The second in his informal trilogy, book-ended by L'avventura and L'eclisse, La Notte once again examines the ebb and flow of relationships. Mastroianni plays a successful writer (and faux intellectual) who has lost his passion for anything other than chasing women, while his wedded foil, Moreau, wanders about looking for what she has lost in Mastroianni. Like any troubled marriage, the under-current of Mastroianni and Moreau's relationship is far more telling than the uneventful surface actions.
The power of the film lies in what the characters don't do -- Mastroianni's character doesn't pay any attention to his wife when they go out together, focusing instead on the tempting movements of a sultry club dancer, and Moreau doesn't react with hatred, anger, or malice when Mastroianni's character's faithfulness is in question. As the film progress, the two unconsciously and separately explore their love for each other. Mastroianni pursues women while Moreau is pursued by men -- the difference being that when Mastroianni is rebuffed, he merely finds a new target, whereas Moreau rebuffs the men in favor of her husband. When the climax and conflict between the two finally reaches the point where they say more than two words to each other, it's no surprise that Mastroianni doesn't realize that he's no longer in love, even when Moreau does.
When so much of a film's power rests on unsaid subtlety, it could have been a disaster of emptiness or over-wrought with visual explication. But Antonioni plays his cinematic instrument with a cold precision that elevates the emotion between his characters. In the first half of the film, he is clearly stuck on the unnatural lumbering sky scrappers that penetrate the Italian skyline. Although it feels bizarre that Antonioni places such emphasis on the inanimate objects rather than his characters, it pays off when Moreau wonders around the old, poor countryside and Antonioni's camera becomes more sympathetic -- sweeping across the crumbling buildings and pulling back to soak up the landscape.
Not yet having developed his beatnik style seen in the likes of his most famous film, the British Blow-Up, Antonioni's restraint and cinematic seriousness doesn't allow La Notte to slip into self-parody. With Mastroianni's intellectual status all but obliterated in our eyes due to his tail-chasing behavior and Moreau's childish social isolation is the stuff of pretentious art house clichés -- but Antonioni treats his material with the respect to make it relatable. The events in the film are hardly worth noting, but the emotions are the stuff of romantic nostalgia and forlorn love.
