Le Notti Bianche (White Nights) - Criterion Collection
by Luchino Visconti
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Jean Marais, Marcella Rovena, Marcello Mastroianni, Maria Schell, Maria ZanoliDirector: Luchino Visconti
Brand: Image Entertainment
Cinematographer: Giuseppe Rotunno
Writer: Luchino Visconti
Editor: Mario Serandrei
Producer: Franco Cristaldi
Writer: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Writer: Suso Cecchi d'Amico
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Italian (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 97 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-07-12
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of Le Notti Bianche (White Nights) - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: Excellent
Summary: 4 Stars
Luchino Visconti's 1957 film, Le Notti Bianche (White Nights), winner of the Silver Lion Award at that year's Venice Film Festival, and adapted from a Fyodor Dostoevsky story of the same name, is not quite a great film- for it lacks any great nor new ideas, but it's a very good film that uses the elaborate Hollywood style sets of that era, crafted by Enzo Eusepi on a Cinecitt? sound stage that is manifestly artificial, to create a very un-Hollywoodian tale of love, especially in its seemingly dour ending for its hero. The use of these elaborate sets immediately brought to mind Woody Allen's 1991 film Shadows And Fog, and its reliance on German Expressionistic silent films, as well as the more recent cartoon The Triplets Of Belleville. This film's dependency on those roots, likewise, adds a creepiness and dark undertone to the seemingly straight Romantic tale the film tells.... as easily as the film could have descended into trite and hyperbolic melodrama, it is all the more admirable for its restraint- shown in the screenplay, the acting, directing, lighting, and many other aspects. It only gives us the bare essentials. It never overloads the viewer with information that could heighten the realism while muting the drama. There are only small moments depicted- even in the more elaborate mugging and dance scenes. There is one charming scene, especially, where we see Mario being swooned over by some young women through a glass window, and one writes Ciao to him in the mist upon the pane, that lets us know that, despite being the loser on this night, he will triumph in the end. Yes, love may be blind, and cruelly so, for Mario is blinded by Natalia- the more he tries to sound practical in his dissuasions to her the more he is smitten by her Romantic fortitude; Natalia by the tenant- the more he is absent the more she desires him; and the tenant by his mysteries- whatever they are, but this film is about life, and- in the end, most of life is not deep. The film ends realistically in its lack of profundity. Love stinks, but life goes on, to merge two clich?s into a newer one. But, the fact that a clich? exists does not alter it, nor make it less real a truth. It's only how one applies the truth, or clich?, to one's future endeavors that matters.
The film, within itself and without, exists a bit outside of time. There is a sense that time is distorted, for we sense Mario and Natalia's budding intimacy could not have been achieved in a mere four day period. It's as if the film has distorted time, compressed it, to heighten the drama, yet the viewer accepts this because the film never presses too strongly on other points- it never screeches loudly its posits nor plaints of the cosmos. Visconti alternately called this film Neo-Romantic and Neo-Intimist, but it is really more Neo-Fantasist, if anything, for it is too realistic in tone to be neo-Romantic, and too archetypal to be Neo-Intimist. I generally reject such -isms, so will call it simply a damned good tale. If you need more of a marker than that to go and see it, then you are more lost and prone to fantasy than this film's characters, although even less likely to get your reward. And this verity is precisely why films like this are made.
Summary of Le Notti Bianche (White Nights) - Criterion Collection
A chance encounter on a canal bridge results in a series of twilight rendezvous between a lonely city transplant (Marcello Mastroianni) and a sheltered woman (Maria Schell) haunted by a lover's promise. Their hesitant courtship soon entangles both of them in a web of longing and self-delusion. Adapted from the Fyodor Dostoyevsky short story, director Luchino Visconti's Le notti bianche-shot in ravishing black and white-is a romantic, shattering tale of the restlessness of dreamers.Art House & International DVD Video
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