Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1961 film La notte is about an established author, Giovanni, and his wife Lidia in post war Milan. La notte has been a highly respected motion picture worldwide, receiving numerous awards including the Berlin International Film Festival “Golden Berlin Bear” award for best film and the highly respected David di Donatello award (similar to America’s Academy awards), given to Antonioni for best director.La notte introduces its audience to Giovanni and Lidia as they visit an ailing friend in the hospital before making an appearance at Giovanni’s book signing party. This initial scene reveals the movie’s set-up including moments discomfort, separation, and unusual silence. Throughout the film, there are many occurrences where words or conversation would seem appropriate, and at times crucial. However, Antonioni includes these moments to strengthen the notion of despondency between the main characters. Lidia’s abrupt solo exit of the hospital room and the following scene of her alone, crying, and in pain due to Tommaso’s state of health are evidence of her own life, revealing the pain and isolation within her marriage.
Many times throughout the film deliberate silence and gazes are exploited to dramatize the visual happenings, leaving the audience employed to insert their own dialogue and emotion. Giovanni and the deranged patient, the fight Lidia witnesses, her walk through the city, and the awkward meeting of Valentina with Giovanni and Lidia with the male party guest, are times where words are replaced with gazes, stares, and contemplation. At times, silence is disturbed with natural noises of planes, sirens, a baby crying, and rockets.
This void the director depicts in the film is exemplified by Giovanni’s wife Lidia. She made a vow to love her husband but finds it increasingly difficult to respect him and his profession as his attention is constantly elsewhere. The depressing emptiness the audience feels, is also felt by Lidia. She leaves the book signing party unnoticed and wanders the city in hopes of some excitement or meaning. As she drifts through the city she comes across a clock, broken with motionless hands, a symbol of her stagnant marriage and the constant void she is longing to change, but may be too late.
The film’s climax occurs at Gherardini’s evening party. It seems as though Giovanni senses his wife’s distance. He flirts with the host’s daughter Valentina. She insists that he should reunite with his wife. Giovanni dismisses this claim by saying Lidia sent him to her. Lidia, from afar, sees them together but decides not to stop them as she knows her relationship with Giovanni is coming to an end. With lost hope Lidia tries to make the most of her evening. One of few scenes where Lidia smiles and is seen enjoying herself is when she receives attention from a male party guest and is approached, inviting her to dance. Later Valentina confronts Lidia about her actions that evening with Giovanni, yet Lidia interrupts, making a confession of her own to Valentina. Her marriage is not what it once was.The last few moments unravels the overwhelming feeling throughout the film. Lidia reveals her nightclub thought to Giovanni that remained a mystery until this point. Throughout the whole film, Giovanni and Lidia lacked affection towards one another; their interactions usually consist of short conversations with abrupt subject changes, avoiding argument and confrontation. Lidia expresses that the love she once felt has been exhausted. She made a choice to love Giovanni over Tommaso, but her love has extinguished.
The ending scene of Lidia and Giovanni together brings about a mix of emotions. The live band on Gherardini’s lawn sets the melancholy mood. When Lidia reads the love letter she pulls from her purse to Giovanni, he feels uncomfortable and queries who wrote such words of affection and devotion to Lidia. After he questions the letter’s author, Lidia turns to him in astonishment. “You did” she replies to Giovanni. His failure to remember his own words reassured Lidia that his professed love did not exist.
La notte may have left some empty, cold, angry, or sympathetic. The lack of words in the film is made up in emotion we feel for the characters. Director Antonioni embraces the fact that we are what we make of ourselves. For Giovanni his addiction wasn’t from “tasting the wine and becoming an alcoholic”(as he talks to Signora Resy), but can be metaphorically applied to his intellectual stature, success, and attention that blinded him from the love he had for Lidia.
Aside from the interesting voyage we took following the course of Lidia and Giovanni, I particularly found Antonioni’s cinematography visually pleasing as artist. Antonioni marvels his audience with his artistic expression in his cinematic creations. The director’s first name may be coincidental to one of Italy’s most celebrated painters and sculptors of the fifteenth and sixteenth century, but Antonioni doesn’t disappoint in his m
odern artistic expression of art using actors and motion picture as paint for his canvas. Antonioni may give the audience of La notte an additional reason to watch just for his stunning cinematography capturing Italy’s post war beauty. La notte is sprinkled with busy cityscapes, serene landscapes, vivid reflections, natural use of light, and extreme tonal contrasts to add an additional element of uniqueness. Antonioni’s attention to artistic beauty is just one of many aspects the audience of La notte will witness throughout the movie.Here are a few sites that offer great additional information on the film and the director Michelangelo Antonioni:
http://www.culturecourt.com/F/Antonioni/LaNotte.htm
(Themes in the film La notte)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054130/
(Reviews on the film)
http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/antonioni.html
(Biography of Antonioni)
http://mikegrost.com/antonion.htm
(Overview of Antonioni and his films)
11 comments:
I totally agree that Antonioni's artistic view of the film is quite fantastic. The lighting was something I especially enjoyed... probably due to the fact that the film was in black and white so lighting is a bit of a necessity. I also totally didn't even think about the clock being a perfect depiction of their marriage. good eye man!
This was a very good blog, and I agree with pretty much everything that is said. After last nights class and actually thinking about the film in terms of art and images, there is a lot to be said about it. With a film with VERY little dialogue, what the audience can see is crucial. All the angles, shots, and reflections in the film were on purpose; Antonioni wanted it to look a certain way. Having the two main characters almost always on opposite sides of the screen when they are shown is showing the viewer how disconnected they are. The lighting is also very key to this film as well.
