Part of the Picture: Made For Each Other
MADE FOR EACH OTHER
FEB 28, 2009 – THE TRUE BOY-MEETS-GIRL MOMENT in White Nights occurs the morning after boy has met girl, on a bridge, and after they’ve set up some sort of date. Mario (Marcello Mastroianni) is sipping a cup of coffee at a local bar, when, through the misted glass doors, he sees Natalia (Maria Schell). She freezes upon sighting him, then breaks into a run. He follows her. She looks back and runs even faster. Her hat falls. She picks it up and ducks hysterically into a courtyard beyond an open door. She looks around, past a few children at play, and squeezes herself into a chicken coop, sending the indignant birds into a greater state of agitation than she’s clearly in. A matronly woman enters the picture, demanding, “Who’s scaring the chickens? Go on, kids! Off to bed!”
She sees Natalia inside the coop. She raises her voice, “What are you doing in the hen house? Get out of there! Can’t you see you’re scaring the hens? They’ll stop laying! Out!” Natalia steps out and offers a feeble protest. “Excuse me, I was looking for…” The matron grunts, “In the hen-house, at this hour?” Natalia quickly alters her story. “No one, thanks. I’ve an appointment here.” The matron follows her, stating with finality, “I have to close up.” Natalia begs, “May I stay here a moment? Outside, there’s someone who might bother me.” And as if on cue, Mario joins them. Natalia squeals to the matron, “He follows me all the time and I don’t…” Mario doesn’t want to listen any more. He leaves in a huff.
And now it’s Natalia’s turn to run after him. She catches up and begins to explain, “Please don’t take offence. There is a reason, I assure you.” He’s upset. “Listen, maybe I’m indiscreet, rude, but if you didn’t want to see me, all you had to do was say so. What do you take me for? What?” She continues to soothe his wounded pride and honour. “Don’t take offence. Yesterday evening, I made a mistake, that’s all. I behaved like a little girl. It’s been on my mind all day. ‘I wonder what he thinks of me? That I’m a girl who accepts a date with the first guy she meets?’ You didn’t think this, did you?” He turns away and lies to her. “I didn’t think anything at all.”
But Natalia senses the truth. “Oh, yes you did! And you were right. But since I’m not like that, the easiest way to prove it to you was not to show up.” Mario is as baffled by this logic as we are. He asks incredulously, “Where? In the place where we’d agreed to meet? At the very same time?” She replies, “But I just had to go there.” Mario counters, “Really? But you obviously didn’t want my company. So, I apologise and wish you good night!” He walks away. Natalia smiles and says, “There wouldn’t be anything wrong in your keeping me company now.” Mario turns. “Excuse me?” Natalia continues, “I mean, if we got to know each other and became friends.”
In one of the greatest understatements of the time, Mario muses, “You’re an odd sort, you know?” He adds, “What can I do if we met by chance and there’s no one around even now to assure you I’m not a rogue?” She replies, “I already realised that. If I fix an appointment with you, you’re entitled to think…” He completes her sentence, “That it was a date. Okay, I don’t think that.” Natalia is concerned about his curt manner. “Are you cross with me.” He replies, most unconvincingly, “Me? Not a bit!” Natalia enquires, “You really didn’t think that?” He shakes his head. She sighs with relief. “Then everything’s fine. We can take care of the rest.”
And as if setting eyes on him for the very first time, she announces, “My name’s Natalia.” She holds out a hand. He clasps it. Over the handshake, she requests, “Now, tell me everything about yourself. Who are you? What do you do? Tell me your story. It’ll be as if we’d always been friends!” An understandably confused Mario replies, “My story? But I don’t have a story to tell.” She laughs. “How have you managed to live up to now without a story? You must have someone, a family… Even if very small, like mine. I’ve only an elderly grandmother. Elderly and almost blind. All the others left. The first to leave was my father. It was so long ago that I don’t remember him.”
Natalia breathlessly continues to lay bare to this stranger the most personal aspects of her life. “Then my mother left with someone who wasn’t my father.” She laughs. “So now, my grandmother, for fear that I’d get into trouble, and seeing she’s almost blind and couldn’t follow me, sometimes took a pin and attached my skirt to hers!” If Mario is beginning to understand that her loneliness, her lack of age-appropriate human contact, is behind her skittish behaviour and her obviously warped sense of reality, he doesn’t let on. Natalia concludes, “It’s true! Don’t you believe me? It’s what happened. But don’t laugh at my grandmother. I love her all the same. But we weren’t talking about me. You were supposed to tell me who you are, what you do, how you live…”
Mario catches her arm, apparently having decided that her interest in him has been revived. “We’ll have plenty of time for this. Why don’t we decide, first, where we’ll go? It’s too late for the movies now and anyhow, you can’t talk there.” And she looks at the bridge and says sadly, “I thought you’d understood. I have to go back there. I’m expecting someone.” That’s the third inexplicable mood change of the day, and that would be the point a sane person would count his blessings and walk away. But Mario is lonely too. When Natalia requests his company while she waits, he smiles. “With pleasure! It’s an honour!” Of course, he doesn’t know that the man they’re waiting for is her lover. But that wouldn’t matter anyway. A non-date with a slightly daft woman is a small price to pay for some age-appropriate human contact.
Le Notti Bianche (1957, Italian; aka White Nights). Directed by Luchino Visconti. Starring Maria Schell, Marcello Mastroianni, Jean Marais.
