Le Notti Bianche

Mario knows nobody in the city he has just moved to. One night he sees a woman crying on a canal bridge. Natalia is waiting for a man who left a year ago; he promised to come back and she waits on the same bridge every night. Mario tries to make her forget him and then becomes part of the waiting himself. The story runs across four nights. Luchino Visconti directed and wrote it with Suso Cecchi d'Amico, from Dostoevsky's novella White Nights. Marcello Mastroianni plays Mario, Maria Schell plays Natalia and Jean Marais plays the man she is waiting for. Visconti moved the action from the canals of tsarist Petersburg to the back streets of Livorno in the fifties. The striking decision is the setting: rather than shoot in the real Livorno he rebuilt an entire district of the city in minute detail on a soundstage at Cinecittà in Rome. The streets, the bridge and the snow are all constructed. That one of the directors who established neorealism's habit of shooting in the street should choose this is still argued about. There are many adaptations of the Dostoevsky story; Visconti's is the most cited and has the most loyal following. Who it is for: viewers who like atmosphere built on a stage and literary adaptation. Who it is not for: anyone after realism. The film takes place in a deliberately artificial world and never hides that it is a set.