The painting by Luchino Visconti tells the story of a lonely man who on one of the many monotonous moon nights met a mysterious pretty girl. She instantly captivated him with her mysterious fate and unbearably beautiful soul, humbly waiting to meet her first and only lover, who disappeared from her life a year ago without any clear explanation. She vowed to wait for her prince as long as she needed. And now the date of their long-awaited meeting should approach immediately. But he's gone and gone. . .
At this very moment, our loner appears, turning the fate of the heroine in the radically opposite direction. What if he's right? Shouldn't you have waited for your narrowed-minded and uneasy to give her even the smallest piece of news in a year of unbearable waiting? What if all this is absolutely meaningless, and let them go to hell with these empty dreams and stupid love fantasies? You have to live in the present, don't you? Asking these questions, the heroine confuses herself and begins to feel feelings for a loner who has fallen from the sky, who says truly healthy things. But is a woman’s heart capable of neglecting Faith in the first Love and forgetting all the heap of happiness and suffering that accompanied it, in order to be simply loved, not really loving the object that exalts it? . .
This film, basing its narrative on the literary work of the same name by the outstanding Russian writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, forms an independent story in which brilliant artists of that period of European cinema perfectly reveal their entire creative potential. We are talking about Marcello Mastroianni and Maria Shell. They amazingly, unimaginably embodied on the screen infinitely living images, each suffering heroes in their own way. In this regard, it is worth paying tribute to the director of the picture Luchino Visconti, who managed to purely individually present this melodramatic story, immensely respecting the literary source.
So love at all costs, friends! Give joy and happiness to loved ones! One day your night will be brightened.
"A Miguel of Happiness on the whole of human life"
Many people say that a book is always better than a movie. If they are so sure of this, let them look at this picture of Visconti, it must convince the truth of this proposition. At least I am convinced of this, the film is beautiful, even though it turned 60 years old this year.
It is black and white, but it seems that paint is not necessary here, because the action almost constantly takes place at night, on the gray streets of the Italian town. The pavilion of the shooting is almost not striking, except that the snow seems artificial, but this is written off for the year of release and does not interfere with viewing.
There are not so many characters in the picture, the main ones and three at all. The resident performed by Jean Marais: he is calm, confident and, I will not deny, handsome, although not very young. And he loves the heroine, although he has to leave her for a year. But at the same time, he does not bind her with any obligations, unlike another famous character of the Russian classic, he himself promises to return and love her further. Whether it is an attempt to escape or forced circumstances is unknown, and probably not important. Marais does not have much screen time, but manages to reveal his character and in the scene of recognition to him even imbued with sympathy.
Natalia performed by Maria Shell. In general, it is clear why it was renamed in the picture, the name Nastenka would sound strange in the lips of Italians. Shell is exactly what the picture needs, she is cute, graceful and convincingly naive. This is especially evident in the dance scene: the girl covers her face several times, embarrassed by attention. And, despite the detachment of the character from real life, the actress does not overplay. Without any tantrums, even practically no words, she shows her pain with one face at the moment when she decides that her beloved did not come, and when she learns that her friend cheated. Maybe in the end it is somewhat illogical, but it is more a claim to Dostoevsky.
Mario (Marcello Mastroianni) is a little different from his literary prototype, he’s not as useless as a “dreamer,” rather he’s just an endlessly lonely man. For the first time meeting Natalia, he even decides to rid her of the molestation of two young people, he works and, hoping for happiness, is ready to change the usual place for a more profitable one. And if just limited in this role Mastroianni constantly, it is revealed in two scenes: when he admits that he threw the letter, and in the finale. In the first, the whole appearance speaks for the hero, not only words, but his remorse would not look so convincing without the headscarf, which he tensely squeezes in his hands, as if calming himself in this way. In the second, he seems to stand in the background, but it is his figure that draws attention to himself.
I also want to say about the snow, I don’t remember what time of year Dostoevsky’s action takes place, but the idea of a short snowfall turned out to be very beautiful. That's where the whiteness is, that's where the grayness of the streets is replaced by the purity of love. Beautiful, happy, like this snow.
In general, I can talk about this film for a very long time, it turned out so soulful, but I will not, but I will just advise you to watch it. At least for those who have no prejudice against monochrome cinema.
