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The Night is a bitter and painful portrait of Italy at the beginning of the 60s.
The subject and the screenplay are by Michelangelo Antonioni, Ennio Flaiano, and Tonino Guerra.
From Wikipedia notes: The film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Festival, Silver Ribbon, and David di Donatello for directing and best film.
It is the central chapter of the so-called "existential trilogy" or "of incommunicability," following “The Adventure” and preceding “The Eclipse”.
The film is from 1961, we are in the middle of the economic boom, Antonioni puts his magnifying glass on a snapshot of Italy in particular: the upper bourgeoisie, the intellectuals, the industrial captains. We are in Milan.
We are guided in this world by a young writer, Guido Pontano (Marcello Mastroianni) who, with his latest book, firmly establishes himself “in the circle that matters” and by his wife Lidia Pontano (Jeanne Moureau).
Before a long introductory prologue (the magnificent sequence of the visit to the clinic of the dying friend, Lidia wandering through the city, the two of them at the cabaret after dinner) we will make a long night tour within the circle that counts (money and nothing more) in the luxurious villa in Brianza of the Gherardinis, owner of a large and historic company.
The film thrilled the critics but not the public, it was praised by Pasolini who noted analogies with the novel “The Boredom” by Moravia, and by Moravia himself.
An atypical film, innovative in language and directorial style, a trailblazer for a generation of authors to come, a source of inspiration for the Nouvelle Vague or for future great filmmakers like Wong Kar-wai for example.
Bitter and painful, as was said. Uncertain, suspended, at times Bergman-like for the ability to lay bare the human soul thanks to the stillness of the images, the absence of a soundtrack, the vacuity of the dialogues.
Upon careful superficial examination (quote) the film might bore quite a bit, but if one manages to follow it in a certain way “immobile,” suspending judgment, shrouded in healthy comprehension, it reveals itself in all its power, in the immense scope of the message. A silent "cry" of pain that tears the soul bare, laying bare the lost souls in the incommunicability already sniffed out and denounced by two passers-by: Svevo and Pirandello. 50 years after them, Antonioni still feels the urgency to unmask the deception, to put the finger in the wound although now infected and purulent. Today it seems that everything is resolved instead, you just have to say empathy and resilience...
The Pontano couple's crisis is a child of this deceit. A love built on such foundations is false in itself and can only move forward with compromise, pretending nothing is wrong, turning the other way. But the Pontanos will not succeed and will be lost in the limbo of indifference without finding a way out, without seeing the stars again.
The only one who has already "understood everything" despite her young age is the daughter of the Gherardinis, Valentina (Monica Vitti) who shields herself in "her world". A light and frivolous world but one that does not fly so high as to not see the abyss, not to be irremediably sucked into it. “Tonight I am too sad, I got distracted just for a moment while we were playing, do you have a cigarette?”
Marcello does the Mastroianni as usual. Handsome, elegant, and refined. Measured, cultured, and calm, charming, magnetic. Yet extinguished, unresolved, lost, semi-blind but still holding his ground or at least trying to. An interpretation "by subtraction" as they say... “do less” and he does the less well.
His wife, on the other hand, can't do it. She has lost the mask, it has fallen into the mud of hypocrisy and she doesn't want to wear it anymore... but without the mask of her upper-bourgeois being and of vacuity, she is irremediably lost and afflicted. Splendid in this sense is the performance of Jeanne Moureau.
A captivating and refined film like few others and that nonchalantly tosses out its je accuse in the form of aphorisms. Phrases thrown here and there by Pontano himself or by Gherardini, Gherardini's wife, or by some loquacious guest, in their “light talk” of an insincere world. A sort of “talking cricket” that would like to be threatening but instead is feeble, who listens to it anymore... Instead, they would be worth cataloging and memorizing, they are pieces of writing (you saw above who wrote this film, right?) that would make one peel their hands in an unbroken 15-minute applause.
The “vacationers” will have two minutes of glory only in the sequence of the rain that will fall abundantly in the middle of the night. A purifying rain that will awaken their beastly souls, a dive into the pool dressed “look at what she's doing!” just a taste of the noble savage myth, more is not allowed “don't throw yourself into the water too, come away don't do silly things...”.
MASTERPIECE.
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