Le Notti Bianche

There are many examples of superior craftsmanship in Italian filmmaking, and Luchino Visconti's Le Notti Bianche (White Nights) ranks among the finest. Often described as a bridge between the neo-realism of Visconti's earlier career (for example, La Terra Trema) and the more subjective and/or metaphorical style of later films such as The Leopard, this melancholy love story was created entirely on a massive, impeccably authentic set in Rome's legendary Cinecittá studio, allowing a perfect balance of realism and artifice in a story that's grounded (as described by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith in an accompanying essay) in two levels of reality: the actual and the ideal. These delicately balanced aesthetics provide the physical and emotional framework for this adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1848 short story, in which a transplanted city man named Mario (Marcello Mastroianni at his most charming) falls in love with local girl Natalia (Maria Schell, speaking her Italian dialogue phonetically), but she is hopelessly in love with a lodger in her building (Jean Marais) who left her a year ago and promised to return. As she waits, it seems as though she might forget her former lover and fall for Mario, but fate has other plans. The huge studio set creates a dreamlike environment for this sad tale of hearts out of sync, which surely ranks as one of the most heartbreaking romances ever filmed. As always, Criterion has assembled superior supplements for this DVD, including an audio reading of the Dostoyevsky story, interviews with several of Visconti's surviving collaborators (including legendary cinematographer Guiseppe Rotunno), and the original screen tests for Mastroianni and Schell. Highly recommended. (J. Shannon)