How Fed­eri­co Felli­ni mas­tered the mag­ic hour

Vic­to­ria is the lat­est fea­ture film to boast the impres­sive feat of being shot in just one con­tin­u­ous take. But where­as the likes of Russ­ian Ark and Bird­man have tak­en away some of the nov­el­ty of sin­gle-shot sto­ry­telling, what sets Sebas­t­ian Schipper’s film apart is the fact that he opt­ed to shoot it between 4.30−7.00 am one morn­ing, cap­tur­ing in real-time the sun as it ris­es over the horizon.

Dawn is a spe­cial time of day to shoot film. Along with dusk it is known as the ​‘mag­ic hour’, made famous by Ter­rence Malick’s insis­tence on shoot­ing his films when­ev­er pos­si­ble in this brief win­dow for max­i­mum aes­thet­ic effect. There’s more to dawn than the warm glow of new light, though. In Fed­eri­co Fellini’s 1960 clas­sic, La Dolce Vita, much of the sto­ry unfolds dur­ing the ear­ly hours of the day, but the sim­ple fact that the film was shot in black-and-white obscures the director’s mas­ter­ful use of light and colour.

The role of dawn in La Dolce Vita is to con­demn the deca­dent noc­tur­nal activ­i­ties of tabloid jour­nal­ist Mar­cel­lo in 1950s Rome. When the sun ris­es, it is as though a heav­en­ly force were cast­ing a spot­light on the sins of the film’s char­ac­ters, a pierc­ing white light that is an unwel­come sight to the bleary-eyed rev­ellers. Night­time in La Dolce Vita is char­ac­terised by drunk­en, hedo­nis­tic friv­o­li­ty. Mar­cel­lo spends late hours lap­ping up all that Rome’s ​‘sweet life’ has to offer. Which rou­tine­ly involves attend­ing wild par­ties, sleep­ing around, or chas­ing Ani­ta Ekberg’s Sylvia around the city.

Fellini’s inim­itable style ensures that we’re as much swept up and intox­i­cat­ed by the car­ni­va­lesque atmos­phere as the char­ac­ters are. But dawn invari­ably has a sober­ing effect: upon sleep­ing with one woman, Mar­cel­lo returns home to find his cuck­old­ed wife has over­dosed; there’s the roman­tic scene with Sylvia in the Tre­vi Foun­tain which turns sour; Marcello’s father suf­fers a minor heart attack after a night on the town; and, most hor­ri­fy­ing­ly of all, he even­tu­al­ly picks his wife back up after aban­don­ing her, only to learn that his close friend has killed his own young fam­i­ly and com­mit­ted suicide.

In each of these scenes, dawn prompts a sig­nif­i­cant shift in mood from gay aban­don to melan­choly con­tem­pla­tion. Fellini’s cam­era favours still­ness over move­ment and the sound­track calms down as the char­ac­ters reflect on their lifestyles and lack of spir­i­tu­al fulfilment.

By the film’s last deca­dent par­ty, Mar­cel­lo has come to dread the onset of dawn. As the oth­er guests become tired and the night winds down, he forcibly shouts at them to con­tin­ue, des­per­ate to pro­long the night for as long as pos­si­ble, whether by rid­ing one of his com­pan­ions like a horse or toss­ing pil­low feath­ers in the air. But night can­not last for­ev­er, and even­tu­al­ly the par­ty­go­ers stum­ble out­side towards a near­by beach.

Felli­ni ends many of his films on a beach, and often infus­es the space with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of redemp­tion for his char­ac­ters. But when Mar­cel­lo and the oth­ers reach the shore, what they find seems more like a heav­en­ly omen of con­dem­na­tion rather than abso­lu­tion: a huge, dead leviathan – a bib­li­cal metaphor for Satan, star­ing at them with emp­ty, god­less eyes hav­ing been washed up on the shore. The night may always be dark­est just before the dawn, but in La Dolce Vita the return­ing sun brings no relief to its for­sak­en characters.