La Notte is the central film of what has come to be known as Antonioni's “trilogy” (L'Avventura precedes it, The Eclipse follows). “In all three films,” Penelope Huston writes, “Antonioni is obliquely testing moral standards, proposing alternative courses for his characters, sounding out the subterranean systems of human betrayal and weakness.” In contrast to the expansive pilgrimages of L'Avventura, La Notte takes place within one 18-hour period. In both films, however, Antonioni makes his characters strangers in their own land; here, that territory is a marriage of 10 years being questioned for the first time. Marcello Mastroianni is the husband, a novelist who feels himself written out; Jeanne Moreau, his wife. While visiting a dying friend they realize simultaneously that there is very little left between them. The rest of the night is spent in escape and disillusionment, played out against Antonioni's rigorous sense of place and architecture. “Within its time span of less than 24 hours, the film proposes courses its characters might have taken in the past, points to some of the missed turnings: Jeanne Moreau's walk through Milan is a walk through her own life.” (Penelope Huston quoted from Cinema: A Critical Dictionary, edited by Richard Roud)