White Nights
(Le notti bianche)

Screening on Film

Directed by Luchino Visconti.
With Maria Schell, Marcello Mastroianni, Jean Marais.
Italy/France, 1957, 35mm, black & white, 102 min.
Italian with English subtitles.

A cinematic gem, White Nights is an essential formal exercise leading up to the titanic Rocco and his Brothers. Set in a winter Venice, far from the hustle and bustle of the city’s summer months, the film follows the nocturnal wanderings and romantic pursuits of a loner played by Marcello Mastroianni (who received his start with Visconti in theater). Visconti lends a fluid editing style that blends memory and reality to craft the relationship of the film’s principle love triangle, an amorous geometry that proves to be a consistent theme in Visconti’s body of work.