Luchino Visconti’s ‘White Nights’ 4K Trailer: Marcello Mastroianni Is a Restless Soul Adrift in Tuscany

Exclusive: Janus Films will re-release the Italian master's fifth feature, an adaptation of a Fyodor Dostoevsky story and co-starring Maria Schell, starting this July.

A repertory movie summer wouldn’t be complete without a yearning-filled Italian classic set in Tuscany.

After a successful Kino Lorber-released restoration of Luchino Visconti‘s “Conversation Piece” at New York City’s Film Forum this past winter, the theater will host a Janus Films restoration of the Italian master’s fifth feature, “White Nights.” An adaptation of a Fyodor Dostoevsky story, “White Nights” swaps out the original St. Petersburg location for the Tuscan city of Livorno — a far more poetic location for romantic ennui and restlessness, no?

IndieWire debuts the exclusive trailer for Janus Films’ 4K restoration of “White Nights” below.

Marcello Mastroianni starred in the film in the early days of his leading-man career, only a few years before movies that turned him into a brooding matinee idol, like Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” and “8 1/2,” and Michelangelo Antonioni’s “La Notte.” Austria-born Swiss actress Maria Schell co-stars as his leading lady, by then established as one of German cinema’s most eminent stars. A year later, she’d star in another Dostoevsky adaptation, Richard Brooks’ “The Brothers Karamazov.”

More on “White Nights” courtesy of Janus Films’ synopsis: “Marcello Mastroianni, as a lonely city transplant, and Maria Schell, as a sheltered girl haunted by a lover’s promise, meet by chance on a canal bridge and begin a tentative romance that quickly entangles them in a web of longing and self-delusion. Luchino Visconti’s ‘White Nights’ is an exquisite adaptation of Dostoevsky’s legendary novella, transforming this romantic, shattering tale of two restless souls into a ravishing black-and-white dream.”

“White Nights” was shot entirely on a soundstage at the famed Cinecittà Studios outside Rome — where Fellini would shoot “La Dolce Vita” and “Casanova.” The film won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was named one of the best films of its year by Cahiers du Cinéma, just below “Touch of Evil” and “The Seventh Seal.”

Janus Films will open the new 4K restoration of “White Nights” starting July 24 at Film Forum.