A NIGHT FULL OF RAIN (THE END OF THE WORLD IN OUR USUAL BED IN A NIGHT FULL OF RAIN)

Italy, 1978, 104 minutes, Colour.
Giancarlo Giannini, Candice Bergen, Michael Tucker, Massimo Wertmüller, Anne Byrne Hoffmann.
Directed by Lina Wertmüller.

A Night Full of Rain was written and directed by Lina Wertmüller. A vigorous director, she made a number of films in the 1970s about social concerns in her native Italy. They include Mimi the Metalworker, Seven Beauties (with the evocation of World War Two and the concentration camps) and Swept Away. These were only the brief titles – there was always a long subtitle.

Giancarlo Giannini appeared in many of her films at this period. He portrays a journalist, a communist journalist, who is attracted by an American (Candice Bergen) and when she returns to California, pursues her to San Francisco.

The film has a lot of discussion, reflection on social issues, a leftist perspective.

The film is interesting in looking at the work of Lina Wertmüller and her particular contribution to Italian cinema and social concern. It is also interesting as reflecting some of the intellectual and political discussion in western countries, Europe and the United States, in the 1970s.

1. Audience interest in and response to the work of Lina Wertmuller? This film in comparison with her wider political works? Her frequent use of Giancarlo Giannini and his range of performances? The director and the Italian star working in English? How successfully bridging the various culture gaps and language gaps? An Italian feminist director portraying Italy and contrasting it with the United States? Audience expectations and fulfilment?

2. The techniques of the film, polish and style? The portrait of things Italian and the contrast with the look at the world of San Francisco? The importance of the musical score and its range, the initial modern music for the mood of the house, the use of more romantic and classical themes, opera?

3. The background credits and the long track through the house and the continued use of photos, especially of the Italian past? The significance of photos, memory? The lesser use of the contemporary photos especially of the wife? The significance of the title? the use of night and its darkness, waiting for the dawn? The use of so much rain? So many sequences at night and in the rain especially the long final fight and reconciliation? The impact of the rain and its feeling sense? The significance of the phrase 'in our usual bed'? The presentation of the courtship, marriage? The long final sequence in the usual bed, love-making, fight, break-up, reconciliation and the finale? The tone of the end of the world? The last times, floods and deluges? The background of the ills of the present, ecology, the Vietnamese War, the bankruptcy of church and society? Signs of an end of the world? The political background of fascism, communism, fashionable bourgeois living? Morals, marriage and family? The overtones at the end of the hymn Dies Irae and The Day of the Lord? Drowning and dying in rain? The deluge and the end of the world? The possibilities of rain purifying and cleansing and a new phase of the world?

4. The Italian focus? the picture of Italian society especially in the long opening sequence in the village and the South, the political background especially with reference to the communists and the clash with fascists? The traditions of Italian religion and art especially as presented in the statuary, the processions and their detail, ritual, the churches and paintings and statuary and plaster? The comment that Italy was gorgeous but there was not enough money to run it? The influence of the traditions on the contemporary Italian? On the Italian male and his sense of supremacy and pride? How well was this contrasted with the American focus? The world of journalists, the Vietnamese War and the revolutions of the sixties, the fights, causes, abuses, for example with Calley and the massacres, American manners? The place of men in Italian society, American? The dominance of the American woman? The potential for clashes? How did the comparison of Italian and American highlight the strengths and weaknesses of both? How much insight did this contrast provide?

5. The significance of the chorus of friends? As a cinematic device and its being highly contrived? Distancing the audience or involving them more in understanding the central couple? Their being within the minds of the protagonists, within their house? The way the friends talked to the wife with their incessant chatter, suggesting interpretations of married life and behaviour? The way they talked to Paolo and disturbed him? The men and their comments on women to Paolo? The women and their suspicions in the way they talked to his wits? Her seeing them squashed within the mirror? As realistic friends, as types, as Fellini type grotesques, as aspects of the shadow side of man and woman, the complementary side, saving or destructive? Their enjoying what they watched, the way they observed, the way they entered into the action, their tempting and corrupting, their comments? Their personalities in themselves and the way they spoke, appeared, looked at the audience and at the couple? The use of dress, make-up? Society chatter? Their moral presuppositions?

