In La Notte (1961), Marcello Mastroianni played Giovanni Pontano, a successful Milanese writer who spends one long night with his wife, played by Jeanne Moreau, as their marriage quietly unravels. Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, the film is a study in modern alienation, and Mastroianni’s restrained performance is its still centre.
Giovanni is charming, intelligent and emotionally absent, and Mastroianni plays him without ever asking for sympathy. The film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, and it confirmed Mastroianni as an actor who could carry a film of ideas, not just of plot. In La Notte, his famous smile is present, but it no longer quite reaches his eyes.