Film Review
Fyodor Dostoyevsky's short story
White
Nights was the inspiration for
Le
Notti bianche, one of Luchino Visconti's most hauntingly lyrical
films. A beautiful and sensitively crafted ode to caprices of
love, is is unlike any other film that the director made, and a worthy
recipient of the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1957.
Coming between
Senso (1954)
and
Rocco and His Brothers (1960),
the film marks a significant departure from the neo-realist stylisation
that had hitherto predominated in Visconti's oeuvre, towards a more
dreamlike style that is partly evocative of French poetic realism of
the 1930s. This was the only one of Visconti's films to be shot
entirely in the studio, on a vast and elaborate set which faithfully
reproduces part of the Tuscan port of Livorno, complete with functional
roads and waterways. The central canal that splits the set in two
provides a suitable metaphor for the unbridgeable gulf that separates
the two main protagonists.
Visconti's decision to shoot the entire film in the studio was
presumably motivated by a desire to have complete artist control over
the mood of every scene in the film, something that is hard to achieve
when a director works on location and is at the mercy of the
elements. Certainly, in its composition and tone,
Le Notti bianche is the most
harmonious and fluid of Visconti's films, the subtle changes in
lighting and use of artificial mist perfectly matching the changing
moods of the two principal characters, played by Marcello Mastroianni
and Maria Schell. Visconti could not have chosen a better pair of
actors for the lead roles, as both Mastroianni and Schell have a
particular talent for playing fragile characters who have that quality
of appearing only slightly divorced from reality.
Jean Marais completes the love triangle à la perfection,
as an ethereal presence lingering in the background, the ghost
that will not go away.
Nino Rota's score and Giuseppe Rotunno's cinematography both add
greatly too the melancholia of the film, an aching sense of loss that
is only briefly punctuated by moments of hope, such as the almost
surreal sequence in which Mastroianni breaks into a star dance in a hip
youth café. The blaze of vitality that Visconti injects
into this sequence comes as a visceral shock after the languorous
introspection that preceded it, and the ease with which it is forgotten
reminds us of the transience and fickle nature of the human
passions. As the two lovers continue to drift in their separate
dreams, emotionally connected yet somehow failing to reach one another,
it soon becomes apparent that they are destined never to meet in the
real world. The film ends as we expect it to, with one of the
most cruel and poignant codas of any romantic drama, one that is
unforgettable in its poetic simplicity.
© James Travers 2012
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Next Luchino Visconti film:
Rocco e i suoi fratelli (1960)
Film Synopsis
One evening, as he wanders the streets of a town he has recently been
transferred to, Mario encounters a solitary young woman named
Maria. Like Mario, Maria appears strangely disconnected from the
world around her, although she has lived in the town all her
life. She is pining after a man whom she once fell in love with
and who said he would return to her after a year's separation.
When they next meet, Mario is certain that he is in love with Maria,
but whilst she obviously finds him attractive she clings to her
erstwhile love. When Maria's former lover fails to keep his
appointment, Mario is confident that he can now persuade her to love
him...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.