La critique des spectateurs ImDB
The sun is setting on a couple's love.
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In 1960 Milan was modernizing,old buildings were making place for a new stark and impersonal architecture.A young couple(Jeanne Moreau and Marcello Mastroiani)experiences the same transformation His desire for her is dead and she even goes looking for other men in a plebeian suburb... Her admiration for him is now confining to boredom.
When the night (La Notte) comes they try to make the best out of it but he is lusting for other women and she is sad because she knows their relation is coming to an end. The lavish party (new Italian capitalism of the 60's) to which they go will not change the course of their life, separation is looming.Night is falling on their love. At dawn he will not even recognize the love letter he once wrote to her... long before they got married.
This highly symbolic movie is a "chef d'oeuvre du genre" but may seem a bit boring by today's standards. The pace is unrolling slowly. No relation comes abruptly to an end. Antonioni remarkably depicts each character's state of mind. It is a beautiful piece of camera work with magnificent actors in a splendid modernist house.
La Notte (1960) will lead to «Le Mépris » by Jean-Luc Goddard and « Le Chat » by Pierre Granier-Deferre. The unraveling relationship between a man and a woman is a universal and timeless theme.
