One might say that an Italian film from 1957 has become more relevant to contemporary audiences than any other release this summer. That film, White Nights, was first seen in cinemas nearly 70 years ago, but its recent revival comes at a time when it speaks urgently to our needs, fears, and hopes.
The Janus Films restoration of the film is currently playing at New York’s Film Forum through August 6, and will soon make its rounds across the country, with scheduled stops including the Roxie Theater in San Francisco and the Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles, both starting August 7.
On the one hand, White Nights resembles a museum piece, a reminder of a form of cinema that no longer exists. This is a film made in black-and-white, with a high-toned, overripe style that seems to belong to an earlier era. However, on the other hand, the movie concerns a condition afflicting many people today: having deferred marriage and family life, they find themselves exiles from adulthood, lonesome, solitary, and yearning for companionship.
The story puts across this theme in an intensely romantic style, giving a kind of validation to contemporary viewers’ woes. One of the reasons the film feels so urgent is that the director, Luchino Visconti, adapted Fyodor Dostoevsky’s story with a radical change: depositing the characters from 19th-century Russia into 1950s Italy.
The opening shots instantly tell us we are somewhere recognizably modern, with Mario (Marcello Mastroianni) traversing the dark, emptied-out streets of an Italian city, illuminated by garish neon signs. His isolation is not that of a man locked up in a room, but a man who delays going into that room for as long as possible.
Miraculously, Mario allows his eyes to drift to Natalia (the celestial Maria Schell), who appears as companionless as our hero. Having proved his gallantry by shielding her from a pair of motorcycle-riding hooligans, he persuades her to let him accompany her to her home, which she shares with her grandmother.
Can a man who lives alone and a woman who lives with her grandmother be so different? In fact, Mario and Natalia have each entered adulthood without its benefits: she is tethered to her family, and he is accustomed to solitude. Yet Natalia has hope for relief from her condition: she is bewitched by a former tenant, who pledges the resumption of their romance upon his return.
Rota’s gorgeous score swells sweetly as this affair is sketched, but Mario has his doubts about a man who seems to him like a cad. Besides, Mario is certain that what ails Natalia can be cured by him; against all odds, he reckons, two forlorn creatures have found each other.
Despite Mario’s best efforts to control the situation, White Nights will end in disappointment for one of its central characters. But no audience can fail to connect with the eagerness with which they each embrace a chance they had seemingly given up on — to slough off the obligations or trepidations that had kept each unmarried. This is no museum piece at all — see this truly great film to be reminded of our lives today.
