Good Morning, Night (Buongiorno, Notte) (2003)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	None
Rating
Year Of Production	2003
Running Time	102:22
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Marco Bellocchio
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Luigi Lo Cascio Maya Sansa Roberto Herlitzka Pier Giorgio Bellocchio Giovanni Calcagno Paolo Briguglia
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	?	Music	Riccardo Giagni

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.66:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes

    This film is the fourth of eleven films in the Italian Film Festival 2004 box set. The films are very different and the only real link between them is that they were all made in Italy in the last couple of years. This one shares the third disc of the collection with The Miracle. They are not available separately in Region 4.

    This one is certainly the best movie of the box set so far. It is very different to the other films as it is based on real life events from Italy's turbulent political history. In 1978, Aldo Moro, the President of the Christian Democratic Party in Italy and a former Prime Minister, was kidnapped by the Red Brigades who demanded the release of several imprisoned terrorists in exchange for not killing Moro. The government refused to negotiate and despite many letters written by Moro from captivity including one to the Pope, he was killed and his body was found on May 9 after 55 days in detention. Strangely, Moro did not hold any public office at that stage of his career despite still being a behind the scenes power in Italian politics. Since his death all sorts of rumours about why he was not rescued have come to light, mostly to do with political rivals. An excellent rundown on his story can be found on Wikipedia.

    This movie tells the story of the kidnapping from the perspective of the brigade members including a young woman, Chiara. The film focuses on the internal conflict between her communist beliefs and her lack of desire to see Moro dead. She works in a government ministry and has rented an apartment in Rome with a fake husband, Ernesto, which is then used as a place to hide the kidnapped Moro in a small cell built behind a bookshelf. As the film plays out the tension between the brigade members increases as they come closer to needing to make the final decision about Moro's future. Besides Chiara and Ernesto there are two other members of the Brigade, Primo, her real boyfriend and their leader. These are pretty much the only characters in the film, along with Moro himself. The title refers to a screenplay found amongst Moro's papers for a film to be entitled 'Good Morning, Night'.

    This is quite a tense, emotional and sometimes harrowing film which is very well made, building tension throughout. It is certainly an interesting approach to virtually entirely base the action within the confines of the small apartment where they keep the prisoner. This adds significantly to the tension and gives a very claustrophobic feel to the film, especially as tensions within the group rise. The acting is strong and some of the music used makes an excellent impact, especially bursts of Pink Floyd. The film also makes excellent use of news footage from the time including footage of Moro's funeral. Despite the obvious ending, the film handles it surprisingly well.

    An interesting political/terrorist thriller.

Video

    The video quality is good.

    The feature is presented in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio non 16x9 enhanced which is reasonably close to the original ratio of 1.85:1.

    The picture was quite clear and sharp throughout, with no evidence of low level noise. Shadow detail was pretty average with scenes being fairly murky in low light. There is very light grain throughout.

    The colour was very good with no major issues to report. The colour scheme is quite dark with very little use of bright colours.

    Artefacts included moire on a lot of the stock footage used such as at 7:30 and 37:30, mild aliasing at 7:49 on some blinds, 27:27 on a jacket, 46:24 on a jumper and 52:57 on a jacket. There were also some tape tracking errors in the old news footage.

    There are burned-in subtitles in English which were clear and easy to read, but did have some issues. At 2:30 there seemed to be a word or part of a word missing, some subtitles flashed by too quickly to read although this was rare and the title of the film came up a few times seemingly for no reason.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio quality is quite good.

    This DVD contains an Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo soundtrack encoded at 224 Kb/s.

    Dialogue seemed clear and there was no problem with audio sync that my very limited knowledge of Italian allowed me to detect.

    The music was excellent, minimalist for most of the film, however was impactful when used. Some bursts of Pink Floyd from Dark Side of the Moon really worked well.

    The surround speakers and subwoofer were not used.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    None.

Menu

    The menu allows only for the selection of which movie to play, with not even scene selection available.

    This movie is available in the UK (Region 2) in a significantly better edition than this one. The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• 16x9 enhancement
• Closer to original aspect ratio (the UK disc is presented at 1.78:1)
• An Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack
• A proper subtitle stream rather than burned in subtitles
• A one hour documentary on the film maker
• A text biography of the film maker
• Theatrical Trailer
• Scene Selection

    On this basis if you want this film only, get the Region 2.

    The video quality is good.

    The audio quality is quite good.

    No extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall