As James Joyce is noted for the use of stream of consciousness to provide character insight, Michelangelo Antonioni is known for the use of imagery of the external world as a cinematic form of stream of consciousness. His films consist of a unique text that is both contemplative and provocative. As a result, some critics refer to it as cinematic codes due to the film’s distinctive language. Antonioni’s films, more specifically, L’avventura (1960), garnered the Canne’s Jury Prize “for its remarkable contribution toward the search for a new cinematic language” (Chatman 30). This eventually becomes Antonioni’s method of stream of consciousness—a flow of inner and insightful musings and reflections. Antonioni’s distinctive, simplified expressionistic filmmaking style is also captured in La Notte (1961). Through this, Antonioni effectively pulls images from various portions of Milan, Italy, which he also uses as a backdrop, in order to convey a sense of agony and spiritual deterioration. The cinematic stream of consciousness is underscored through the film’s modern visual style such as the relationships between Antonioni’s use of imagery and the placing of characters within a composition—all of which symbolically represents Lidia’s spiritual realization or better yet, an epiphany, about the fate of her marriage.
La Notte is the second film in Antonioni’s trilogy where his most intuitive female heroines are fraught with existential malaise that is expressed implicitly rather than explicitly through the characters. Antonioni’s visual splendor becomes means of expressions, revealing the thoughts and feelings of the characters, especially when the protagonist, Lidia, broodingly carries on with her day-to-day life. From this, Lidia is prompted to reflect on the meaning of her life. Such ontological theme typifies modern films that are reminiscent of literary influences in which “they seek revelation through images of the ordinary and [like] the modern novel from Joyce onwards, [they] develop their own matrix of epiphanies not of great events or melodramatic spectacle but out of the textures of everyday experience” (Orr 10). In La Notte as well as the rest of Antonioni’s oeuvre, the mundane becomes the central issue. Amid a typical day for Lidia, she wanders aimlessly around Italy and nothing eventful happens. She must come into terms with what is actually happening in her life, in this case, a spiritual void and deterioration that is not explicitly expressed verbally but rather through representations of the external world. Therefore, Lidia’s point of view shots of everyday objects become telling—as the metaphorical meanings behind the objects shed light into what is happening to her internally.
This type of reflexivity not only typifies the modern film, it also complements the stream of consciousness Antonioni employs in order to provide insight to Lidia’s personal conflicts. As an auteur of the feminine psyche, Antonioni sets up a narrative that allows spectators to walk alongside Lidia (Jeanne Moreau) who intuitively observes the world around her. This is common in his other films such as L’avventura with Claudia (Monica Vitti) and L’eclisse with Vittoria (Monica Vitti again who eventually became Antonioni’s muse). The beautiful women in Antonioni films are not only alluring “objects” but also visionary pathways to the human soul. Thus, Antonioni befittingly considers women the “more subtle filter of reality” and “more in tune with their feelings and therefore more honest” (qtd. in Chatman 35). They are strategically placed in the midst of chaos or in a cold and indifferent world—and only Antonioni’s brooding heroines can provide insight into such existential quandary and angst. In turn, their observations amid their physical and spiritual odyssey create a unique, provocative, and contemplative narrative that lures spectators not only into the private musings of his female protagonists, but also into the philosophical universality of their ailments, especially when it comes to understanding meaning and purpose in an ever-changing world where the modern world clashes with the old. In essence, Antonioni’s female heroines (often affluent) evolve into allegorical figures who represent a humanity that is consumed by the emptiness and shallowness that accompany the modern milieu. Antonioni’s images criticize the pervading attitude of stagnation, atrophy, and complacency of a social milieu that cannot come into grips with modern advancements by developing new values and complementary social mores (Orr 7). Because of this, a moral crisis is omnipresent. People engross themselves in meaningless relationships, superficiality, and vanity.
