La notte (1961) – 2/5

A night not really to remember

Here we have „La notte“, which of course means „The Night“ and this is an award-winning film from 1961, so it is over 60 years old now. It did not make an impact at the Oscars, but its biggest triumph was perhaps the win of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival back then. I got the chance to watch the film as it was shown twice, or actually once and the second showing is still coming up, here at a movie theater that frequently focuses on older movies, which is really awesome. Even if I did not like the film too much, as you can see from my rating, I was glad that the room was pretty much packed and surely a triple-digit amount of viewers came to give this film a watch. Which shows that it is far from forgotten. No surpise though with the names of Antonioni, Mastroianni and Moreau on board. As for Antonioni, he is the writer and director here, but there are two co-writers credited as well. It is definitely a bit on the absurd side that they have three Oscar nominations each while Antonioni himself only has two. This should not say anything negative about them though. Flaiano, who did not reach a really high age, has worked on some of Federico Fellini’s triumphs too and this is where his popularity mostly stems from. Guerra has also worked with Fellini, but not to the extent of Flaiano. This may sound old with 1961, but Fellini has actually worked on films for two decades before that already, for he pretty much started during the dark days of World War II.

Enough of him now and let us take a close(r) look at this film that runs for minimally over two hours. It is in black-and-white of course and there nobody should be really surprised as this applies to most of Mastroianni’s defining movies. It is interesting though that he is „only“ second credit here, but yeah it could have been him or Jeanne Moreau as they are a couple that is pretty much equally at the center of the story here. They have many scenes together, but also some where they do not share the screen and understand how they act and behave when their significant other is not around. Well, I should perhaps write „significant other“ because, especially with the last scene, all the love seems to have vanished. I cannot go too much into detail here with Moreau, but she did not impress me a lot either and I have not seen too many other films starring her. As for Mastroianni, I know he is lauded and appreciated by many and many even come up with his name when being asked for the greatest European actor of all time, but I cannot agree with that at all. For me, he plays the same character in almost every movie. A bit on the sleazy side, major inner moral-related struggles, adored by women and usually well-off or at least with this film here he married rich you can also say. So why did I give this film a relatively low rating? Well, I must say the story of the two and also the minor characters did not really win me over. Monica Vitti, by the way, is not as much in the center of the film as you could think from the cast list and poster especially. She still has some okay scenes. I really liked the introduction with this game she invented and how they were somewhat playing it. I would like to play that too, preferably with somebody like Vitti. Unfortunately she died this year, so there are really not many actors from this film alive anymore, which should surprise nobody though.

One who is, is the actress that plays the nymphomaniac, even if I am a bit hesitant to call her that as she is just one troubled woman and we do not know about her exact mental disorder and why she is in the hospital. It seems to be a hospital dealing with both physically and mentally ill people, something not super common today anymore compared to back then I guess. The actress Maria Pia Luzi was pretty though and I see she was just 20 or even under and now she is in her early 80s. Maybe the exception that she is still alive here. Perhaps the crying kid is also alive. This scene is one that stayed in the mind a bit when we see the female protagonist run into a crying child. She cannot really do anything to make the crying stop. Another scene she has on her own is when we see a bunch of James Dean character-style thugs fight, two especially, and the female protagonist screams that they should stop, but nobody is really harmed and she just attracts the attention of one brute then and is chased briefly as he is sexually interested in her I assume from the way he looks at her, but he disappears quickly too and is not seen again. I must say I found these inclusions a bit embarrassing. They were supposed to show us how attractive and desirable these two main characters are in a sense that much younger people, even if those were probably not in the best mental state, are clearly attracted to them. It felt more about the actors than the characters for me to be honest. And other scenes like the crying kid, well I would say people consider it art because it has Antonioni (and Mastroianni) attached to it, but if the scene looked exactly the same, which it very well could have because it was nothing special, then nobody would have praised said scene or the filmmaker behind it. I just don’t see the artistic impact at all, but then again, as I stated earlier, I have never been big on Mastroianni, also in terms of „La dolce vita“ for example what many consider a masterpiece.

But back to this one here: I did like the first scene or sequence I should say at the hospital and Austrian-born Bernhard Wicki is an actor who is almost always interesting to watch. Such a pity his character had a tragic fate and was not included later on. I would have liked to see more from him. There even the decadence of it all like a nurse, maybe more of an assistant, bringing some champagne was watchable in an interesting way without despising the characters, but that did come pretty quickly if we look at the way how especially Mastroianni’s character behaves. He is the one who talks about how he feels love in his marriage and is still always ready to get busy with other women. While his wife rejects the constant displays of affection coming from other men. I wonder if times were really like this. I think the sequence with the Black dancer and how flexible she was and all she could do to make sure a glass of champagne does not only not break, but also does not even touch the floor and that not a single drop is spilled was a bit pompous and pretentious. I mean her moves were really impressive, but other than that, the scene did not have a lot to offer for me I must unfortunately say. It only showed that they enjoy their wealth, events like this, decadence etc. Especially Mastroianni’s character. Moreau’s of course had the initial idea, but it was probably more that she wanted to be with people and not just alone with her husband and she did not really care what they would be doing, where they would be going. She just did not want to stay in the apartment that united them and kept everybody outside. With the final scene between the two that is about (pseudo) love confessions and the actual disappearance of love, especially from her side, I am not 100% decided yet. I don’t think it was great or bad, maybe among the better moments from the film, but also a bit over the top for sure. With Mastroianni’s character, you could easily see that he was eager to maintain the status quo. He was not hesitant to cheat on his wife when they were still together and he has easy access to his wife’s fortune too, so all is alright, even if he asks the new woman to start from scratch with him. A strong contradiction to what he tells his wife in the end.

Moreau’s character was really focused to end the relationship there and especially not get sexual out there. Very strange moment too. I guess in the 21st century now half a dozen people would have intervened already and told him to leave, but back then the woman was still more of the husband’s property and had to follow up on what he had on his mind. This is maybe what feminists, especially male feminists, should think about, what things were like back then, when they talk about lack of equality in the 21st century. I totally think that for example differences in salaries between genders must be overcome, but nonsense like gender-adequate language I simply cannot support. That is an entirely different subject though, so let’s get back to the movie for a little moment still before the review is finished: It is not a film that will make you laugh a lot, but this should not surprise anybody as Mastroianni is rarely about comedy, especially compared to some of the other defining Italian actors of his generation. Here and there, there was a subtly comedic moment though and these I liked somehow. I would say I liked them more than the dramatic moments that were included far more frequently. I will just mention two. The first is when Mastroianni’s character talks to his potential new lover’s dad and maybe he will get a really decent and well-paid job from him, even if he does not know if he should accept it and in the end it seems he decides against it. There they talk about his actual wife’s wealth and financial background and the old man says something like he understands when Mastroianni’s character talks about how he can make a living for himself with his writing. The second moment is when Monica Vitti’s character was really fed up in the end with the two protagonists, not just with Mastroianni’s character, and says something like „You two!“ or how they are just too messed up for her and that she cannot deal with them any longer. This was almost at the very end before the big finale between the couple. Last scene for Vitti in this film. It is also not always too easy to quote exactly what they said because I must think back about the subtitles that were also in English, not German, and Italian I don’t speak at all. So yeah, that’s it and I give the film a thumbs-down. Not recommended.