La prima notte di quiete (1972)

Director:

Valerio Zurlini

Writers:

Enrico Medioli (writer)
Valerio Zurlini (writer)

Release Date:

November 1978 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

In Italy, the gambler and professor of poetry Daniele Dominici arrives in the seaside town of Rimini...

Cast

Alain Delon	...	Daniele Dominici
Sonia Petrovna	...	Vanina Abati (as Sonia Petrova)
Lea Massari	...	Monica
Giancarlo Giannini	...	Giorgio Mosca aka 'Spider'
Renato Salvatori	...	Marcello
Alida Valli	...	Marcella Abati - Vanina's mother
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Patrizia Adiutori	...	Valeria
Liana Del Balzo	...	Signora Dominici, Daniele's mother
Roberto Lande
Carla Mancini	...	Female Student
Adalberto Maria Merli	...	Gerardo Favani
Sandro Moretti	...	Leo Montanari
Fabrizio Moroni	...	Fabrizio Romani - student
Krista Nell	...	Martine - the girl reading Daniele's palm
Salvo Randone	...	Professor Porra
Nicoletta Rizzi	...	Elvira

Also Known As:

Il professore (Italy) (working title)
Indian Summer (USA)
Le professeur (France)
The Professor (USA) (festival title)

Runtime:

Hungary:105 min | France:105 min | West Germany:90 min | Argentina:125 min

Country:

Italy | France

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Argentina:16 | Finland:K-16

Filming Locations:

Rimini, Emilia-Romagna, Italy

Company:

Mondial Televisione Film

Soundtrack:

You Gotta Have Love in Your Heart

Alain Delon and Giancarlo Giannini at their best in a fantastically photographed forgotten masterpiece

This is forgotten Italian master Valerio Zurlini's third best film after "Family Diary" and "Le Soldattese." It features one of Alain Delon's very best performances and an equally good supporting one from Giancarlo Giannini. Delon plays a hard-drinking and gambling professor of poetry who is fascinated by the sullenness of a beautiful student(Sonia Petrovna) and gradually falls in love with her. He finds out through his gambling buddies that she is involved in a pornography-prostitution operation of some kind. Zurlini's great film uses a slightly over-the-top melodramatic style to delve deep into the existentialist despair of Delon's character as he hangs around the discos of a very liberal and swinging early '70s post-sexual-revolution Italy, depressed by all the empty people around him desperately trying to distract themselves any way they can. The underlying Antonioni-like theme of people trying to distract themselves and merge into a crowd rather than individuate and painfully grow is very similar to that of "Desert of the Tartars," a film that couldn't be more different than "The Professor" on the surface. Dario Di Palma's deep-focus color cinematography in this film is one of the most breathtakingly gorgeous displays of virtuosity this side of Carlo Di Palma's soft-focus work in Antonioni's "Red Desert."