Antonioni’s visual wasteland not only reveals the harshness and grittiness of the external world, but also Lidia’s internal world, her feelings of displacement and suffocation. Lidia’s internal conflicts and their relationship with the film’s symbolic imagery are moments of revelation. As the film begins with Lidia and her writer husband Gionvanni (Marcello Mastroinni) visiting a friend who is terminally ill at a hospital, Lidia is obviously affected by the thought of death. She is later seen crying, pressed against the wall of the hospital building. The imminent death of the couple’s mutual friend sets the tone of the film—as the concept of death is not only referred to the end of life in general but also to the end of a period in her life. For Lidia, life has taken a different turn. Her marriage is dying and feels burdened by it. This is underscored through Antonioni’s composition. Antonioni, a painter first and then a director, experiments with abstract photography in order to emphasize the oppressive atmosphere of modern Italy and its effect on humanity. He is noted for placing humans (such as Lidia) in the midst of symbolic closed or open form compositions that accentuate Lidia’s brooding state. For instance, the stark contrast between a wide, windowless building that dominates the composition and Lidia’s figure (who is barely visible when she suddenly appears in the frame) accentuates her insignificance in a modern world. Her image is almost engulfed by a visually overpowering building. The relationship between humanity and modern architecture illustrate a world of disharmony and disaccord through “the impact of architectural gigantism on the individual” which, in turn, reveals “how the old values of [the] community were disappearing” (Chatman 37). Lidia is swallowed up by these man-made creations, making her feel more empty, lost, and insignificant. There is a weight upon her, but it is not fully explained. Because of this, she feels entrapped and suffocated in a claustrophobic world surrounded by skyscrapers.
The deterioration of Lidia’s marriage is clearly illustrated in the film’s tight framing as well as closed form composition in which she feels stifled or displaced. Lidia is a well-to-do woman who is married to a famous writer, Giovanni (Marcello Mastroianni) but feels displaced in his world. She is now a weary wife who must stand by his side, as he promotes his book. Lidia does not seem to fit in her husband’s literary world, which creates more of a marital distance. She is well aware of this fact. This is illustrated in a closed form composition where Lidia is lost amongst a barrage of her husband’s fans in a bookstore and remains alienated from his world. In a close up shot of her face, Lidia stands next to a bookshelf. Next to her face are her husband’s book and a photo of him on a shelf. As her face turns sideways in agony and ennui, we see an implied division (a split frame) between the two images. Such expressive framing leads us to believe that Lidia struggles with her feelings of displacement, which is also ascertained by her sudden departure in the bookstore.
Specific locations provide insights into their marital relationships. This is illustrated in a car ride scene where they are placed in the center of the busy metropolitan streets of Italy. Cars surround them; towering buildings barricade them. In this suffocating, imprisoning, and overbearing setting, Giovanni is prompted to release a confession. He admits to being carnally tempted by a female patient after visiting their dying friend at a hospital. She quickly dismisses it and tells him “you were overwhelmed by it all.” Because Lidia’s husband is artistically intelligent and revered by the intellectual world, women are drawn to him and, therefore, he is easily tempted. Yet his infidelity does not seem to affect her because her relationship with her husband is disconnected and strained. Lidia’s “acceptance” of her husband’s transgression is also a form of resignation. Their marriage at this point has no meaning and, therefore, there is no reason to secure it.
Furthermore, Antonioni’s cinematic stream of consciousness unfolds in the metaphorical representation between the old and new images of Italy, also corresponding to past and present values and social mores. What was once valued in the past is no longer relevant in the present. In particular, the old marital values are no longer revered—as illustrated in Giovanni’s tendency to be an adulterer and Lidia’s tendency to dismiss it. The subtext is carried through images of opposition: the industrialized, dilapidated, abandoned towns and open lots and its antithesis, the modern, congested city street filled with cars and towering buildings. Lidia’s existential wanderings guide us through these regions—both geographically and psychologically. The city is still in transition where old buildings are demolished and new buildings are erected. With this change, the world is unstable and cannot reconcile the old and the modern. At times, the world appears oppressive. It is harsh, coarse, rough and unrefined (especially in the poorer regions of the northern industrial city of Milan). Antonioni’s gritty realism also captures the culture being portrayed in the same way. It is also cold, overbearing, and impersonal, especially in the more modern side of Italy.
