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Instant Favorite.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

An exquisitely told story of the "silhouette" nature of love -- I love you, and you're drawn to someone else.Director Lucchino Visconti has assembled a perfect cast for this Livorno, Italy-set version of the Dostoyefsky short story: Marcello Mastroianni as a lonely clerk, Maria Schell as the innocent homebody he falls for, and Jean Marais as the unnamed tenant with whom Natalia falls in love.The story is set in a magical-looking streetscape of dusky bars, lazy canals, and quaint little bridges. We share the perspective of the ready-for-love Mario as he roams the town, eager to connect. Anyone can follow a streetwalker but Mario is looking for something deep and authentic. Mastroianni is perfect in the role of a simple man on a heartfelt quest.Ms. Schell could not be more believable as a young woman so sheltered that her blind grandmother would keep their skirts pinned together. Natalia fell in love at first sight with the studly tenant, unwavering in her devotion -- despite the fact that he confides he must go away for a year -- no explanation possible. (My own theory is that he is serving a jail sentence. Yet Natalia is ready to wait, no questions asked.) What woman can't identify with this sort of hypomanic infatuation? What man or woman can't also empathize with Mario, who appreciates Natalia with every cell in his body, yet must accept she'll never return his ardor? Visconti expertly captures these poignancies."God bless you for the moment of happiness you gave me," Mario tells Natalia in the end, in an amazing bit of out-of-the-box thinking.We can't all win at love in every attempt at finding it. But we can be grateful for the richness of our experience along the way!

Luchino Visconti has created a film that tried to reflect reality as well as a dream. The premise is something right out of a dream, two people meet by chance on a bridge and then the man proceeds to try and court the women. In the beginning the film is set up with the man is a realist and the women is a dreamer. While this premise is quite interesting and has much potential it does fall short on the execution. This is mainly caused by huge tonal shifts that occur during the film. The story goes between reality and dream so suddenly and drastically that it becomes distracting. Many times it has aspects of dream and reality in the same scene and characters cycle through the dream vs reality banter many times. The narrative is consistently too melodramatic with characters overacting to situations. This becomes all the more distracting when the aesthetic of the film is both dream like and realistic. Le Notti Bianche has grand sets made replicating a whole section of a city that feels real. At the same time there is a background with clouds that never move and a full moon that never changes. While the film often has a hazy and washed out feeling it often will have a straight forward typical shot reverse shot or tracking shot as well. It just feels like an opportunity that was missed with an interesting premise with a clash between reality and dream that the narrative has problems synchronizing with the aesthetic. As always Marcello Mastroianni gives a wonderful and charismatic performance. Maria Schell as well shines in the film which is no easy task with such a one dimensional character but she makes it work and gives those looks into the camera that stops you in your tracks. Perhaps if you are more of a romantic you might be able to forgive some of the short comings a bit more since there are good performances and visuals in the film.

