Why Do I Hate This Movie I Loved? by Sam Nivola

A couple months ago, my girlfriend and I took a trip to the Film Forum for a romantic escape from the misery that is New York summer heat to treat ourselves to Marcelo Mastroianni’s breakout performance in Visconti’s White Nights. It was fantastic, which I’ll provide more detail on later, but it reminded me so much of a film that I had seen a year or two ago called Four Nights of a Dreamer by Bresson. No wonder, both films are based on the same nineteenth-century novel – White Nights by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Dostoyevsky’s work has been an undeniable source of inspiration for filmmakers. From much farther-flung realms than Russia, his work has served as a blueprint for films like The Idiot by Japan’s Kurosawa, Nastasya by Poland’s Andrzej Wajda, Crime and Punishment by Austria (and USA)’s Josef von Sternberg, and even films as universally adored as Taxi Driver. 

Strangely, every single one of these directors, bar Bresson, has something in common: they are expressionists. At least in my very humble opinion, these directors are famous, by and large, for their expansive sets, their romantic storytelling, their movie magic. The exception, of course, is Bresson, whose style I would describe as poetic but inward-facing – quiet, unsettling. 

The only film in the above list that I can confidently say left no impact on me, one that I truly had to wrack my brain in order to recall the name of when I was reminded of it after the screening of White Nights, is Bresson’s Four Nights of a Dreamer. Bresson, being a filmmaker whose body of work in general I find just as enrapturing as the next verging-on-pretentious Criterion-subscription-haver would, didn’t do it for me like Visconti did, at least not when it comes to his transmutation of White Nights.

I’d love to figure out why I felt so differently about these two films, and as someone with a fair knowledge of film history and absolutely no knowledge of Russian literature, I find myself uniquely qualified to offer commentary on both. 

Firstly, I’ll give my take on the Russian. White Nights, for those who haven’t read it or seen the movies, concerns itself with a young man, often referred to in the novel as ‘the dreamer’, who finds a young woman, Nastenka, on a bridge in St. Petersburg in the middle of the night. After some conversation, he discovers that she spends most nights on this very bridge waiting for an old lover to reappear. Her longing for his return feels hopeful, but sad and potentially misguided. The dreamer repeatedly reminds her that the odds of this man coming back seem slim, and she seems to be pining for a fantastical impossibility. The dreamer creates an illusion of his own, as his name might imply, imagining a world in which she falls for him, projecting his loneliness and turning Nastenka into the answer to all of his problems in impassioned speeches that aim to convince Nastenka to abandon her seemingly ridiculous faith in this mystery man’s return. Nastenka entertains the dreamer as a friend, and a distraction from her endless hours of waiting. She eventually even expresses feelings for him, though she remains clear that her interest in the dreamer couldn’t possibly come close to her love for the mystery man. The novel’s final act involves, you guessed it, the return of said mystery-man, leaving the dreamer alone. The dreamer, however, reflects that he is in fact happy to have even had a few days to live in such a beautiful fantasy. 

Tonally, Dostoyevsky’s novel feels very similar to how falling in love feels. It’s back and forth, incredibly fickle, incredibly complex. Both characters seem to be in a constant state of change, convincing themselves that they are in love, and then convincing themselves that there’s no such thing in bouts of self-preservatory realism. This is what I love about the story; its back-and-forth chaos reflects everything eternal and true about how love exists in the world, and the human mind's vast power to project love onto others.

Visconti, I think, would agree with me. He leans arguably even further into the chaos of love than Dostoyevsky did, directing his (absolutely brilliant) actors to perform with no inhibitions, often coming off as insane – for what is insanity if not waiting on a bridge every night and expecting different results – which makes the point even clearer that youth and love are simultaneously ridiculous and beautiful. 