Through the juxtaposition of old and new, Lidia enters these two worlds, which compares to her own life—past and present—and we later come to find out that she is brooding about the gradual marital erosion that is happening in her life. This begs the question: What was her marriage like in the past and what is her marriage like now? Are the principles of marriage still honored and valued in the current milieu? The answer slowly unfolds in Lidia’s wanderings in the former world—a world that once existed and is symbolically represented as ghost towns or places that once had meaning and are no longer appreciated. They are desolate and forlorn. Her spiritual deterioration is symbolically represented through a close up shots of her hand peeling off the paint of a worn building. What was once new, beautiful, and at its prime has eroded. She, too, identifies with the eroding world—but more so on a figurative sense. Even in Antonioni’s subtle photography such as a long pause of a close up shot of a broken clock suggests we already know that the past (her marriage) is irretrievable and the present and future look unpromising. An irrevocable sad change has happened. And thus, an everyday image of the obsolete becomes powerful and revelatory.
Lidia, for the most part, refrains from utterances; even dialogue is not sufficient enough to provide clues to Lidia’s internal malady, which is why the combination of image and sound becomes a way of communicating her thoughts. Thus, internal monologue is not captured through non-diegetic sounds (i.e., voiceovers) but through ambient sounds—in a figurative sense. Her silent, brooding beauty is evasive, and the language behind the film’s imagery becomes more emphatic and compensates for Lidia’s limited verbal expressions. In particular, the conceptual interplay between sight (image) and sound “speak” for Lidia. For instance, as she makes her way into impoverished regions, she ends up at an apartment building where she tries to calm a crying child. In a desolate area, she breaks up a fight amongst a group of young men. Thus, “Antonioni brilliantly uses the urban environment to show its indifferent and negative impact on its inhabitants” (Chatman 37). Furthermore, ambient noise becomes part of the quest to come into grips with her malady such as the siren from a vehicle and the firing of a rocket on an empty light. The sounds function as an alarm signaling something has gone awry and is causing her to feel ill at ease. According to Antonioni, “the people around us, the places we visit, the events we witness—it is the spatial and temporal relations these have with each other that have a meaning for us today, and the tension that is formed between them” (50). Thus, the audible sounds function as distress signals, more specifically an awakening of Lidia’s senses as they correspond with her feelings.
Because verbal communication between Lidia and Giovanni consists of fragments, the images help communicate their disconnectedness and their differences in how they perceive the world. Because there are gaps in their expressions and misunderstood subtexts amid the sparse dialogue, both Lidia and Giovanni find it difficult to understand each other. When Lidia asks Giovanni to meet her at Sesto San Giovanni, a defunct railway station she happens to wander to, it becomes a revealing moment about their inability to see things with the same vision. This is mainly because Giovanni’s lacks insight and that Lidia is more intuitive. The event becomes telling because it indirectly sheds light into their differences between how they see their marriage. At Sesto San Giovanni, the couple is able to witness what “used to be” as Antonioni captures a place that is desolate, nonfunctioning, and pitiful. A worn building is abandoned, defunct train tracks are buried in weeds, and a broken clock hides among sprawling bushes. When her husband sees the tracks, he says “these tracks were still in use when we used to come out here.” In spite of this comment, change does not faze him. When he tells her that the place hasn’t change, she responds with an ominous statement “it will soon.” This equivocation becomes a precursor to a discussion later on about their love for each other. Lidia’s consciousness is getting closer and closer to revealing that their love for each other has indeed change, which Giovanni fails to acknowledge.