Luchino Visconti's 1957 film, Le Notti Bianche (White Nights), winner of the Silver Lion Award at that year's Venice Film Festival, and adapted from a Fyodor Dostoevsky story of the same name, is not quite a great film- for it lacks any great nor new ideas, but it's a very good film that uses the elaborate Hollywood style sets of that era, crafted by Enzo Eusepi on a Cinecittá sound stage that is manifestly artificial, to create a very un-Hollywoodian tale of love, especially in its seemingly dour ending for its hero. The use of these elaborate sets immediately brought to mind Woody Allen's 1991 film Shadows And Fog, and its reliance on German Expressionistic silent films, as well as the more recent cartoon The Triplets Of Belleville. This film's dependency on those roots, likewise, adds a creepiness and dark undertone to the seemingly straight Romantic tale the film tells…. as easily as the film could have descended into trite and hyperbolic melodrama, it is all the more admirable for its restraint- shown in the screenplay, the acting, directing, lighting, and many other aspects. It only gives us the bare essentials. It never overloads the viewer with information that could heighten the realism while muting the drama. There are only small moments depicted- even in the more elaborate mugging and dance scenes. There is one charming scene, especially, where we see Mario being swooned over by some young women through a glass window, and one writes Ciao to him in the mist upon the pane, that lets us know that, despite being the loser on this night, he will triumph in the end. Yes, love may be blind, and cruelly so, for Mario is blinded by Natalia- the more he tries to sound practical in his dissuasions to her the more he is smitten by her Romantic fortitude; Natalia by the tenant- the more he is absent the more she desires him; and the tenant by his mysteries- whatever they are, but this film is about life, and- in the end, most of life is not deep. The film ends realistically in its lack of profundity. Love stinks, but life goes on, to merge two clichés into a newer one. But, the fact that a cliché exists does not alter it, nor make it less real a truth. It's only how one applies the truth, or cliché, to one's future endeavors that matters.The film, within itself and without, exists a bit outside of time. There is a sense that time is distorted, for we sense Mario and Natalia's budding intimacy could not have been achieved in a mere four day period. It's as if the film has distorted time, compressed it, to heighten the drama, yet the viewer accepts this because the film never presses too strongly on other points- it never screeches loudly its posits nor plaints of the cosmos. Visconti alternately called this film Neo-Romantic and Neo-Intimist, but it is really more Neo-Fantasist, if anything, for it is too realistic in tone to be neo-Romantic, and too archetypal to be Neo-Intimist. I generally reject such –isms, so will call it simply a damned good tale. If you need more of a marker than that to go and see it, then you are more lost and prone to fantasy than this film's characters, although even less likely to get your reward. And this verity is precisely why films like this are made.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a writer I've gotten into heavily recently, and I couldn't be happier to have seen Luchino Visconti's adaptation of his short story (not yet read by me) as the first. The very essential, human search for happiness with a one true love, that those who may not have much money may at least find some kind of relief from the world in each other's company, is at the heart of Dostoyevksy's stories. And while often filled with sorrow, decay, and with enough melodrama to sink a ship, this spirit is then given catharsis when the good that comes in through the dark times it's something to really cling to. Visconti has his own style already taking on Dostoyevsky's work, and I wondered going into it if the director of another great adaptation, Ossessione, could pull it off. For me, it may even be better than that film; Le Notti Bianche gives us characters who are not overly complicated or with nefarious desires. If anything, these are the kinds of characters that I wish were in movies more often, flaws and all.Marcello Mastroianni is also, for me, a really pleasant surprise seeing him in this film. Regrettably the only films I've seen him in are the early ones he made with Fellini, where his persona is cool, detached, and he could do his ultra suave &/or depressed and unchained characters effortlessly. With the character of Mario, Mastroianni is playing just an ordinary guy, with a low paying job and nothing special going for him in life. But if nothing else he is what most women in real life would look for in men, with compassion, sensitivity, but also sensible and with some of the minor flaws of being a nice guy. With the character of Natalia, Mario meets a woman whom he falls for hard, and wants to see again after a chance encounter. Maria Schnell is perfect against Mastroianni, as she has that kind of face and look in her eye (for lack of a better comparison) of any given American melodrama, only a bit more genuine. She's basically been waiting, as she tells, for a year for the man who will whisk her away from all of her troubles. But will he? Will Mario come through on a letter? What happens through the course of an unsure night? Visconti poises these two against a backdrop completely staged, brilliantly in fact, and shot by the great Giussepe Rotunno with the kind of visual splendor that in its own way is on par with Visconti's the Leopard. It's not filmed in the real world, and the melodrama in the film is that of a very cinematic- or maybe theatrical- nature, but because it's an ultimately believable one the atmosphere gets heightened. Topped with Nino Rota's elegant score, many a wide shot shows Mario and Natalia on their walks along the streets, and then the close-ups work just as well. Best of all is a quasi ice breaker of Visconti's by doing a dance number in a bar, adding a sweet, if dated, levity that acts as the last mark before the story turns, and turns some more. What drew me in most about Le Notti Bianchi is how Visconti makes this a story of pure emotions, but one that is not at all sappy or trashy or whatever. Like with many of Dostoyevsky's characters, even through their misguided wants and feelings and the sense of anguish that may come to them (or not), we care about them. If ever a director, who started in neo-realistic roots, took a 180 and made it just as dramatically satisfying, it's here. One of the best films of 1957.