White Nights

Visconti's version of the Dostoievsky story - about the chance encounter of a couple as she is waiting in vain for her lover, and the obsessive, panic-stricken relationship which then develops between them - later filmed by Bresson as Four Nights of a Dreamer. Visconti traps his characters (three excellent performances) within a claustrophobic canal-side set, and the film is a series of brief walks, chases, attempted escapes, always frustrated. Shot as neo-realist high tragedy, the film offers its characters only one strange moment of escape from their night-time obsessions - a raucous, sexual, subversive scene in a dance-hall. Then the snow comes down, and with it a chilly desperation about the extent of human self-delusion.