The catalyst for Lidia’s epiphany about her unhappy life and failed marriage happens in the bourgeois party of an industrialist mogul named Gherardini, which later prompts her to finally take action. Antonioni captures a party that represents the opulence of a bourgeois society along with its trivialities and vapid lifestyle. Symbolically, this is captured through still shots of an ostentatious and overbearing modern mansion glowing in the night. It is an overbearing sight, especially when used as a backdrop among a crowd of people who look insignificant and miniscule. Lidia becomes part of the ornamental “accessories” of the modern bourgeois. Even other animate objects are objectified. For instance, when Lidia converses with the hostess, the hostess draws their attention to a cat that is constantly staring at a statue. She states: “He’s been staring at that statue all night. Who knows what the animal is thinking? Maybe he expects it to wake up. Cats are strange.” There is a still shot of the back of a cat staring intently at the statue. Other inanimate objects are placed in the same frame: a building block, a large rock, and an unidentified object. Is the cat out of placed? Not really. It is because there is no difference between statue and cat—as Antonioni captures both animate and inanimate objects facing each other. The cat too becomes part of the barren atmosphere that makes up this contradictory world. Much like Lidia, where marriage (companionship) is loneliness and where intellect is soiled by thoughtless self-indulgence, she, too, is part of this chaos. People are displaced objects amongst the tumultuousness of life. And the cat serves as a powerful metaphor for this, which is why Lidia’s gaze fixates on the cat. She knows that humans, too, are insignificant in a vast world that is indifferent and at odds.
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Humanity’s insignificance is also captured through the film’s spacious composition. The outdoor setting is vast and open. People are sparsely distributed. The party guests keep to themselves and are not in physical proximity; and if they are mingling, the connection is superficial and often frivolous. There is idle chatter amongst the guests. Thus, humans are growing further away from their own humanistic sensibilities—as they all seem to be plagued by stagnation, banality and ennui. There is no drive to strive for something meaningful even in a “comfortable” world of money and modern advancement. Such an event is an exposé of the upper-middle-class representing an “emotional poverty” (Ezra 134). There is a discomfort in existing. What we witness at the party are images that are both profane and borderline vulgar. Such emotional poverty is clearly illustrated in some of the careless and trivial actions of the people at the party. People are mindlessly philandering. Valentina (Monica Vitti), the industrialist daughter, is seen playing a silly game of sliding her make-up case across a tiled floor while Giovanni ogles her. Later during the evening, rain comes pouring down on the guests, and they end up jumping into the pool just to keep themselves entertained. An intoxicated woman engages in a shameless display of eroticism with an inanimate object. She is pathetically and ridiculously caressing and kissing a statue of a satyr. Lidia is able to observe all of this and is willing to jump into the pool with the rest of the party guests but is stopped by a man named Roberto who has been following her throughout the party.
Moreover, Lidia’s spiritual separation from her husband and the world that surrounds him becomes more emphatic during the party. She takes a lonesome walk to observe the disconnected bourgeoisie. She witnesses the same isolation and alienation: A woman is on the staircase reading a book and another woman is lying flat on her back on the diving board. She walks around and does not really mingle with the people. She notices Roberto gazing at her and briefly returns his gaze but quickly moves away from him before he approaches her with words. At that moment, she prefers to be an observer in the party rather than a participator. Her actions and demeanor reiterate the same, isolated wanderings in the previous scenes where she oscillates between the old and new Italy. At the party, however, she is alienated in the modern world and is surrounded by the affluent, which exacerbates her feelings of despair. Giovanni takes notice of this and asks her: “Why don’t you join others?” He tells her, “You never seem to be enjoying yourself.” She disagrees and tells him about her observations of the two lonely women she observed. She also tells him: “This is how I enjoy myself. There’s a girl in the house having a good time by herself too.”