In rare sarcastic responses to the film adaptations of colleagues, Visconti liked to mention a mysterious Ophelia. Only recently did his biographer, Lorenzo Shifano, lift the veil of a far from Shakespearean mystery: Ophelia was called a dream production machine, the favorite brainchild of one of the characters of Yuri Olesha. Once the father of this character, the director of the classical gymnasium, ordered his son a dream from Roman history, but of course the trick failed and the little experimenter was whipped. However, later it turned out that the dream of the battle of Farsal came to the noble family. Just saw his maid Frosya (" Everyone gallops, all terrible horses, sort of in masks). And seeing a horse is a lie. The discovery is striking, testifying to the director’s unprecedented readability even in the intellectual cream of Europe (try now to ask any European Slavic specialist who Olesha is, and in 99% of cases, regardless of the answer, you will clearly notice how the face expresses itself by what it sits on the porch) – and at the same time about his unprecedented loneliness in the same cream, with this excessive, unnecessary reading, with his supreme culture of gesture, thought, emotion, with his hereditary and inappropriate, absolute and standard sense of beauty. So, thanks to one tiny detail, Visconti appears in Shifano completely Pushkin’s old man “in fragrant gray hair, joking perfectly subtly and cleverly, which is now somewhat ridiculous.”
Meanwhile, few directors have done so much to popularize literature by means of cinema. The only clearly visible vector of Visconti’s conscious creative search is the accessibility of the lambda depicted for the viewer. Being obsessed with Dostoevsky all his life and even swung once, in Rocco, to sketches for The Brothers Karamazov (a project he finally abandoned only after watching Pyriev's film), Visconti really filmed only White Nights, thereby creating a miracle of adaptation of the foreign to his native soil and fate. Many had to give up, starting from the scene - Visconti felt, of course, that he would not succeed in recruiting the St. Petersburg genius loci as accomplices. From the script left the fabulous scenery of the deliberate city-mirage with its brief, but indispensable atmospheric wonders during the summer solstice, “White Nights” as a recognizable attribute of the city on the Neva turned into notte bianche (literally from Italian – nights spent without sleep). Oddly enough, this redirection of the reasons for the exaltation of the characters from the barometer – lack of sleep did not break at all, on the contrary – more clearly manifested it. Losev wrote immediately after the first viewing of the "White Nights": "As the graphologist noticed with a sigh, // the book bursts and falls off the shelves, // because it is too wide // this handwriting of the patient, allzu russisch ..." // Well, what to do here - you will not narrow. As an animated background of the birth and death of illusions, Visconti chose Livorno - a poor orphan among Italian cities, and, not content with the mud of life, recreated it completely even more plague - in the pavilions of Cinecitta, with a tulle on the camera lenses for the effect of winter fog, with fragments of mirrors on the floor to simulate the moisture of walls and pavements. The city is not even the city's abode.
The feeling of aching anguish that never passes all the time of viewing is from here. Visconti - almost more than Dostoevsky - puts in the center of the narrative very weak, very small-blooded people, of whom the habitat draws the last juices they themselves need, while life "continues to walk, gloat, cover, do not lose courage, the distance to beckon, alcohol to fool, the bill to pay." Maria Shell became in this sense for centuries the embodiment of screen defenseless, a girl from another era, withered, as in a herbarium, in a tiny workshop, pinned to the hem of a blind grandmother. This is Dickensian Nelly from the Antiquities Shop, miraculously survived puberty, but in adulthood restless, unnecessary, superfluous, completely unlike Rosina from the Barber of Seville, whose habits she secretly studies. She is not able to take advantage of the chance in life, because she has already spent all the heat of her sweet and frail soul - on love for a stranger, most likely unhappy. Like the snow that suddenly fell at night, it is destined to tighten the dirty abyss with white lace for a few moments - and disappear, melt without a trace. However, in pity for her and the hero Mastroianni - a loser, a hysteric, a weakling - no, no, and squeamishness is mixed. Visconti does not idealize, justify, or even excuse weakness. Because he realizes all too well how weak he is, like no one who looks like the “man who left,” who sends his beautiful dreams to illiterate cooks.
"White Nights" Luchino Visconti as an example of one of the approaches to adapting literary text on the screen
If you read the “sentimental novel” by F. M. Dostoevsky “White Nights”, you can ask yourself: what could such material attract the Italian director Lukino Visconti, inclined in his work to epic, profound tragedy in showing the degradation of society, its spiritual impoverishment?
