La Notte [The Night] ***** (1961, Jeanne Moreau, Marcello Mastroianni, Monica Vitti, Bernhard Wicki, Giorgio Negro, Vincenzo Corbella) – Classic Movie Review 2838

Antonioni entrances us with iconic Sixties actors and scenes from a dying marriage.

This much-admired and long-recognised 1961 world cinema classic is one of co-writer/ director Michelangelo Antonioni’s acclaimed and brilliantly stylish Sixties studies in alienation.

Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau star as author Giovanni Pontano and his wife Lidia, an unfaithful married couple who are trying to come to terms with a marriage and lifestyle that is choking them and their steadily deteriorating relationship.

Cleverly, Antonioni makes a startling, riveting film about bored, unappealing people, their sterility reflected in Milan’s chilly buildings.

It all happens on the title night in a Milan suburb where Moreau’s Lidia wanders around feeling dejected, in a hospital where the couple’s friend Tommaso Garani (Bernhard Wicki) is dying, in a nightclub and at a party.

The party is in the mansion of tycoon Signor Gherardini (Vincenzo Corbella), where Mastroianni’s Giovanni flirts with the daughter of the host, lovely young rich woman Valentina Gherardini (Monica Vitti). Lidia retaliates by flirting with the handsome playboy Roberto (Giorgio Negro).

It won the Golden Bear top prize at the Berlin Film Festival in 1961.

The co-writers are Ennio Flaiano and Tonino Guerra.

RIP Jeanne Moreau, winner of the 1967 BAFTA Film Award as Best Foreign Actress for Viva Maria! (1965), winner of the 1960 Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for Moderato cantabile (1960), and winner of the 1992 Best Actress award for La vieille qui marchait dans la mer (1991) at the César Awards, France.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2838

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