Mauro Bolognini - La Notte brava aka The Big Night (1959)

Two young unenployed men, Scintillone and Ruggeretto, pick up a couple of prostitutes. They hope their company will help them sell some rifles they have stolen. On their way they meet Bella Bella, who also aids them in selling the goods. They then abandon the women in the countryside, only later to notice the money they had has been stolen from them. They try in vain to find the girls and retrieve the money.





Loosely based on "Ragazzi di vit"a by Pasolini, who also wrote the screenplay, Bolognini's "La Notte Brava" exposes beauty and desperation in a nocturnal, silent Rome, as lived by restless souls in search of a life “to live”.
A proletarian cousin to Fellini's more upmarket La dolce vita, La notte brava was a vastly influential film – even though it is rarely seen today. One sequence in particular, where Brialy takes his dream girl (Antonella Lualdi) to a swank restaurant and pays it to stay open just for them, was copied almost verbatim by Sergio Leone in Once Upon a Time in America (1984). The minor character of Bella Bella (played here by Franco Interlenghi) provided the basis for Pasolini's 1961 debut as a director, Accattone. (Senses of Cinema)







La gran noche
Dos truhanes de poca monta, Scintillone y Ruggeretto, levantan a dos prostitutas con la esperanza de utilizarlas como ayuda para vender unas armas robadas. Durante la trayectoria se encuentran con Bella Bella (que años después sería la base para el personaje de Accattone de Pasolini) quien los ayuda a vender las armas. Luego abandonan a las mujeres en las afueras de la ciudad, y al tiempo se dan cuenta de que les han robado el dinero. Sigue una búsqueda infructuosa de recuperar el dinero, que al final termina en las manos de Ruggereto, que se lo gasta todo en una noche.

Rodada en 1959, La notte brava es una adaptación libre de la novela "Ragazzi di vita", escrita por Pasolini en 1955.





Scintillone e Ruggeretto, ragazzi di vita, passano, insieme con l'amico Bella Bella, una notte movimentata e violenta. Alla fine rimangono solo il vuoto e la tristezza. Uno dei due torna a casa, l'altro in prigione. È – con La giornata balorda (1960) – uno dei 2 film pasoliniani di Bolognini, ispirato al romanzo Ragazzi di vita (1955) e sceneggiato dallo stesso Pasolini con Laurence Bost. Epidermicamente picaresco, elegantemente erotico, raffinatamente manierista. I ragazzi di vita di P.P. Pasolini sono ammorbiditi, tirati a lucido.





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