La notte

This psychologically acute, visually striking modernist work was director Michelangelo Antonioni’s follow-up to the epochal L’avventura. Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau star as a novelist and his frustrated wife, who, over the course of one night, confront their alienation from each other and the achingly empty bourgeois Milan circles in which they travel. Antonioni’s muse Monica Vitti smolders as an industrialist’s tempting daughter. Moodily sensual cinematography and subtly expressive performances make La notte an indelible illustration of romantic and social deterioration.

Italy
1961
122 minutes
Black & White
1.85:1
Italian
Spine #678

Special Features

New digital restoration from a 4K film transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
New interview with film critic Adriano Aprà and film historian Carlo di Carlo
New interview with professor Giuliana Bruno on the role of architecture in La notte
Trailer
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: An essay by critic Richard Brody and a 1961 article by director Michelangelo Antonioni

New cover by Lucien S. Y. Yang

Blu‑ray 1 Disc $27.96 SRP: $39.95

DVD 1 Disc $20.96 SRP: $29.95

Digital Options

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Special Features

New digital restoration from a 4K film transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
New interview with film critic Adriano Aprà and film historian Carlo di Carlo
New interview with professor Giuliana Bruno on the role of architecture in La notte
Trailer
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: An essay by critic Richard Brody and a 1961 article by director Michelangelo Antonioni

New cover by Lucien S. Y. Yang

Cast & Credits

Cast

Jeanne Moreau: Lidia
Marcello Mastroianni: Giovanni
Monica Vitti: Valentina
Bernhard Wicki: Tommaso
Rosy Mazzacurati: Rosy
Vincenzo Corbella: Mr. Gherardini
Maria Pia Luzi: Party guest

Credits

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Produced by: Emanuele Cassuto
Original story by: Michelangelo Antonioni
Original story by: Ennio Flaiano
Original story by: Tonino Guerra
Director of photography: Gianni Di Venanzo
Production designer: Piero Zuffi
Music: Giorgio Gaslini
Sound: Claudio Maielli
Edited by: Eraldo Da Roma
Production manager: Paolo Frascà

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Explore

Michelangelo Antonioni

Director

Though Michelangelo Antonioni worked throughout the forties (on short documentaries like N.U., about street cleaners in Rome) and fifties (including writing the story that was the basis for Federico Fellini’s The White Sheik, and directing his first fiction features, including the penetrating films about bourgeois Italian life Story of a Love Affair and Le amiche), it was in the 1960s that he became a major force in international film. It was also then that he began to typify, alongside such artists as Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, and Alain Resnais, a new European art cinema, expressing a distinctly contemporary ennui. With their stunning visuals, ambiguous narratives, and still relevant focus on modern alienation, Antonioni’s films of this period, all starring Monica Vitti, his lover at the time—L’avventura (famously booed at Cannes for confounding its audience with its longueurs and lack of closure), La notte, L’eclisse, Red Desert—have stood the test of time. And his less iconic later films, like Identification of a Woman, have only grown more compelling and mysterious as the years have passed.