There was a thing that was said during the presentation on the film yesterday that caught my attention. Sam said there were many shots when Lidia was walking, and she was often surrounded by tall buildings. He said this was a metaphor of her being trapped, and I totally agree with this. She looks so little and insignificant compared to the towering buildings around her, and we learn that this is completely how she feels with her life and her marriage. I think Antonioni did this on purpose also.
As much as I didn't really enjoy the film that much, after our discussion is class yesterday, it made me appreciate certain aspects of it more. It is a story of two people who aren't in love anymore, and they are at a crossroads in their marriage. Showing this without words was a difficult task for Antonioni, but he did a very good job at it in the end.
I really liked the emphasis on the voids of the film. The lack of noise and music and the emptiness it leads the audience to feel and the characters, particularly Lidia, really gives the film a bizarre but arty feel. There is so much emphasis on visuals because of the lack of sound and this makes the audience pay closer attention to the meaning of the objects and people seen on the screen.
I agree with you. Also I feel that Antonioni pays more attention to the objects and the background than the people in it. You can tell for example by the angle of the camera. When Lydia was coming home, the camera was looking down on her from the balcony as she was insignificant to the picture. The big concrete wall of the apartment and her being so minuscule might mean something to the movie. Maybe this is art according to him. The silence, the people's gestures and the scenery might show the universal truth.
In poetry for example you can see the poet's feelings. By showing metaphors, similes, etc, you can see his heart and soul. In real life words are less significant than gestures to show your true feelings. You need to show someone how you feel and not just to say it.
I thought the cinematography in this film was outstanding. While the film avoids a linear, goal-defining narrative, the visual storytelling is reminiscent of silent film, where the visuals have to be compelling and not simply show two people talking, with the dialogue prominently driving the story.
I'm am still wondering how some of the reflection shots were achieved, as it can be difficult to conceal a camera's reflection.
this film may seem tedious to some ppl, and i actually found it a little hard in the beginning. it was a little boring and unsettling, but until i became more engrossed into the art and not so much the story. i think the story or dialogue is secondary, as seen by its scant use. i don't think the movie was quiet, to me there was a fair amount of dialogue, but i think it mainly had a lot to do with the fact that the characters didn't know what to say to each other or how to express themselves because they were so disconnected from themselves. because of this, we have to let the set and mise en scene speak for them.
I really liked this post. I would like to add something about what is said between Tommaso and Lidia in the beginning of the movie. When I was first looking at that initial seen, it seemed that Lidia was lonely in a mood of sadness and desperation as it is already brought up by the blog, but I also felt that she was the one in the relationship that seemed unhappy with her husband. She constantly seemed to be less interested in her husband and I couldn't make the connection between her and Tommaso initially. I thought that she had an affair with him in the past. Only in the end of the movie I made the connection that her and Tommaso had, and why she cried in the beginning scene.
I felt the initial scene was a little bit deceiving since her husband appeared to be almost perfect and caring towards his wife. Throughout the movie we all obviously discovered the truth.
I liked the title relation to the storyline also. The movie is about the rendezvous that goes on in the night life of a writer, who wakes up in the morning and and is faced by reality. I felt that "La Notte" is also a symbol of excitement since night life is always characterized by intrigues and parties.
I really liked this post. I would like to add something about what is said between Tommaso and Lidia in the beginning of the movie. When I was first looking at that initial seen, it seemed that Lidia was lonely in a mood of sadness and desperation as it is already brought up by the blog, but I also felt that she was the one in the relationship that seemed unhappy with her husband. She constantly seemed to be less interested in her husband and I couldn't make the connection between her and Tommaso initially. I thought that she had an affair with him in the past. Only in the end of the movie I made the connection that her and Tommaso had, and why she cried in the beginning scene.
I felt the initial scene was a little bit deceiving since her husband appeared to be almost perfect and caring towards his wife. Throughout the movie we all obviously discovered the truth.
I liked the title relation to the storyline also. The movie is about the rendezvous that goes on in the night life of a writer, who wakes up in the morning and and is faced by reality. I felt that "La Notte" is also a symbol of excitement since night life is always characterized by intrigues and parties.
I think that something can be said for Passolini's article in reagrds to this partcular film. It does seem that Antonioni has created a different genere of film with more poetic elements such as his use of imagery in place of dialogue and his non verbal metaohors. I also think that when a film provokes good discussion, even if it was not pleasurable watching, it has more meaning than the film that leaves you feeling indifferent with nothing to say!
This film definitely left room for discussion. I think that due to the lack of dialogue, the audience was left trying to individually interpret the meaning of "La Notte". Personally I payed great attention to the body language of the characters. The first time watching this film, I can say that I was very aware of even the trivial details. It's easy to let your imagination wander when you are not sure of the signicance of it all. It didn't necessarily end by tying up all loose ends, but I think that was ultimately what made this film so diverse. It was original and didn't follow a familiar plot.
I did not particularly care for this film. I rarely want to fall asleep during any movie (2001 Space Odyssey is the only other I can think of) but this one made the list. Its lack of dialogue, slow pace, poor acting, awful characters, and random wandering left me looking for more. The contrast between dark and light seemed overly dramatic and the use of symbolism was way overboard. I can agree with some of the points that were made in the blog but I still think that the film could have done with less forced interpretation and more given direction. When watching a movie, I want to be entertained, not in deep thought.
Post a Comment