indicates, at one point, that she chose Giovanni over Tommaso because Giovanni was more self-centered and preferred to talk about himself. That may seem odd to some viewers, but a person really only enjoys being the center of attention, in a relationship, if they like who they are. Lidia chose to derive her joy from being married to an intelligent and creative husband who was passionately attracted to her. Unfortunately for her, that basis for the relationship worked effectively only so long as (a) she admired Giovanni, and (b) she felt his lust for her. Now, with the passion gone from their relationship and Giovanni as dejected and listless as herself, she can love neither him nor herself.
There are other external factors as well, exacerbating the weaknesses inherent in their relationship. Antonioni suggests, as he does in every one of his films, that part of their angst and alienation is related to the sterile nature of the modern city, with the concrete buildings and overpowering skyscrapers and the incessant noise of planes, helicopters, and traffic. The old neighborhood where they grew up together and, undoubtedly, felt the first passions of youth, is now rundown and the train no longer even passes through. A broken clock lies on the ground signifying that time there has ended, at least for Giovanni and Lidia. The place is now frozen in their memories. They go to a stripclub for entertainment, but the passionate performance of the stripper only serves to provide a stark contrast with their own passionless relationship. Giovanni confides, "I no longer have inspirations, only recollections."
Those external factors are aggravating an already shaky marriage relationship. Antonioni always constructs his films in such away as to invite a variety of interpretations, so that each viewer brings something of himself or herself to the viewing. My personal sense, from this film, is that the relationship between Giovanni and Lidia is less damaged than most reviewers believe, but that each of the two has internal psychological issues that they need to work out. Both are depressed, at the present stage of their lives, and its almost impossible for two depressed people to relate well with one another and, especially, to experience any passion or real warmth in their relationship. Lidia needs to work out her issues in relation to self-esteem and not depend on admiration for Giovanni to provide her sense of self-worth. Giovanni, like a lot of middle aged men, needs to acquire some broader basis of interest in women – and, in particular, the one he married – beyond mere physical lust. Even if Giovanni and Lidia regained some of the old magic in their sexual relationship for a few years, as the film's ending hints, a time has to come, sooner or later, when their love will need to be based on more than just his passion for her or their passion for one another. As it is, they have some real positives going for them that many married couples lack. They know how to communicate with one another (though they are mostly opting not to, presently, because each recognizes that their depressed feelings are not really something very attractive to share) and they genuinely care about each other's well being.
Lidia was even wise enough to realize that her feelings of depression were not going to be relieved by having quick, passionate sex with the man who picked her up at the party. "I'm sorry, but I can't," she had told him. Giovanni was not quite so insightful and undoubtedly would have gladly slept with Valentina (how many men would refuse her?), but he conveyed enough of the nature of his internal crisis to Valentina that she refused to be a momentary answer to his midlife crisis and desperate effort to recover youthful passion.
Love is more than just passion and it has to be in order for a marriage relationship to last beyond the years of youthful sex appeal. The relationship between Giovanni and Lidia includes some of the most important ingredients. They know each other intimately and they care about one another. True, they've lost the sense of cherishing each other's beauty. She is less the appealing sex object that she once was and he is less the knight in shining armor that she opted to marry. But, it certainly is not helping matters that each is currently depressed and brooding over the state of their lives and the impending death of a dear friend. They've each discovered that the other is flawed and those flaws seem terribly important from the vantage point of the doldrums. If together, they can help one another recover passion for one or more elements of their respective lives and their life together, the cherishing of one another will return. In my opinion, the ending of this film is upbeat and suggests real promise for this couple as they continue through life.
Production Values: Like other Antonioni scripts, this one provides precious little plot, which is not to say that is does not succeed. The lack of plot is part and parcel of the kind of minimalism that Antonioni employs in order to focus his films on the internal psychological struggles of his characters. The action is slow and many American viewers will find the film boring, but for those so attuned, it is a riveting psychological study. As always, Antonioni is circumspect to an extent that leaves much open to individual viewer interpretation.
Antonioni is the master of visual poetry in cinema, so it's no surprise that the luminous high-contrast black-and-white cinematography here is magnificently composed and fraught with symbolism. From the very opening, the camerawork of Gianni Di Venanzo carries much of the weight of the film's meanings. The first images we encounter are from a camera tracking down the side of a steel-framed, glass-faced skyscraper, from many floors above the ground, showing us a double-shot of the city below, direct and in reflection. This sets the tone for the entire film, in which we observe the external reality of our characters paired with a reflection of their inner psychological states. Throughout the rest of the film, Antonioni comes back repeatedly to the motifs of windows and mirrors, keeping us equally centered on the interior worlds of Giovanni and Lidia as on their overt activities. There are frequent facial close-ups of the principals that further help to reveal their inner turmoil.
The performance by Marcello Mastroianni is truly remarkable – the finest I've ever seen him give and there's plenty of great ones from which to choose. Rather than giving us a mere cad, he portrays a complicated man in midlife crisis with whom we can sympathize, even if we can't always approve of his behavior. He even outshines two fine performances by Jeanne Moreau and Monica Vitti. Mastroianni's resume includes roles in La Dolce Vita (1960), Divorce Italian Style (1962), Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (1963), 8 ½ (1963), The Stranger (1967), City of Women (1980), La Nuit de Varennes (1982), and Dark Eyes (1987). Jeanne Moreau's role was a much more difficult one than Vitti's, but she carries it brilliantly. She also appeared in such films as The Lovers (1959), A Woman is a Woman (1960), Jules and Jim (1962), The Trial (1963), Diary of a Chambermaid (1964), The Train (1965), Chimes at Midnight (1966), La Femme Nikita (1990), and Until the End of the World (1994). Vitti is both gorgeous and talented, once again, in this film. She starred in such films as L’Avventura (1959), Red Desert (1964), and The Phantom of Liberty (1974).
Bottom-Line:La Notte is among the best films ever made as an exploration of marital problems. One thinks of such other great examples as Contempt (1963), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), and Scenes from a Marriage (1973), but La Notte is fully able to hold its own in such illustrious company. La Notte is as fine a film about intimate human relationships as you'll find. What you get is great images, a strong script, and great performances. What you don't get is Hollywood-style plot and action. I highly recommend this film for those attuned to European-style filmmaking. The DVD from Winstar Video is bare bones, without so much as a printed list of chapters, but it includes scene access through an interactive menu and filmographies. The DVD transfer is crisp and clear to my eye, though I came across one reviewer who was highly critical of it. La Notte is in Italian with English subtitles and has a running time of 115 minutes.
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