Luchino Visconti

Le notti bianche

Le notti bianche

Marcello Mastroianni, as a lonely city transplant, and Maria Schell, as a sheltered girl haunted by a lover’s promise, meet by chance on a canal bridge and begin a tentative romance that quickly entangles them in a web of longing and self-delusion. Luchino Visconti’s Le notti bianche, an exquisite adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s “White Nights,” translates this romantic, shattering tale of two restless souls into a ravishing black-and-white dream.

Film Info

  • Italy
  • 1957
  • 101 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.66:1
  • Italian
  • Spine #296

Special Features

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno
  • Interviews with screenwriter Suso Cecchi D’Amico, film critics Laura Delli Colli and Lino Miccichè, cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, and costume designer Piero Tosi
  • New audio recording of Dostoyevsky’s “White Nights,” also downloadable as an MP3
  • Rare screen-test footage of Mastroianni and Schell
  • Original theatrical trailer
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • Plus: a new essay by film scholar Geoffrey Nowell-Smith

    New cover by Lucien S. Y. Yang

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno
  • Interviews with screenwriter Suso Cecchi D’Amico, film critics Laura Delli Colli and Lino Miccichè, cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, and costume designer Piero Tosi
  • New audio recording of Dostoyevsky’s “White Nights,” also downloadable as an MP3
  • Rare screen-test footage of Mastroianni and Schell
  • Original theatrical trailer
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • Plus: a new essay by film scholar Geoffrey Nowell-Smith

    New cover by Lucien S. Y. Yang
Le notti bianche
Cast
Marcello Mastroianni
Mario
Maria Schell
Natalia
Jean Marais
Lodger
Clara Calamai
Prostitute
Credits
Director
Luchino Visconti
Producer
Franco Cristaldi
Screenplay
Suso Cecchi D’Amico
Cinematography
Luchino Visconti
From the story by
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Cinematography
Giuseppe Rotunno
Editing
Mario Serandrei
Music
Nino Rota
Art direction
Mario Chiari
Set designer
Enzo Eusepi

Current

Visconti and Mastroianni in Paris

Big Theater

Visconti and Mastroianni in Paris

The Cinémathèque Française celebrates the work of Luchino Visconti with four weeks of retrospective screenings, including this presentation of Le notti bianche.

Remembering Suso Cecchi D’Amico
Remembering Suso Cecchi D’Amico
The great, beloved screenwriter Suso Cecchi D’Amico died this past weekend at the age of ninety-six. A longtime collaborator of Luchino Visconti’s (they’re pictured together above), including on the epic The Leopard (1963), Cecchi D’Amico wor…

By Antonio Monda