Luchino Visconti
Le notti bianche

Sometimes all you need for a movie is an idea.

If the idea belongs to someone named Fëdor Dostoevskij, it doesn't matter.

Fëdor writes this idea and you can imagine it.

But Luchino lets you see it.

And so we watch "White Nights".

White with fog and humidity in an imaginary town made of alleys, bridges, cobblestones, and streetlamps.

There's also a river with homeless people under the bridges.

Almost like a decadent, bare, dark, and humid Venice, very humid...and then maybe it rains.

There’s the avenue with the neon lights of shops, bars, and clubs.

Incredible.

Incredible and why? Because this town is not real, it’s all fake, constructed… We are in the Cinecittà studios…

Extraordinary.

Luchino Visconti invents white nights like this (and sincere will be the thanks to the studios that did so much to make this small miracle possible).

Now add a story.

Let’s say it’s a love story.

It’s night, it’s white, she cries on the pier, he sees her, he wants to comfort her, console her, he wants to know her, wants to see her again tomorrow and then the day after tomorrow and forever.

But she cries for someone else…

She is Natalia (Maria Schell)

He is Mario (Marcello Mastroianni)

And to make this night even whiter, maybe at some point, it snows.

The music is by Nino Rota.

The director is Luchino Visconti.

It’s 1957.

And this is CINEMA.