1961 Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
A married couple attend a bourgeois party and wade through the stifling strain that long-term marriage has imposed upon them.
Rewatching the trilogy because I was able to see this one at the American Cinematheque (Egyptian Theatre) on a DCP of the nicely restored version. Of course, it was wonderful seeing on the big screen.
I still think L'Avventura is my fave but revisiting L’Eclisse next week.
I did a thing: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhCyZyA9YlU
How do I put this delicately? La Notte is simply the finest film I have ever seen. I have reached this point after much careful consideration. The mastery of the film is inescapable and the conclusion I have come to feels inevitable. La Notte is a perfect example of the cinema's ultimate grammar. It's the best film in the whole world.
La Notte is a film of reflections, of internalized deterioration made visibly external through false extensions of our composite social selves. Giovanni's novels are imprecise reflections of his intellectualism. His wife, Lidia, is an untrue, forced reflection of his masculine and social worth. The role of architecture in La Notte serves as the mirror…
I'm really getting to like the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, having loved this, L'Avventura and Blow-Up.
Whilst the first film of his alienation trilogy had an otherworldly, slow, fevered atmosphere some describe as boredom, it was in much of La Notte that I found something akin to boredom or neutrality or even a very mild depression: a feeling of what standard days are like in the spaces between things: the way that much of life is spent waiting for things to get better, to change, to happen. This doesn't make it sound like an exciting watch, but then if that matters you'd probably be better off with a Bruce Willis movie.
La Notte is a very grown-up film about a…
That Antonioni is consistently labelled 'boring' is a gross misconduct. This is among the most primally exciting films I've ever seen, and Vitti is terrifying.
"I'd like to read a novel about a woman who loves a man but the man doesn't love her. But he does admire her intelligence, her temperament. They start living together and then...but how could a story like that end?"
“I no longer have inspirations, only memories.”
Reflections on regrets. Easily one of the best films shot on Black and White. How does Antonioni do it?
I feel like I need to start by talking about the ending. The iconic image on the Eureka blu ray cover/title menu. It left such a bad taste in my mouth. After what was building to a perfect emotional crescendo, the couple seemingly accepting the inevitable, she reads a long monologue and it just feels right, it feels like this how this film should end. But nah, why end there when you can have a really uncomfortable rape scene. She pushes him away and says she doesn't love him, he drags her into the sand and overpowers her whislt she continues to resist. The camera just casually pans away, and... The end. I'm not some mard-arse who objects to the…
When one sees an Antonioni film and then subsequently reads in interviews about what he actually thought about modern times, they seem contradictory to each other. The films, with their black and white color palate, depict suffocating alienation in a cold environment of despondency. Yet in an interview about Red Desert, he says: “It's too simplistic to say that I am condemning the inhuman industrial world. My intention was to translate the poetry of the world, in which even factories can be beautiful.” Watching his masterpiece La Notte again, I discovered a shocking equilibrium between support for modernism and regretful acknowledgement of its detriments. The film is about a couple with a dead marriage, whose intellectual provocations have been trampled…
Not my favorite out of the trilogy..much more straight forward than the other two films. Le Notte is grounded in realism and focuses on a marriage couple who seem to be at a low point in their marriage. The husband has difficulty with fidelity to his wife and has temptation all around him. They go to a party at mansion where they are challenged more.
Movie Challenge 2019: 104 Years in 52 Weeks: Movie #7 out of 104
Great plot, intense atmosphere, great actors, great movie!
"Hoje, quando acordei, você ainda dormia. Aos poucos, acordando, senti sua respiração leve. E através dos cabelos que escondiam seu rosto, vi seus olhos fechados e senti uma comoção subindo à garganta. Tive vontade de gritar e acordá-la, pois o seu cansaço era profundo e mortal. Na penumbra, a pele dos seus braços e pescoço estava viva e eu a sentia morna e seca. Queria passar os lábios nela, mas o pensamento de perturbar seu sono e de ainda tê-la em meus braços, me impedia. Preferia tê-la assim, como algo que ninguém tiraria de mim, pois só eu a possuía. Uma imagem sua para sempre."
Right in the sweet spot of Antonioni's rather-too-conveniently-labelled 'Alienation Trilogy'; sent sailing for 6 out of the centre of his bat; an absolute beast of a mid-period Antonioni with all the brilliant pieces in place.
Not quite as radical and breathtaking as the next film, L'eclisse, but dark-haired Monica Vitti is already sliding her bejewelled compact right onto the next perfect square at the epic set-piece party that dominates the night. An essential journey from the afternoon, through the night, to the dawn.
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