The seemingly local tragedy of the heroes of Dostoevsky’s novel, in the hands of Visconti, is projected, thanks to the transfer of time and place of the work to the modern director of post-war Italy, to the world space. On the basis of the story of the acquaintance and relationship of two young people, Visconti simultaneously expresses the idea of the perniciousness of illusions, the central motive in his work, and makes a kind of artistic study of the breakdown of the era, when the whole world (and Italy including), experiencing hunger, poverty, lack of work, general depression and personal humiliation, death, i.e., all the hardships of war, meets the establishment of the economic situation and the growth of wealth with an ardent desire to be satisfied in London and enjoy the life of pigs.
The film “White Nights” (1957) is interesting because, being one of the first works of the director, it already reveals the rudiments of the means of expression characteristic of Visconti (pathetics and high, “opera” passions, breadth and naturalistic display of universal spiritual and bodily decay). Starting with the fact that the film was shot entirely in the pavilions, when, in general, nothing interfered with going out on nature, as Rossellini and de Sica did at one time, thanks to which it was possible, moreover, to avoid additional costs. But Visconti, although inspired by neorealism, and the stylistics of his first works is in line with “rosying”, melodramatized neorealism, but theatrical aesthetics prevails here.
At the same time, “White Nights” to some extent stand alone in the work of Lukino Visconti, putting forward a hero at the same time and neo-realistically simple (Natalia and grandmother weave carpets, Mario is an employee), and fabulous, fantastic, which, perhaps, is not in the world (Natalia, for example, lives with a pin pin pin to the dress of her blind grandmother, a girl who did not know life at all). Heroes Maria Shell (Natalia) and Marcello Mastroianni (Mario) - Dreamers, marginals. In this regard, the scene where Natalia and Mario swim at night on a kayak, alone, and around them, on the embankment and under the bridge are tramps warming up by the fire: both directly in the frame, and as individuals, representatives of society, they knock out. They are like an island isolated from this life and out of reach for it. Or the same bar dance scene where the characters dance so ridiculously that they look rather out of place among swinging, cheerful, organic youth. In the same scene, there is a moment when Mario and Natalia are sitting in a cafe, trying, embarrassed, to talk. The frame is divided into 2 parts: on the right side are the heroes, on the left - a couple kissing in frank poses of young people, which also quite colorfully emphasizes how they do not fit into this life.
After more than 30 years, such an island of illusions and dreams will appear in the film of another Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci – Dreamers (2008). A group of young people who stop leaving the house, the same stronghold of the illusory world (cinema) in the raging real world (student revolutions in France).
This theme was developed earlier, for example, by Charles Chaplin, whose hero, which is indicative, is a tramp, all of whose involuntary movements lead to disaster and a ridiculous position. With the characteristic movement of his foot away from himself, he seems to involuntarily repel this life from himself. In "White Nights" very precisely worked out plastic Maria Shell. Her heroine is very impatient in movements: as if she does not know where to put her hands, then adjusting her hair, then trying to lean on something or holding something in her hands, or where to go, chaotically running from Mario and eventually running into the henhouse - she seems to even in the streets does not always fit in; her speech is confused when she is addressed with a specific question, as if she is trying to understand whether she is saying / doing the right thing. Among other things, Natalia throws polar feelings into absolutely : she either laughs in vain or sobs (also peculiar "high" passions of Visconti). Moreover, the director enhances the instant emergence of very strong feelings, adding a dialogue between Natalia and the Resident in the opera (" ... that we love each other, that we will never part again). “But I love you, Natalia, love, love”), which Dostoevsky did not have, and applying long close-ups of her face when she looks at him.
In general, the resident (Jean Marais) in Visconti loses his physical appearance in Natalia’s stories. “Does he even exist?” asked Mario. Therefore, it is so surprising and implausible his return, as if this image was introduced not as a character, but as a circumstance that makes the dreams of a lover of Natalia Mario even more fatal.
The hero of Mastroianni is a dreamer not so sweet as Dostoevsky, he does not speak lengthy monologues about his life, does not walk around the city for days, contemplating and animating urban landscapes in his imagination (he works in the film). However, in the face of real life, he is lost no less than Natalia. He wants to go out and have fun "for real," but he doesn't get any reactions from the merchandise at the fair or the girls smiling at him. Mario’s encounter with a lonely woman who leads him under a bridge (which is also indicative) and offers himself, as if confronting him face to face with real life, with doom in the face of this woman.
