La notte

La notte takes place over one night in Milan. While visiting a dying friend, Marcello Mastroianni, a novelist, and Jeanne Moreau, his wife, realize that there is little left between them. The rest of the night is spent in escape and disillusionment, played out against Michelangelo Antonioni’s rigorous sense of place and architecture. The centerpiece of the film is Moreau’s walk through a Milan that is lacking in charm but filled with beauty and meaning for her, with only camera and composition to tell us so. “Beauty,” as their dying friend says, “is depressing in certain circumstances.”