Monica Vitti was surprisingly forgettable

La Notte

As much as I love to watch movies and blog about them, I also really hate a huge backlog. It’s even worse when people encourage me to blog more (though I appreciate it!) As a result, sometimes my blogging frequency looks more like a Poisson distribution when in reality there is no randomness but the clusters of many blog posts are due to the simple fact that I finally kicked my own butt and got myself to writing. There is also another counter force: The movie that is Difficult To Blog(TM). Heck sometimes I even write an entire blog post and then it gets stalled as a draft for days because I cannot come up with a witty title. Not like the titles are that witty anyways.

“La Notte” is really, really difficult to blog and it has all the characteristics of such a film: A director I admire, a somewhat complicated, subtly passive-aggressive relationship, a topic I feel somewhat uneasy about and the recommendation of several people whom I don’t want to disappoint. Oh well, there is no way around it. (La fatalité!)

The topic I feel somewhat uneasy about is that last scene, which – perhaps inappropriately – is the one that stayed in my mind the most. Antonioni is a master of last scenes, the one from “L’Eclisse” being quite famous. I can’t forget how she laid there repeating “Je ne t’aime pas” (or “plus”?) over and over again while he essentially forces himself on her. To me, it was a very memorable rape scene because it is one within a marriage and somewhat ambiguous. My interpretation from her behavior throughout the entire film is that she does indeed love him, and that these feelings are quite obvious. The couple is separated by his infidelity and Antonioni’s trademark alienation between man and woman. Considering that “Je ne t’aime pas” is ultimately a lie (more to herself than to him really), it seems questionable whether she actually refuses to sleep with him. It may be one of these cases where “she actually wanted it”, especially considering how she is not really putting up a fight against it. Nevertheless, the opposite of that is also not really present, i.e. unabashed passion for this man who is trying to sleep with her. She is trying to end their relationship for real, and from the bitterness in the conversation with Valentina, it is more likely that she really does not feel like sleeping with him whatsoever. So it’s rape after all, it just so happens that she loves her rapist. Ironically, it is him who is incapable of loving her, and is delusional about it, thus wanting to make physical love to hide the lack of emotional love.

The aforementioned alienation between man and woman is probably the deepest in “La Notte”, where a strained marriage with an implied troubled past is being shown, while “L’Avventura” and “L’Eclisse” are both about more fleeting affairs (though of course “L’Eclisse” also has a great break-up scene from a more serious seeming relationship). Especially from her side, it’s a futile attempt at saving a relationship and towards the end, she looks like she’s pretty much given up. Nevertheless, she maintains her polite smile towards everybody – and oh wow, what a smile. When I saw “Jules et Jim” for the first time, I absolutely did not understand why they picked Jeanne Moreau for the smiling woman. She is the only actress I can think of whose edges of her mouth tend to go down, giving her a resting bitch face. Sure, she does smile in “Jules et Jim” but it never struck me as exceedingly beautiful. I have seen her a few more times and liked her more and more, but I never got that smile. In “La Notte”, however, she flashes it all the time. Even though it’s supposed to be a fake smile, somehow I am absolutely mesmerized by it. She looks unhappy throughout the entire film, but when she talks to someone, she puts on that radiant society smile. Amazing.

I am not trying to say that Jeanne Moreau is outshining Marcello Mastroianni. The latter is always radiant himself – I am not really into his face, but somehow these roles he plays make him more attractive than he would look like at first glance. I am not surprised Don Draper likes the movie – heck, Mad Men is “La Notte” as a series and Mastroianni could have played Draper easily.

One should devise a party around Antonioni’s “Love Trilogy”. Breakfast, then “L’Avventura”, lunch, then “La Notte”, dinner, then “L’Eclisse”, finally a few drinks while watching “Le Amiche”. Everybody has to arrive styled like the film characters for which you can easily recycle any outfit from a “Mad Men” party as long as it can pass as Italian, and the food will consist of a Mediterranean breakfast, pasta for lunch and pizza for dinner. OK, I admit this party idea is not super creative, but I would love to do that!