The Existential Chic of La Notte

This fea­ture is the third in our sum­mer series, La Dolce Vita: A Cel­e­bra­tion of Ital­ian Screen Style, in part­ner­ship with Disaronno.

La Notte, the mid­point of Michelan­ge­lo Antonioni’s ​“alien­ation tril­o­gy”, depicts an exis­ten­tial cri­sis that is only made more explic­it by the film’s gleam­ing sur­face. This icon­ic 1961 film cap­tures, over a day and a night in Milan, the death of a mar­riage, the dubi­ous rein­ven­tion of a city – and a glimpse of the end of the world.

Mar­cel­lo Mas­troian­ni plays Gio­van­ni, a suc­cess­ful nov­el­ist, appar­ent­ly implaca­ble, cool­ly kit­ted out in a black suit and tie. Jeanne More­au plays his dis­il­lu­sioned wife, with a ter­ri­ble thought she daren’t express hov­er­ing above her head. 

The film starts when they vis­it a dying friend in hos­pi­tal: Tom­ma­so (Bern­hard Wic­ki) is a lib­er­al writer who is far more polit­i­cal­ly com­mit­ted than Gio­van­ni, and also in love with Lidia. For both hus­band and wife he rep­re­sents the road not tak­en, one that is now about to close.

They return home to their sleek mod­ern apart­ment, vis­it the run­down streets where they lived as new­ly­weds, attend a book launch, vis­it a jazz club and final­ly join a par­ty thrown by a wealthy indus­tri­al­ist on the out­skirts of the city. As the band plays on through the night, the cap­i­tal­ist wor­ries that his way of life is com­ing to an end. 

Ten­sion, both sex­u­al and melan­cholic, pulls at the air between Gio­van­ni and Lidia, who drift through the city as the image of a per­fect cou­ple, while their mar­riage shat­ters in their hands. Anto­nioni cap­tures the dis­con­nect­ed lovers and their city in sleek, geo­met­ric com­po­si­tions, echo­ing the clean lines of their wardrobe. 

Those cos­tumes are by Biki, the cou­turi­er best known for dress­ing the diva Maria Callas. Lidia’s two out­fits, the white sun­dress and jack­et print­ed with flow­ers, and the black cock­tail dress with the flo­ral lace shrug form metic­u­lous neg­a­tive impres­sions of each oth­er. Hers is a care­ful­ly cul­ti­vat­ed glam­our (an old school­friend blunt­ly points out that she ​“used to be so plain”), which reflects the con­struc­tions of ele­gance that dom­i­nate the film: the bour­geois par­ty, the mod­ernist apart­ment. She exists in the point where chic meets respectable class conformity. 

Point­ed­ly, the two women with whom Gio­van­ni strays wear out­fits that echo Lidia’s. First embroi­dered flo­rals on the long black gown worn by a histri­on­ic patient in the hos­pi­tal, then the chic black dress worn by an unsta­ble woman named Valenti­na (Mon­i­ca Vit­ti in a brunette wig) at the par­ty. When Lidia removes her lace cape, the two women sud­den­ly match, down to their short, dark hair. Lidia has anoint­ed her own successor.

As Tom­ma­so says in his hos­pi­tal bed, ​“Some­times beau­ty can be real­ly depress­ing.” Their sophis­ti­cat­ed world’s façade of ele­gance is shown to be frag­ile, as for Lidia, life in the shad­ow of a celebri­ty has drained her life of mean­ing. Out­side their home, the archi­tec­tur­al her­itage of Milan is being swept away in favour of less sub­stan­tial replace­ments, includ­ing the couple’s air­less flat. 

In an instant, a show­er of rain sends the par­ty guests scat­ter­ing: los­ing their poise, they throw them­selves (in their design­er gowns), into the swim­ming pool. One woman rubs her­self against a stat­ue of Pan, an absurd image of fren­zied decadence. 

At the film’s sor­row­ful con­clu­sion Gio­van­ni and Lidia embrace, iso­lat­ed in the mod­ern, arti­fi­cial land­scape of the rich man’s golf course: Adam and Eve in a false Eden, all too neat and new.

To find out more about Disaronno’s 500-year anniver­sary* cel­e­bra­tions, vis­it dis​aron​no​.com, and join us at Regent Street Cin­e­ma on July 4 and 5 for spe­cial free screen­ings of The Great Beau­ty and La Notte, with com­pli­men­ta­ry cock­tails from Disaronno.

*1525: The leg­end of Dis­aron­no begins.