La Notte

Michelangelo Antonioni - 1961
Maybe it's a touch more awkward than the two films on either side of it; only a masterpiece, not a flat out 'greatest film ever'. Here was the first time I strongly focussed on the sound; Antonioni uses great differences in dynamics, from crashinbg outsides to the remarkable quiet of the insides.
Has a later filmmaker had more to do with Lumiere? Antononioni uses a great depth of field, and as the frame diagonally slopes off he lets his characters come, walk, closer to the camera. There is really quite a lot of fish-eye stuff here, depth through stagings close to the camera.
Abd of course the edit; there's not a system, just always the most imaginative, disconserting, unpredictable, always perfect next shot; you expect one place, but then it's much longer, or just straightforward not 180' stuff. Often what is the supposed 'reverse' shot fails to include in it what the original was of; a ninety degree move, from frontals to sides.
The story of a relationship over one night, or perhaps a lifetime, little ellipsis. The arbitrary decisions with the weight of the world, but the ease to change. Situations, the backs of heads, the unknowability of the human mind and the concrete consequences of this.