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I haven’t seen White Nights, but I’m curious to know how different was SLB’s vision, except for the most obvious ‘blue’ fairty-tale like setting. After being very disappointed to learn later how scenes in Black were lifted totally from The Miracle Worker, I’m curious to know if any such thing happened here.
BTW, I didn’t hate Saawariya as most other people did. In fact, barring a few reservations, I quite liked it.
Sorry to go off-the-topic, but Please do try watching Siddhatha – the Prisoner, just in case You haven’t. I am sure Many other of your readers just like me would like to know your opinion about it.
This is from Dostoevsky’s “White Nights” right?? I didn’t know there was a movie adaptation of it.
Aditya Pant: Visconti too sets his film on a soundstage, but I think SLB’s version better captures the madness of the romance. Because despite the artifice of the setting, White Nights still has the traces of neorealism that Visconti hadn’t fully let go at this point, and there is a sense of a “real” story (as opposed to a tragic fairy tale set in an obvious never-never-land). So when the tenant (the Salman character) takes the girl’s family to ‘The Barber of Seville’ and later, when Mario and Natalia go to a bar where people are dancing to Bill Haley and the Comets, there is a distinct “bridge” between the old world (opera) and the new world (rock ‘n’ roll). The bridge that Natalia is standing on becomes a very literal metaphor between the static, timeless world (i.e. waiting for an idealised lover) versus a world that has moved on (i.e. Mario, who can provide her the companionship she so craves).
But in SLB’s case, the opera equivalent is ‘Mughal-e-Azam’ and the rock equivalent is the title song (Saawariya, which Ranbir uses to serenade Sonam). So both are from the same source (a “cinematic” source), which gives the impression that everything (and everyone) is trapped in the same quicksand — the same world of deliberately constructed artifice (which is just another name for the cinema) — with no escape in sight. To me, this worked better in capturing the doomed romanticism of Dostoevsky’s purple prose. This is a story where “realism” has no place.
B.H.Harsh: Never heard of it. Will look out.
Upashana: Yup. Visconti was apparently a huge admirer of Dostoevsky. (You can see traces of ‘Crime and Punishment’ in ‘Rocco and his Brothers,’ which I wrote about last week.)
Marcello!
I don’t know, I agree that SLB’s was the more romantic take on the story (in fact, I like Saawariya much better in retrospect than I ever did at first glance) but I much prefer Visconti’s version. Perhaps that’s just cinematic taste or my deep love for Mastroianni speaking.
Actually, I do know – it’s the acting. Ranbir and Sonam are likeable kids but they were so bloody annoying, esp towards the latter half when they’d meet up with each other. I think the sequence with Salman Khan and Sonam, their backstory, was much more riveting than when Ranbir and Sonam were together. Similarly, Ranbir when he was by himself was infinitely more riveting.
It’s the direct opposite in White Nights. When Mastroianni and Schell are together, they draw you into their weird relationship. You want to see them together, you want to know if she will react to him the way you do (because he’s Marcello! Come ON!). By the time the movie ends, you feel like you’ve been put through the wringer too.
Besides stray dog > deflated football anyday!
I like what you make of the airlessness of Saawariya – your understanding of it as intentional makes sense.
On the horizon as you may know – a third movie inspired by White Nights – Two Lovers, it’s playing here (NY) now and liked by the good movie writers. It looks as if it’s a man and two women.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1103275/
Nice insights with you comments. I like your observation about the bridge between two worlds, though I would argue that Mario seems as uncomfortable in this “new world” as Maria. And yes, it’s true that the overall gestalt of the SLB version captures the feeing of Doestoevsky’s story better – which reflects the intense, disorienting experience of the White Nights phenomena in St. Petersburg . I agree with you that this is not a place for “realism” so the obvious artifice of the sets is appropriate. However where SLB goes wrong in contrast to the Viscounti version is the main character – in the story and in this film, he is isolated, alienated – in SLB’s version, he is a rather happy-go-lucky fellow – when the girl leaves him, it is not as devastating for his character as it is for the Mastrionni character here and certainly not as soul-crushing as for the character in the Dostoevsky version.
Amrita: “in fact, I like Saawariya much better in retrospect than I ever did at first glance” – don’t you? I caught it a second time, and it did play much better than it did the first time around. As for the two versions, I thought Schell was as “annoying” as Sonam. That’s the character. But I agree MM was far superior to Ranbir, whose performance, though confident and impressive for a first film, is a little too “busy” (though that’s probably SLB’s doing). Another thing I like about the Hindi version is the prostitute’s role, which is a mere walk-on in the Italian film. Here, she becomes some sort of conscience (a cliche, yes, but when done well, cliches do work).
Virginia: “Airlessness” – yes, the exact word. I think I used the phrase “hermetically sealed” in my review. And I’ve been meaning to catch Two Lovers. I’m a huge fan of James Gray.
zasu: The happy-go-lucky youth vs. the careworn man, for me, didn’t make all that much of a difference in terms of feeling for the characters. I wasn’t invested in either of them. They were both simply pawns in an elaborate scheme. But yes, as Ranbir interacted with a lot of other people and forged a lot of loving relationships, his loneliness aspect wasn’t as evident as with the case of Marcello, who barely had any other human contact through the film.
hey i wanted to talk about oscars !!
Dude.. this is such a lovely piece .. *dashing to grab a copy of White Nights*
I guess I’ll also take a look at Saawariya now, if it’s not the flotsam that most people consider it to be