6. The presentation of Italy? The procession and the long attention given to it, the look of the Italian town, the people? The contrast with the modern observers? The fight during the procession and the implications of the American girl going to the rescue and having to be rescued by the Italian male? People's reaction, the chase? So much time spent on them wandering the building? Paolo trapping her? The talk of 1968, American attitudes? Paolo's attempts to seduce her? Her succumbing and his accusing her of sentimentality and her reaction? The value of such a long introduction to the characters and Italy?

7. How did this give the feel for the rest of the film? The contrast with the United States, journalists, the Calley trial, the talk about America? Paolo and his encountering her again, watching and pursuing her, watching her dance and kissing her boy friend? The build-up to the fight on the lawn? His being released on bail and her finally realizing that they loved each other? The significance of this reconciliation happening in the rain? The location of their memories as the wife reminisced in flashback glimpses on the usual bed? The context of ten years of married life?

8. The transition of the screenplay to the seventies, their being established in their work, marriage? Their daughter? The significance of the daughter's wanting to see her father and understand him sexually? and the ironic comment about her young friend? Her presence in the house? Paolo not understanding her? The aspect of the American mother bringing up her daughter to be uninhibited? Her place in the family? How had they developed as a family? The importance of their being in the aunt's house? The significance of Paolo's visit to his aunt? her reading from the article about women? The camera and Paolo's eye ranging over her room and looking at all the photos and the significance of the past? Its place in the present? His aunt's age and the significance of the generations?

9. The film's comment on careers? Paolo and his writing? His wife and her interest in feminism and its implications? His suspicions?

10. The finale of the film on the one night and so much attention being given to it? How well did the screenplay develop the dramatics? Their going to bed and its being an ordinary night, working, reading, being tired? Paolo's nightmare and its significance especially as regards death? The love-making and its earthiness and sweatiness? The wife's reaction and her wanting to end their love-making (and the friend's comment on the number of times they had made love in 10 years?), the discussion about love-making and the alternative ways, novelty? The men friends warning Paolo about women being whores? The women making his wife suspicious? Her getting the wine and the possibility of their dialogue? Suspicions growing? Her taunting him about the lover and his Italian violent reaction? The decisions about packing and going? The physical violence of the fight around the room?
Moving outside into the rain, the humour of the locked car? The pursuit in the streets? The continued fighting and the bashing at the glass? The effect of such violence and hatred within their love on each of them? The possibility of returning home and reconciliation?

11. Audience response to the dominant Italian male attitudes towards fidelity, sexuality, the male assertion and female submission? The contrast with the attitudes of the American woman? Where did the director's sympathies lie?

12. What kind of peace did such a love/hate encounter and struggle achieve? Would either leave? Their care for each other, tenderness? The ending in the usual bed? Union, looking out together? The tones of the Dies Irae as the rain fell?

13. The themes of man and woman and their identity, relationship? Presuppositions about the quality of this relationship? The importance of the theme of mutual respect rather than male attitudes towards women as whores and women being suspicious and untrusting?

14. The theme of Italy being gorgeous but there not being enough money to run it?

15. The director's attitude towards religion, the Catholic Church. its status, its emphasis in the past on suffering and pain, masks? The observers finding it laughable? Its influence on the Italian countryside and people? Plaster and decay? Gorgeous homes and beauties? The importance of the confessional and the conversation about it and the sexual overtones? The nature of prayer etc.? Insight into Italian Catholicism?

16. Insight into the United States, the visual presentation of San Francisco as contrast to Italy? Capitalism, war? Police?

17. The importance of the contrast between Europe and the United States and the insight?

18. The importance of the large range of photographs used and the comment on the Italian and the American past and its influence or lack of influence, relevance or irrelevance to the present?

19. How real a world was this? How authentic, how contrived? The couple as symbol? The great range of symbols used throughout the film? The importance of the film being made by a woman and a woman's interpretation of Italian society, America, the relationships of love and hate between man and woman?