678 La notte

[zedz]

Nah, you need to crop it so that you can't see that Harold is actually hanging from the clock and might as well be standing on a box just off-frame. Way more dramatically effective.

[jojo]

Beaver on MoC's BD

It seems most of the information lost is at the top of the frame. The bottom seems intact.

Quick, someone ask Gary about the boobs

[manicsounds]

Blu-ray.com on the Criterion
Much better score on the picture quality than the MoC

[tenia]

Blu-ray.com on the Criterion
Much better score on the picture quality than the MoC

Be aware that Svet took one point off for almost only the compression issues, which seems to be mostly chroma issues.

[Finch]

Aye, 4.5 as opposed to 3.5 doesn't exactly translate to a "much better" score. Still, if I get the film at some point, it'll likely be the Criterion.

[ellipsis7]

Beaver wades in...

[jojo]

After watching the new disc, I feel like 1.85 seems like the right ratio more often than not. We have no idea what MA really intended, but there are so many shots here where losing a bit of information on the sides would seem slightly off, while losing some information at the top seems less important to most of the compositions. There's one that sticks out in my mind, when Giovanni pulls his car up in front of a house and you see him get out. The entire car just makes it into the frame in 1.85, but in 1.66 it would cut off the trunk of the car. A better example can be seen in the Beaver review. The one shot with Giovanni in the background placed between a sitting Lidia in the middle ground and Valentina in the foreground would be slightly compromised in 1.66, as part of Lidia's head would surely fall outside of the frame.

[Donald Brown]

Why do you assume a 1.66 ratio would remove info from the sides rather than simply add more at the top and bottom?

[jojo]

Why do you assume a 1.66 ratio would remove info from the sides rather than simply add more at the top and bottom?

Because all of the previous 1.66 releases of La Notte did remove info from the sides. Look at the Beaver review and see the comparisons. In some cases it is quite dramatic.

[Donald Brown]

Yes, I realize that, but that needn't necessarily be the case.

[knives]

For your suggestion, Donald, to be right though that means every 1.66 DVD thus far has deliberately taken away a fitting amount from the negative which seems silly. Given the information available from previous DVDs the simplest and thus most likely answer is that the negative is the 1.85 we see here which previously was cropped to the European standard on the assumption it was the standard.

[Donald Brown]

Sure, but the way jojo worded his comment gave the impression that adding information at the top and bottom of a 1.66 transfer would be accompanied by the loss of information on the sides. That needn't be the case when working from a full frame neg, though it certainly does seem likely that the neg for La Notte is hard-matted to a wider ratio.

[jojo]

No, I didn't mean to say that adding info at the top and bottom would be accompanied by loss of information at the sides and vice versa. I said that in this particular case, the slight loss at the top on these blu-ray editions seems less important than loss at the sides in the previous DVD editions, but I definitely didn't mean that it was an either-or case.

[ptatler]

A few thoughts on this. Not my favorite Antonioni, but is some exquisite moments, particularly Moreau's solo trek through the city.

[Matt]

After seeing this film a handful of times over the last 15 years or so, I feel like I finally connect with and understand it for the first time after watching it again last night. I had always just thought it was two boring people being boring and being bored with each other. But when I started to think about it during Lidia's walk through the city, it clicked that the devastation of the war is still within recent memory and there's this new modern, alien city sprouting up from the ashes of the ruined city. After being shaken by seeing her friend (and not-quite lover) at the brink of death, Lidia seems to find the old city as comforting as the angular concrete and steel structures rising up around her are alienating. Nostalgia. The way things used to be. But she's unable to express this clearly, or unable even to recognize that that's how she feels. It all seems kind of obvious to me now, but I was never able to grasp that from my previous viewings.

Watching the Adriano Aprà interview helped congeal these thoughts for me, particularly the part where he talks about how Moreau and Mastroianni were disappointed by the film because they were instructed to be completely restrained in movement and emotional expression. I had never thought about Antonioni using an almost Bressonian direction of actors, but it makes perfect sense for this film (and for Monica Vitti in the other two films of the trilogy). And it is wonderfully perverse to hire these two huge international movie stars to stand around like tree trunks.

[artfilmfan]

La Notte is my favorite Italian film. It's one of a handful of films which I return to frequently. The Criterion Blu-ray looks wonderful. In fact, I bought two copies

I finished watching the Criterion Blu-ray last night. I was surprised to see a strand of something showing up in the upper right-hand corner of the screen at around the 1:43:10 mark (the scene of Moreau coming into Vitti's room to dry her hair). It remains there, flickering, for maybe a minute. It's distracting. I don't think this has been mentioned in any of the reviews that I've read.

[Matt]

It's just a hair or piece of dust in the camera's film gate. It happens a few times in this film and in countless other films. It's in the original negative. Nothing to raise a fuss over.

[ellipsis7]

The film was impeccably shot by the great cinematographer Gianni di Venanzo, so apart from these insignificant 'hairs in the gate' there can really be no complaining...

[artfilmfan]

I totally agree that the film was impeccably shot. La Notte is one of the most beautifully looking films I have seen, in addition to being one of the great films of international cinema (IMHO).

Ahhh, the "hairs" ! They have the habit of showing up every where ... Likely and unlikely places. I ended up staring at that hair in La Notte for two minutes ... The first time around and upon a rewind

[MichaelB]

Ahhh, the "hairs" ! They have the habit of showing up every where ... Likely and unlikely places. I ended up staring at that hair in La Notte for two minutes ... The first time around and upon a rewind

If it's part of the original film and has always been part of the original film, conscientious restorers tend to leave such defects alone.

[artfilmfan]

The Jazzy soundtrack of this film is now available on a very nice-sounding CD at Amazon. Jazz, Italian style, at its best.

[Ovader]

According to this review of Jazz in Italian Cinema (Spreading new sounds from the Big Screen 1958-62) the music was recorded live on set of the film for the concluding party scene.

[Lowry_Sam]

Just rewatched the Criterion blu-ray as I'm brushing up on my Italian for my upcoming visit. I happen to notice a mistake in the subtitles. When Monica Vitti is asked how old she is she says "diciotto" (18), but the Criterion subtitles read "twenty-two". Anyone know of a reason for this flub?

[Lachino]

Hmm...that just makes the character a bit more ludicrous: Reading Hermann Broch and conducting dense and difficult late night/early morning conversation with people twice her age is already somewhat hard to take.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Just rewatched the Criterion blu-ray as I'm brushing up on my Italian for my upcoming visit. I happen to notice a mistake in the subtitles. When Monica Vitti is asked how old she is she says "diciotto" (18), but the Criterion subtitles read "twenty-two". Anyone know of a reason for this flub?

I have absolutely no idea other than to hazard a guess that it might have something to do with the respective ages of majority. The connotation of her being 18 and a minor might be misleading in a US context.