Viaggi, prima parte

‘Castagnoli is the auteur of Valentino Moon, a little Italian gem (is it Rome, is it Venice?) : streets, people, a market, all very quickly and every three seconds (yes it’s Rome and it’s a baroque film by Bernini), a dancing ‘Pierrot’. Pachelbel’s Canon adds to the jubilation. Jouhandeau could have whispered a title to Castagnoli : ‘Life should be a celebration.’ D. Noguez.

First of all, the music. The music in Night and Day by Gianni Castaglioni is in the repetitive rhythm of the images, usually very rapid (with some suddenly slowed down, figements, yet with a fiery intensity). And as each shot, (brief like those of Mekas or Brakhage), moves,; as the camera moves to the nervous rhythm of a wrist, the music becomes a sort of Free Jazz — and not only visually, since the soundtrack is composed of piano frenzies à la Elton John. The extreme close-ups that sprinkle this sort of intimate journal and which are among the most admirable - as well as the most rapid - ever made in cinema, don’t float adrift like the film’s music through a hundred flowing veins.