Visconti’s set design serves a similar purpose. Having been one of the preeminent pioneers of the Italian Neorealist movement, which prioritized non-actors, location shoots, and subject matter pertaining to the misery of the economic downturn in Italy following the war, Visconti’s style changed drastically as he aged. White Nights, unlike his earlier neorealist films, was shot almost entirely on pre-constructed sets in CineCittà studios in Rome, miles away from the dreamy bridges of Venice where it’s set. The sets are huge and have a magical feeling, like Harry Potter. This, of course, is intentional. He wanted the world to feel made up, or dreamed up, if you will. 

Therein lies the biggest difference between White Nights the book and White Nights the movie. Dostoyevsky seemed to be concerned with the rapid transference between blissful dream and harsh reality that occurs when one falls in love. Visconti, on the other hand, was a filmmaker, not an author, and understood from his neorealist days that reality can, in certain cases, be boring. He managed to contain Dostoyevsky’s back and forth within one big visual dream, one that was fantastical enough to make you smile, and to make even the most heartwrenching scenes feel melancholically happy.  

Bresson wasn’t having any of that. He took the story of White Nights, but left behind everything that brought its characters to life. Onto his characters, Bresson imprinted a reserved stoicism that makes every character feel like a serial killer. The keen-eyed viewer will even realize that the dreamer’s only friend throughout the film was imaginary, dreamed up, which gives one an incredibly uncanny feeling. The motive, I imagine, is to show how the 70s paid the bill for the 60s. 

Four Nights of a Dreamer, on this second watch, felt more about loneliness than love. I don’t think Dostoyevsky was writing about loneliness. I think he was writing about a lonely man, falling in love, and realizing that even a few days of love’s warm embrace can fuel your dreams for a lifetime. Bresson’s point was simply that it’s a lonely, lonely world. 

In an interview recorded in 1972, Bresson said, ’I’ve started to believe that our society is infected and unapproachable.’ The interviewer, a Monsieur Régent, asked Bresson about his choice of focusing on nature, the Seine, buildings, still lifes, while the actors speak in monotone: ‘you permit Nature, if we can say, to “act”, which is an ability you deny your actors.’ 

Bresson’s response: ‘Yes, because acting is a thing that will inevitably be eradicated. We know very well that, a few years from now, actors will not exist, at least in films that’ll be worth something… Just as people reproach me for making my actors speak in a tone that is false, I reproach the theater actors for speaking in a tone far more false, and for bringing that tone into the cinema.’ I imagine Bresson was unimpressed by the boundlessly energetic and boy-like Mastroianni, bouncing around onscreen, literally peacocking for his crush, funny dances and all. 

Bresson’s disdain for those dumb enough to follow my career path is abundantly clear. Despite being really charmed by Bresson’s book about cinematography, I disagree with this disdain. I feel that what is so awesome about movies, and what drew me to a career in them, is the collaboration, the fact that one needs actors and directors, and grips and costume designers and caterers and ADs, etc. in order to create a movie. Visconti’s White Nights just simply doesn’t work without Maria Schell’s wild eyes or Marcello Mastroianni’s wry smile. Bresson’s films weren’t films in the same way; they were poems, stemming from a single mind that imprinted his ‘vision’ onto a cast and a crew.

In writing this short essay, however, I reminded myself of how I felt the first time I saw Four Nights of a Dreamer, years before I knew of its association with Dostoyevsky and its place within a tradition of adaptations that included Visconti’s White Nights. I actually loved it. The shots really did move me, and even if the emotions I felt are less obvious than the explosive euphoria evoked by good acting, they made me feel something. Uneasiness, ennui, a focus on objects that made me realize humanity isn’t necessarily at the center of the universe. It’s hard to watch a Bresson movie and not feel something, whether that something is positive or negative. 

I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that art will always exist within the context of other art. IN A GOOD WAY! Even if watching White Nights once in between my two viewings of Four Nights of a Dreamer ultimately left me with a disdain for Bresson, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I won’t watch it again in another few years and read back over this essay with an audible scoff. 

Dostoyevsky’s White Nights let me watch the same movie twice in a completely different context, making it feel like a whole new movie. When it feels like one has seen every movie that’s worth seeing – you can always treat yourself to watching them again!