One of the masterworks of 1960s cinema, La Notte (The Night) marked yet another development in the continuous stylistic evolution of its director, Michelangelo Antonioni — even as it solidified his reputation as one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. La Notte is Antonioni’s Twilight of the Gods, but composed in cinematic terms. Observed from a crane-shot, it’s a sprawling study of Italy’s upper middle-class; seen in close-up, it’s an x-ray of a relationship on the brink of collapse.
Two of the giants of film acting come together as a married couple living in crisis: Marcello Mastroianni (La dolce vita, 8 1/2) and Jeanne Moreau (Jules et Jim, Bay of Angels). He is a renowned author and “public intellectual”; she is “the wife.” Over the course of one day and the night into which it inevitably bleeds, the pair will come to re-examine their emotional bonds and grapple with the question of whether love and communication are even possible in a world built out of profligate idylls and sexual hysteria.
Photographed in rapturous black-and-white by the great Gianni di Venanzo (8 1/2, Giulietta degli spiriti), La Notte is a film about the yawning caverns that can open up between people who were once in love, and the difficulty of trying to fix something that may be irrevocably broken. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Michelangelo Antonioni’s haunted odyssey for the first time anywhere in the world on 4K UHD.
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Supplements
- New audio commentary by film writer Tony Rayns
- New interview with academic and author Richard Dyer
- 2020 interview with soundtrack composer Giorgio Gaslini
- Original Italian theatrical trailer
- Booklet featuring an essay by film critic and scholar Brad Stevens and the transcript of a lengthy Q&A conducted in 1961 with Michelangelo Antonioni upon the film’s release