Blu-ray Review - The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

La Notte (The Night) Masters Of Cinema Blu-Ray Review (1961)

Rating:
12
BD/DVD Release Date:
23rd September 2013 (UK)
Distributor:
Eureka Video
Director:
Michelangelo Antonioni
Cast:
Jeanne Moreau, Marcello Mastroianni, Monica Vitti
Buy La Notte:
(Blu-ray) / [DVD]

La Notte is a classic slice of Antonioni. It was made in his native Italy before he later came west and made films such as Blow-Up, Zabriskie Point and The Passenger. It was made at the height of the Italian art films of the early with other films such 8 ½, The Leopard and Accattone. These filmmakers were influenced by or either had their start in the Italian neo-realist movement of the 40s and early 50s. The films instead being about social issues become increasing more internalised and dealt with much more existential themes about alienation and men’s role in modern society.

The film is set during the course of one day not unlike Antonioni’s Blow-Up. La Notte is about a upper middle class married couple, the man Giovanni Pontano (Marcello Mastroianni) and his wife Lidia (Jeanne Moreau). Giovanni is a writer and his latest book La stagine (The Season) has been recently published. They film starts with them visiting a friend in hospital who is terminally ill. Lidia is so upset by the state of her friend she leaves early but Giovanni stays on. On his way out he is almost seduced by a crazy young woman but the nurses pull them apart.

During the course of the day the couple head off to the writer’s book launch party. His wife wonders off from the party but they meet up again in their old neighbourhood, they lived there when they were newly wed. They decide to go to a nightclub and later a party. Over the course of the day their marriage and communication is tested to its limits.

The film is noted for its use of landscape that is empty and barren much like the film’s main protagonists. The film’s credits are over an astonishing shot of city of the Milan from a skyscraper as the camera slowing descends. The film is deliberately made so it bores you at times just like how the married couple is bored of each other.

The film boosts 2 outstanding performances from Mastroianni and Moreau who were really at the top of their game. The character Giovanni is too involved in his narcissistic and needs to plan things. Lidia is the opposite she is too involved in the real word cause she just wonders and distracted by things in the sky and so on.

La Notte is well remembered for it’s stunning cinematography by Gianni Di Venanzo who also shoot 8 ½ starring Mastroianni. Gianni shot the majority of Antonioni’s Italian films. La Notte uses lots of high contrast black and white photography especially at the party segment of the film that is simply breaktaking as is the lighting.

The film was a favourite of Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky. All these filmmakers had a similar detached view or even cold aesthetic so it’s no surprise that they found a kindred spirit in Antonioni even though Bergman did have a real love/hate thing with his films. It’s a fascinating film with gorgeous cinematography, great performances and a perfect blend of a passion, emotion but also emotional coldness.

★★★★1/2

Ian Schultz

Chronicle Of A Summer Blu-Ray Review

Made during the summer of 1960 by anthropologist filmmaker Jean Rouch and sociologist Edgar Morin, Chronicle of a Summer set out to record the everyday lives of a diverse array of Parisians through an highly influential approach to documentary filmmaking that made use of an original mixture of intimate interviews, debates, and observation.

The idea for the film arose when Rouch and Morin served as members of the jury for the first International Festival of Ethnographic Film in Florence, 1959. Rouch remembers Morin approaching him with the following question: “You have made all your films abroad; do you know anything about contemporary France?” Morin then proposed that Rouch should move away from his devotion to African rituals and customs and instead turn his gaze onto the Parisians “and do anthropological research about my own tribe.”

The film hinged on a simple theme: ‘How do you live?’ For Morin, this was a question that “should encompass not only the way of life (housing, work) but also ‘How do you manage in life?’ and
'What do you do with your life?’” These questions were tackled through the film’s redefined approach to the documentary form which was, as the opening voice-over announces, “made without actors but lived by men and women who devoted some of their time to a novel experiment of film-truth’,” or, as it is more commonly known, cinéma vérité.

The film’s interviews, debates, and observations reveal many fascinating insights into Parisian society at the onset of the 1960s. We witness factory workers and mechanics who talk about the oppressive nature of daily work and life; with one interviewee evoking the words of Albert Camus as read in his The Myth of Sisyphus. Then there are the debates surrounding the independence wars in Algeria and Congo which situate the film within discussions of racism and decolonisation.

More recently, Chronicle of a Summer has been read by Richard Brody as “one of the greatest, and perhaps the primordial, Holocaust film.” This interpretation of Rouch and Morin’s documentary as a ‘Holocaust film’ can be seen in the story of Marceline. We are first introduced to Marceline at the beginning of the film; first as an interviewee for the filmmakers’ as they make a first attempt at their experimental documentary technique, and then as an interviewer asking random passers-by: “Are you happy?” It isn’t until much later in the film that the numbered tattoo on her arm is revealed.

Immediately after the revelation that Marceline was a Holocaust survivor, the film presents us with its most intense, haunting, beautiful, and powerful scene. Marceline walks along an almost deserted Place de la Concorde, reminiscing about her experience of the Occupation. Far from making this film one about the Holocaust, what this scene demonstrates is a direct link between the legacy of the Second World War and France’s position as a colonial power clinging onto its territories during a time of decolonisation.

As this review as shown, it is often the filmmakers themselves who can provide the best analysis of their film. So I will end this piece on the excellent Chronicle of a Summer with two quotes by Morin. The first quote relates to the films questioning of how much reality and truth is presented in documentary filmmaking: “I thought we would start from a basis of truth and that an even greater truth would develop. Now I realise that if we achieved anything, it was to present the problem of truth.”

The final quote is taken from the films end in which Rouch and Morin pace up and down the Musée de l’Homme before Morin states: “We wanted to make a film about love, but it turns out to be about indifference.”

★★★★½

Shane James

Rating: 12
DVD/BD Release Date: 27th May 2013 (UK)
Director: Edgar Morin, Jean Rouch
Cast: Marceline Loridan Ivens, Landry, Régis Debray

Buy: Chronicle of a Summer (DVD + Blu-ray)