1957 in Film: Le Notti Bianche

Unrequited love is little different than a starving hummingbird who seeks the nectar of flowers, only to find them dried up and limp. Desperate for satiation, it searches high and low for its filling.

In Luchino Visconti’s classic Le Notti Bianche, a 1957 film adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1848 short story “White Nights,” clerk Mario (Marcello Mastroianni) is that solitary bird drawn to the beauty and perceived innocence of Natalia (Maria Schell). Filmed on a sound stage at Cinecittà Studios in Rome, the spectator is treated to the gorgeous black-and-white cinematography of Giuseppe Rotunno, which vividly enlivens the script of co-writers Visconti and Suso Checchi d’Amico.

In the first scene, Mario disboards a bus in a new city for a new job. It is night, and he is desiring some companionship. After being followed for a time by a wandering dog, symbolic of his own solitary existence, he spots Natalia crying, standing on a bridge over a canal. Mario tries to engage her, but she flees away from him, only to be sexually harassed by two creeps on a motorcycle. Mario fends them off, still wanting her attention.

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She reluctantly converses with him, but tells them that they can meet at 10:00 PM the following night. Mario is obviously attracted to Natalia, but little does he know just how infatuated she is with the distant object of her amorous desires: the older, mysterious L’inquilino (The Tenant, portrayed by Jean Marais).

The next night, Natalia literally plays a game of hard to get, running away from Mario, whose happiness quickly deflates. He’s understandably peeved, but his attraction to Natalia (a Slavic immigrant) renders him stupid and vulnerable. He sticks around to listen to her narration of the events that developed her believed mutual adoration with L’inquilino (a foreigner of unknown origin).

Annoyed, Mario’s response includes “You don’t even know what he does… are you quite sure he exists?” For according to naive Natalia, L’inquilino is due to arrive back after a one-year absence. No letters. No telegrams. No phone calls. But the bright-eyed blonde waits every night on the bridge over the canal, anyway.

Perhaps her blind grandmother’s overprotective ways failed to prepare her granddaughter for real life situations such as this. Natalia knows the mystery man is in town, but wants Mario to deliver a letter of hers to find out if the other man has come back for her. Natalia chides a lovelorn Mario with: “You look at me like a suitor… after everything I’ve told you, you mustn’t fall in love with me,” yet still ridiculously thinks Mario will deliver the letter for her.

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After they part, agreeing to meet again, lonely Mario is approached by a prostitute on the bridge. The noirish, hazy mist further defined in black-and-white photography perfectly underscores the suffocating loneliness in the air. My, my, how “Strangers in the Night” (released in 1966) would have fit this scene. He’s having none of it, and rejects her.

The next evening, Mario walks the town, interested in some proper company. Natalia sees him, and this time, he is not so sweet on her. She persuades him to have fun, so they go to a cafe where the salacious sounds of “Thirteen Women” by Bill Haley and His Comets is blaring out of a jukebox.

The dancing couples present all seem to have walked out of a European musical. Quite the spectacle, and not to be outdone, Mario attempts to woo Natalia with his weird, but endearing brand of peacocking in the dance circle. When the tempo slows later on, as they dance slow and close, Natalia tells him “Now I too can say that I’ve been dancing,” to which he somberly replies “Now I too can say that I’ve been happy.”

All hell breaks loose, however, when an old woman in a nearby building finds it appropriate to yell out that it’s past 10:00 PM, sending Natalia running out the door, frantic to see her older lover. Mario finds her collapsed on the ground. He madly declares “I love you, Natalia!… forget your ghosts from your past!” Further incensed by her lack of feeling concerning his burning passion for her, Mario retorts “If they’re not tramps, they’re crazy — certifiable!… I even told you. Never trust anyone. Especially a man in love.”

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You will have to watch the film to see what happens next, but it is interesting to know that Le Notti Bianche was edged out of BAFTA and Oscars contention by Federico Fellini’s 1957 film Nights of Cabiria. Both films illustrate the woes of the loveless among less privileged Italian citizens. Visconti did manage to gain recognition with the Silver Lion at the 1957 Venice Film Festival, but lost out to Satyajit Ray’s Aparajito for the Golden Lion prize.

Though Natalia’s immature naïveté is a frequent target of criticism by film lovers, I cannot help but empathize with both she and Mario. So maybe this young overly shielded woman is explosively emotional and clingy, similar (but not at all identical) to Deanie (Natalie Wood) in Splendor in the Grass (1961). In Natalia’s case, she was abandoned by both of her parents. Her blind grandmother, also wounded by these rejections, kept her granddaughter close so as to feel loved herself.

For Natalia, she sees in L’inquilino a world that had previously been closed to her. A place of longing. Unpredictability. Pleasure. And the electric ecstasy of feeling alive. Which is why this unforgettable masterpiece of Italian cinema only grows deeper in meaning over time for generations old and new who are carrying the same longing flames of desire. Some united, but many left unfulfilled.