That is why they become for each other a stronghold of sincerity, credulity, kindness and beauty, but with such ultimate happiness as the Dreamer visits in the moment of snowfall (as if to justify the word “white” in the title), it is impossible to live for a long time; in the end, such a fabulous, not from this world character and happiness should receive the corresponding one – fleeting, almost unreal, in an instant.
“Is this not enough for all human life?”
Thus, we can say that the root of the phenomenon of the marginal dreamer Visconti sees in the environment, even in life itself.
Luchino Visconti uses classical material, significantly modifying it, to translate his author's view of the situation. Avoiding direct illustrative translation of the literary text into cinematic language allows to avoid "inaccurate transmission of the irrelevant in content" (Walter Benjamin), when in the pursuit of re-creating the true historical entourage, literally transferring episodes and dialogues, plot functions of characters to please the viewer and his understanding the cinematography becomes dependent on literature. The skill of the director in filming the classics is to touch the "truth of the original", i.e., to the very fact that we do not repeat the classical text, which makes it universal for any other. It is then that there is a sense in the film adaptation, and cinema thus gives life to literature, which she herself could not do.
I think Visconti justifies his skill.
Or was it created for the purpose of
Just for a moment.
Near your heart? . .
Yves Turgenev
What grandiose plans were not embodied with the help of magnificent scenery, probably still stored in the bins of the Italian dream factory - the grandiose Cinecitta! In 1957, by the wand of director Lukino Visconti, in Pavilion N5, the city of Livorno seemed to survive its symbolic reincarnation, where the action of Dostoevsky’s novel “White Nights” was transferred. We can assume that it is not accidental - after all, the city, in which, of course, there are no white nights, but very rarely snow falls (!), was once owned by the Visconti dynasty, which gave the world and Count Lonate Pozzolo.
Fascinating "Le notti bianche" already from the opening credits, causing a sharp attack of nostalgia for music for good old cinema - whether it is Metro Goldwinmeier or European. These tense melodies in the characteristic orchestral sound still create a sense of fullness and such an epic scope, which can hardly dream of modern film producers (not creators, but conveyor manufacturers). Visconti’s first collaboration with composer Nino Rota, who simultaneously worked on the score of other Fellinian Nights, marked the beginning of their strong creative friendship.
Interestingly, this is the first collaboration with Giuseppe Rotunno, who later became perhaps Visconti’s favorite cameraman. In “White Nights” the episodes of transitions from the real narrative to the past are most remarkable – for example, a subtle change of frame from the street scene to the carpet workshop; interesting techniques of rectilinear and circular camera movement, as well as successful close-ups that allow you to catch all the shades of emotions invested by Marcello Mastroianni and Maria Shell in their heroes.
By the way, it is known that Luchino Visconti in 1954 for Senso wanted to get Ingrid Bergman, and according to some sources, did not leave this hope for White Nights (this creative meeting of the two giants was never destined to take place), but with the choice of Maria Shell for the role of Natalia, he clearly did not lose. The actress almost simultaneously worked on another difficult role according to Dostoevsky – Grushenki from the “Brothers Karamazov”, and it must be said that the sphere of acute Russian psychology was very close to her, with a related and appropriate introduction of Italian-Austrian color into these images.
It seems quite natural that the genius of the director chose the golden mean between the literal adaptation and free fantasy on the theme of the source, which spiritualizes the creation with the seal of uniqueness, originality. The last thing I would like to discuss is the obvious differences with the story, the shift in accents, "and in Dostoevsky so, and here - the syak." And without this, some curious defects, or aspects, are striking – and it is difficult to say whether this was done consciously or accidentally. For example, the dance orgy, choreographed by Dick Sanders - the most noticeable crook in the whole scene, the worst in the picture (don't believe Mr. K.) - looks strange today, to put it mildly. Freaky, unskillful movements, a tribute to the new-fangled boogie-woogie-trends – this is all a really bright, but noisy and stylistically foreign manifesto about the harmful effects of globalization and industrialization on the moral health of society and other pathos-correct maxims.
In addition, Mastroianni’s characteristic facial flexibility and phenomenal sexuality cast not the most favorable shadow on Jean Marais, whose stone face and axe are more appropriate in a more theatrical setting – in the same “Orpheus”, or in hidden from the public home mise-en-scenes with Corto. But that’s why maybe the drama at the end of the film is more relief, when you want to give Natalia a bad epithet! How often from the fire of universal love are only illusions and fragments of fleeting happiness! However, Fyodor Mikhailovich held a different view.
My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is this not enough for the whole of human life? . .