Press Play: The Night
The night. Silence and stillness—yet also mystery and menace. Gustav Mahler captured all these contrasts in his Seventh Symphony, the “Song of the Night.” On the silver screen too, the night reveals many faces: from simmering romance to chilling suspense.
Take a look at the film selection by Robin Broos.
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
Director: F.W. Murnau
The German director Murnau crafts a visual poem of love, temptation, and redemption. A simple farmer is seduced by a city woman to murder his wife—but during a nocturnal boat ride, his conscience awakens. Through masterful play of shadow and light, Murnau weaves a world of twilight and darkness. This is silent cinema at its finest, where the night both seduces and threatens.
In the Mood for Love (2000)
Director: Wong Kar-wai
Hong Kong, 1960s. Two neighbours discover that their spouses are having an affair. Rather than give in to their own attraction, they meet in dark alleys and restaurants. The night becomes their refuge—a place where desire stirs but never fully blooms. Wong Kar-wai’s masterpiece breathes melancholy; every scene glows with soft, warm colours as cinematographer Christopher Doyle turns each frame into a painting.
Before Sunrise (1995)
Director: Richard Linklater
Jesse and Céline meet on a train and decide to spend one night together in Vienna. What follows is a night of wandering, talking, and fleeting silence. Before Sunrise captures the magic of a night that will never return—when everything seems possible. No grand gestures, only a pure kind of romance, brought to life by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy.
Moonlight (2016)
Director: Barry Jenkins
Moonlight follows Chiron through three stages of life—child, teenager, adult—as he searches for identity, love, and a place in the world. Beneath the moonlight, on the beach or in the car, we witness moments of quiet tenderness. Barry Jenkins films with a soft strength that makes even pain luminous. A film that lingers long after the final frame.
The Lighthouse (2019)
Director: Robert Eggers
Two lighthouse keepers, played by Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, are stranded on a remote island as a storm closes in. Time blurs, and so do the boundaries between sanity and madness. Shot in black and white and in a nearly square format (1.19:1), Eggers amplifies the claustrophobic tension. The night on the island is not just dark—it is obsessive and ominous. With a score that moans and roars like the sea itself, The Lighthouse is a hallucinatory nightmare of isolation and obsession.
Drive (2011)
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
A nameless stunt driver leads a double life as a getaway driver by night. When he falls for his neighbour Irene and tries to protect her young son, he’s drawn into a violent underworld. Ryan Gosling moves like a shadow through the darkness—calm and calculated until the violence erupts. Director Nicolas Winding Refn turns the night into a character itself: romantic yet ruthless, bathed in neon blue and pink, and carried by Cliff Martinez’s hypnotic synth score.
