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Italy

La Notte is the second film in Antonioni's trilogy about alienation. This begins in a glass elevator. As the elevator drops to the ground floor, we get a nice view of the city and get to listen to some nifty, discordant Jazz. Cut to Tommaso Garani {Bernhard Wicki} in a hospital bed. A doctor administers injections and assures him that he'll be feeling better now. Cut to a car, on the street, rolling towards the camera. Lidia {Jeanne Moreau} and Giovanni {Marcello Mastroianni} step out of the car, walk into the hospital and take the elevator up to Tommaso's floor. In the hallway outside Tommaso's room a small, sexy, female patient asks them some very strange questions and afterwards Giovanni queries a doctor as to Tommaso's condition. The doctor tells him that things don't look all that cheery for Tomasso and that an operation will be futile at best.

Once inside Tomasso's room, everyone discusses Giovanni's new book and we talk about Lidia for a while. When Tomasso's mother arrives, Elena, the nurse, brings a bottle of champagne and Tomasso makes a comparison of modern hospitals to night clubs. Lidia needs to leave and a panicky Tomasso, who's well aware what lies in wait for him within the next few days, is horribly upset to see her leave. Lidia promises that she'll visit again tomorrow after which Tommaso complains that the morphine injections no longer seem to be effective. Cut to Lidia in tears on the street below. Giovanni hasn't stuck around much longer so the camera cuts back to him walking through the hallway and looking depressed.

As he approaches the door of the woman who spoke to them so strangely before, she attempts to "force" herself on our poor Giovanni and he goes along with it for several minutes. When she's dragged him into her room, pulled off her clothing and is lying enticingly on the bed, Giovanni takes the bait and hops right on top of her. It's at this very moment that the nurses decide to run into the room and slap the poor girl around. When he finally makes it back downstairs, Giovanni and Lidia get back into their car and drive away with frowns on their faces.

In a traffic jam downtown, they discuss the deluded, horrible woman that attacked our innocent young Giovanni and make it to Giovanni's book signing just a bit late. When they finally walk through the doors, the place is already packed. After some champagne and laughter, we cut to Lidia walking the streets and get treated to many lovely, artsy shots as she wanders hither and yon about the city. Giovanni makes it home before Lidia does and relaxes while she continues to star in artsy footage of city streets, breaks up a fight and finally stops to watch some kids launching some very large model rockets. Antonioni seems to have a real feel for the city as well as architecture in general. Much of this footage is better shot than in La Avventura, the previous film in this trilogy. That's saying a lot.

After watching a while, Lidia decides that Giovanni would probably enjoy this and she needs a ride home anyway so she calls and convinces him to come pick her up. By the time Giovanni gets there the rocket kids have already gone home so the two decide to go to a night club. At the club we get to watch a sexy floor show and listen to a jazz band. Afterwards, we decide to go to a party at the Gherardini's where we wander around listening to both rock and jazz music, Lidia runs into an old friend, Giovanni spends time with a very hot Valentina {Monica Vitti} and both members of the marriage nearly succumb to the temptation to cheat on their partner.

This has some similarities to Fellini's "La Dolce Vita". There's even a similar "fountain scene" {that makes an entirely different point} but, rather than dealing specifically with the decline and fall of modern society, this focuses a little more closely on the fate of the modern relationship over the course of a few hours; a "night". The point of most of this footage is to describe the emptiness of our couple's relationships as well as their lives in general. Both of these people live in real, emotional isolation from each other and their lives are just cold and barren.

Aside from the message, this film's real strong point is in the visuals. The cinematography is wonderful; nearly every shot that features Lidia is composed like a portrait, Valentina is just hopelessly beautiful in the first place and Gianni Di Venanzo has taken great pains to "elaborate" on that. The performances are great and the movie is slow and elegant and seems geared more to engaging thought than to anything visceral. The film's quietly beautiful and definitely makes for a pleasant way to spend a few hours.