La Notte (1961)

 Michelangelo Antonioni's "La Notte"


After the controversial success of his 1960 film "L'avventura," Michelangelo Antonioni continued down the path of atmospheric filmmaking. With his 1961 film "La Notte," Antonioni replaces traditional storytelling narrative in favor of visual composition, atmosphere, and mood. This type of film caused hostile audiences at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival when Antonioni screened "L'avventura." But, the creative support around the film helped Antonioni continue on his journey of anti-drama cinema. With "La Notte," he brought along with him two of the greatest acting talents in the international film scene: Jeanne Moreau and Marcello Mastroianni. 

The film takes place over the course of a single 24 hour period in the deteriorating final throws of a couple's relationship. A famed writer and his wife go to a fancy soiree, only for it to end in shambles. Throughout the whole film, we witness this couple's distance, as the entire film centers on their stagnant relationship through its arid viewpoint. Some would call this type of film boring and uninteresting. However, what Antonioni does so well is to let his films sit in the aura of boring and uninteresting to the point where the smallest moments suddenly seem enormous. The vapid nothingness of its characters lives creates the subtle tension necessary for creating the small drama of it all. In situations where nothing ever occurs, the minute moments of glances, irritations, dialogue, and subtleties start to become the very fabric of the drama itself.

On top of this, the mood and atmosphere that Antonioni creates is done so with expert blocking and composition. We feel the internality of the characters through this visual component, rather than relying on dialogue to provide us with anything. The images are beautiful to look at and their composition creates the necessary information for us to extrapolate ideas about the state of internal drama. 

The result of these compositions and mood creation is that of experiencing the film from the inside out, rather than observing the film as an outside spectator. Antonioni puts us directly into the mood of his characters and that then serves as the basis for our understanding of what is occurring. In "La Notte," we simply are experiencing the stagnation, resentment, and unfiltered emptiness of a couple who no longer love each other. There's nothing more to it than that,  but somehow Antonioni is able to intellectualize vast concepts about class, modern isolation, and post-war malaise into a single, coherent idea only visualized through an internal drama. It's captivating.



 

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