My Chosen Movie: Antonioni, Michelangelo - La Notte (1961): A night of encounters wondering on the streets of Milan 

Antonioni is the epitome of an auteur filmmaker, and his auteur style is inaccessible  opaqueness. (Garrif, 2007) His technique used in LA Notte was using different scenarios and landscape to express the people's strong emotion. The most impressive thing about Antonioni is he can use the element of architecture or the glass and mirror are representing something really essential such as the barrier. 

I can see that this movie is talk about something about triangle relationship, and also talking about the contrast between two different world.

Lidia, the main actress of the movie were standing between two world which are Italy's financial centre and tramp on the streets of Paris. When she is facing this huge contrast, she started to feel her own marginality. This is the reason why she start to examine her marriage and some superficial relationships .

Exquisite Alienation

Perfect Cool

Unforgettable Performance

The strategy I am going to use is A night of encounters wandering in the streets / or the world around you .

So I am going to film the night view of Hong Kong in different place to express the huge different between two place and the strong emotional by local people.

I use my phone to shoot the movie and iMovie to edit it. One is the skyscraper located in city centre, the contrast one is old archway and fishing boat. I want to use this contrast to express under the same sky one side is innovation and the other side is conservative in the same city. It also reveal the change of the time and the strong emotion between the place and people.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAtEwTwAqWw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNZwYLC6-r8

In the final version of my film, I add the background music and change the colour towards  black and white to imitate the scene in LA Notte. However, the transition of the colour change are representing the encounters moment and try to through the landscape of Hong Kong to covey the different strong emotion between people.

LA Notte by Michelangelo Antonioni is talking about a triangle relationship and talk about the contrast between two different worlds. Bonitzer states that “La Notte is not only a film in black and white, but a film about black and white, a giant chessboard on which the characters move by themselves or moved by chance, to which they offered up a desire gone dead.” (Brunette, 1998, p. 53)

The strategy used in this movie is a night of encounters wandering in the streets or the world around us. The main actress in the film, Lidia stands between two worlds: Italy’s financial centre and tramp on the streets of Paris. She realized she is facing a huge contrast, and she started to feel her marginality. This is the reason why she begins to examine her marriage and some superficial relationships. I wanted to use the architecture and the night view in Hong Kong to express local people's intense emotions and the enormous difference between the two places.

Nowadays, everyone lives in a complicated, stressful and restrained world, and people are racing against it with time and COVID-19. However, some people live peaceful, straightforward and enjoying their life with a slow pace in the same city, and the other side is that people are stressed and restricted by their life and the pandemic in contrast. I want to use the skyscrapers to represent modernism and the old archway and fishing boat to represent nostalgia. These two different things can reveal the change of the time, the big contrast between innovation and conservative these two strong emotions in the same city. Moreover, the encounter is a word with specific meaning, and it means unexpected or casual meetings with someone or something. In my movie, I want to express the encounters of prosperity and peace under the same sky, in the same city. From a bustling and noisy city to a simple and culturally old archway to shows the diversity of Hong Kong, and the conservative emotion by people under this pandemic.

Reference list:

Brunette, P. (1998). The films of Michelangelo Antonioni . Cambridge University Press.

Criterion collection. (2013, October 30). Three Reasons: La notte [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WeidpPfPk8

Garrif, D. (2007). The Psychological Landscapes of Michelangelo Antonioni (1912 – 2007). A Centenary Tribute.  https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/calendar/film/pdfs/notes/ngafilm-antonioni-notes.pdf

Hudson, E. (2016). From Orpheus to Opera – Singing about Singing in Verdi’s Il trovatore Verdi, “Tacea la notte” (Leonora), Il trovatore, Act I. Cambridge Opera Journal, 28(2), 179–182. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954586716000203