During the party, they both attempt an adulterous affair but fail. When Valentina finds out that Giovanni is married, she scoffs at his advances. She tells him: “I don’t break up marriages. At least I’m smart enough in that regard. Now go spend the rest of the evening with your wife.” When Roberto attempts to kiss Lidia after briefly driving off to an unknown city street, she rejects him. However, their failed attempts in adultery finally open the doors to communication—especially with the help of Valentina. Valentina is a cynic and very honest about herself and the life she lives as an affluent daughter of a renowned industrialist. She admits to having vices and indulging in life’s trivialities but is not consumed by it. She does not consider herself intelligent but rather a good observer. Because of these characteristics, she is very cynical but intuitive about people and their spiritual emptiness. When she tells Giovanni that love is suffocating, it is an indirect way of bringing to light the flaws in his failed marriage. She, too, admits to love’s disappointments. She tells him: “I think love hems a person in. It’s sort of a mistaken notion that creates a vacuum all around him.” She also understands how difficult it is to sustain love. She states “but every time I tried to communicate with someone love has disappeared.” She is well aware that Giovanni’s numerous attempts in adultery is an escape from boredom, especially with himself who suffers from a creative crisis, as he is stumped on how to write rather than what to write. She astutely tells him, “You need a girl to make a fresh start with.” Indeed, Giovanni is the typical Antonioni man as Valentina astutely points out. He is pathetic, philandering, self-absorbed, self-loathing and weak.
With Lidia, Valentina is able to witness her agony and gain some insight on how marriage can lead to spiritual imprisonment and despair. Because of this, the epiphany is now out in the open. With a female counterpart, the hidden self or inner consciousness is audibly articulated. It begins when Lidia asks Valentina’s age, which is significantly younger than Lidia. Then she confides with her by saying, “You don’t know how it feels when the years weigh on you and no longer makes any sense.” She also adds: “Tonight I just feel like dying. I really do. At least this agony would end and something new would begin.” After this confession, Giovanni walks in on the women’s conversation. The emotional tension is captured in the frame. Valentina is in the foreground holding a bottle of whiskey. Lidia is in the middle ground. As Giovanni is deliberately captured in the background, he is symbolically placed between the two women. In this mise en scène, there is the young (Valentina) and there is the more mature (Giovanni and Lidia), the cynic who ascertains her notions about love and marriage and the worn couple who must confront their marital troubles respectively. As Giovanni and Lidia decide to leave Valentina’s company and the party, Valentina is very much aware that the couple has exhausted their love. This is emphasized as the camera focuses on a full shot Valentina’s figure as she stands before an illuminated window. Before the couple exits the room, she tells them that they have worn her out. After this, the light in the room turns off and Valentina’s image disappears as if she was once a shadow or ghost that once lived in their inner consciousness.
Finally, in the last scene in the film, the narrative becomes more emphatic and the stream consciousness is interrupted and replaced by its antithesis, that is, an elaborate, drawn out dialogue between Giovanni and Lidia. The couple walks into a desolate area surrounded by trees. Lidia finally admits to Giovanni that she is well aware that he is no longer in love with her. However, Giovanni refuses to admit this and insists on making love to her on a shallow pit made of dirt. Their so-called lovemaking takes place in an unlikely setting, which makes the act more insignificant, pathetic and futile. Although Lidia gives in, she knows the truth. Her epiphany can now reach its own resolution. The camera slowly pans away from the couple and lingers on the image of trees that ominously towers over them.
September 13, 2015
Works Cited
Antonioni, Michelangelo. The Architecture of Vision: Writings and Interviews on Cinema. Eds. Carlo di Carlo, Giorgio Tinazzi and Marga Cottino-Jones. New York: Marsilio Publishers, 1996.
Ezra, Elizabeth, ed. European Cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Chatman, Seymour. Michelangelo Antonioni: The Complete Films. Paul Duncan ed. Hong Kong: Taschen, 2008.