Comments on: LA NOTTE http://www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk/reviews/2008/04/01/la-notte/ A Deviant View of Cineam - Film & DVD Reviews Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:20:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.1 By: Celluloid Liberation Front http://www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk/reviews/2008/04/01/la-notte/#comment-4823 Celluloid Liberation Front Wed, 02 Apr 2008 22:31:28 +0000 http://www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk/reviews/2008/04/01/la-notte/#comment-4823 'La Notte' is part of the tetralogy on the 'couple', along with 'L'Avventura' (1959-1960), 'L'Eclisse' (1962) and 'Deserto Rosso' (1964), this film confirms the self-reflexive genius of Michelangelo Antonioni. The elgance of his screen-writing is characterized by a (unconventional for the time) liberated look on the bourgeois, seen in 'La Notte', without absolvent or condemning exorcisms, as the winning class that is institutionalizing its own disputable "morality". Antonioni stands out for his total secularism of an anti-ideological point of view - which does not allow neither emotional removals nor illusions, let alone consolations - he is, amongst his peers, the more aesthetically aware, the ideologically freer and the more autonomous in cultural terms. In 'La Notte', love, is this illusion of the unlimited that confirms the relative; loneliness belongs to those who don't have and would like to have or to those who had and does not have anymore. The couple, is, on the one hand, the only place where the reality and the illusion of the feelings are concretely commensurate, on the other hand, an irreversible call for self-destruction and loss. The woman, who is "better than the man" because in the emotional crisis is the one more authentic, more sincere and because of it, more disposable for supportive mercy, the only alternative solution to the suffered acceptance of one's own ontological loneliness. Antonioni's finest images are visual poetry evoking diseases that were still to become common features in the post-modern atomized couple. Celluloid Liberation Front ‘La Notte’ is part of the tetralogy on the ‘couple’, along with ‘L’Avventura’ (1959-1960), ‘L’Eclisse’ (1962) and ‘Deserto Rosso’ (1964), this film confirms the self-reflexive genius of Michelangelo Antonioni. The elgance of his screen-writing is characterized by a (unconventional for the time) liberated look on the bourgeois, seen in ‘La Notte’, without absolvent or condemning exorcisms, as the winning class that is institutionalizing its own disputable “morality”. Antonioni stands out for his total secularism of an anti-ideological point of view - which does not allow neither emotional removals nor illusions, let alone consolations - he is, amongst his peers, the more aesthetically aware, the ideologically freer and the more autonomous in cultural terms.
In ‘La Notte’, love, is this illusion of the unlimited that confirms the relative; loneliness belongs to those who don’t have and would like to have or to those who had and does not have anymore. The couple, is, on the one hand, the only place where the reality and the illusion of the feelings are concretely commensurate, on the other hand, an irreversible call for self-destruction and loss. The woman, who is “better than the man” because in the emotional crisis is the one more authentic, more sincere and because of it, more disposable for supportive mercy, the only alternative solution to the suffered acceptance of one’s own ontological loneliness.
Antonioni’s finest images are visual poetry evoking diseases that were still to become common features in the post-modern atomized couple.

Celluloid Liberation Front

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