Metrograph

Novelist Giovanni Pontano (Marcello Mastroianni) is the toast of the Italian literary scene, but smothered by the trappings of success. His misery weighs heavily on his wife, Lidia (Jeanne Moreau), already carrying her own cargo of existential anguish. In the course of a day and a night—spent at a hospital sickroom, a book launch, a nightclub, and a party at an industrialist’s villa, where Giovanni flirts extensively with the host’s daughter, Valentina (Monica Vitti)—the couple must come to terms with the extinction of the love that once existed between them… or not? A film steeped in despair but thrilling in its adventurous, architectonic use of the cinematic medium, from its opening credits—an avant-jazz/musique concrète overture accompanying the industrialized Milanese cityscape—to its beguiling final scene.

Distributor: Rialto Pictures