Review of La Notte (1961) by Al M — 11 Aug 2010

Perhaps it was thw quality of the print I watched, but I found La Notte to be the least impressive of Antonioni's trilogy. Still, it is a majestically filmed exploration of identity, relationships, the absence of meaning, and the jaded lives of the middle and upper classes.

In many ways, La Notte could be viewed as a companion piece to Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, for it is an excoriating look at the ennui that can plague the leisure classes. And perhaps, as the film argues, infidelity is nothing more than a symptom of boredom, a boredom that Antonioni stages in his typical existential terms.

As with the other two films in the series (L'Avventura and L'Eclisse), very little outward action occurs in the film, but what does not happen and is not seen becomes even more important in its absence.

Simultaneously, there is a rich depth of interior action, crises, and development occuring across the 24-hour time span of the film's story. Its story is not as existentially provocative and absurdist as L'Avventura, and its images are not as striking and complex as those in L'Eclisse, but La Notte remains a rich, wonderful classic of philosophical 60s cinema.