La Notte (1961)

A writer (Marcello Mastroianni) who is considered an intellectual and his wife (Jeanne Moreau), who's not, lead an emotionally empty existence. After Michelangelo Antonioni's groundbreaking masterpiece L'AVVENTURA pushed him into the forefront of Italian cinema, his follow up LA NOTTE was highly anticipated. But instead of breaking new ground or going in a different direction, what we got was more of the same. Which isn't to say it isn't a good film, it is but it's much less subtle than L'AVVENTURA as if Antonioni listened to complaints that audiences didn't "get" L'AVVENTURA so he made its themes of alienation in an increasingly materialistic and sterile society so obvious that a toddler couldn't help but "get" it! Visually, it's a stunner. It's all angles, textures and surfaces. Gianni Di Venanzo's (8 1/2) black and white lensing is a testament to how B&W cinematography is an art unto itself. Pick any random frame and you could hang it on your wall. Yet you have to hand it to Antonioni, making a film about bored people without being boring is nothing to sneeze at. With Monica Vitti and Bernhard Wicki.