Another entry into Antonioni’s film canon of existential contemplation, this time heavier on the absurdism. Antonioni’s male lead, Marcello Mastriani, begins to realize his struggle in an existential world, whereas the male leads of Antonioni’s prior two films, Il Grido and L’Avventura, where less self-aware and struggling to realize this fate.

Pieces of this film are beautiful, from the cinematography to the female leads, but as a whole it misses reaching the gestalt-like motion and poetry of L’Avventura and Il Grido. Additionally, the ending was problematic from the standpoint that it too closely parallels the end of L’Avventura. It is possible to envision Sandro and Claudia in L’Avventura becoming married and their fate eventually becoming that of Giovanni and Lidia in La Notte. There is a degree of redundancy in these two endings that is extraneous to the struggle or “adventure” of these films.