Monica Vitti credited as playing...
Valentina Gherardini
- Valentina Gherardini: Promise not to make fun of me?
- Giovanni: I promise.
- Valentina Gherardini: [turns on tape recorder] From the living room today you could hear dialogue from a film on television: 'If I were you, I wouldn't do that, Jim.' After that, the howling of a dog rising in a perfect arc and trailing off in great sadness. Then I thought I heard a plane, but there was silence - and I was glad. A garden's silence is made of sounds. Press your ear to a tree and listen - after a while you'll hear a sound. Perhaps it comes from within us, I'd rather think it's the tree. Within that silence were strange noises that disturbed the soundscape around me. I closed the window, but the noises persisted. I thought I'd go crazy. I don't want to hear useless sounds. I want to pick them out throughout the day. Same with voices and words. So many words I'd rather not hear, but you can't escape them. You must resign yourself to them like the waves when you float on your back in the ocean."
- Valentina Gherardini: I think love restricts a person. It creates misunderstanding all around. But not within.
- Valentina Gherardini: You only worry about losers. A typical intellectual. Egotistic, but compassionate.
- Giovanni: I know what to write, but how? It's a crisis affecting many writers today. But in my case, it's something secret inside affecting my whole life.
- Valentina Gherardini: You're just weak, like me. Why are you telling me this? I may not understand. After all, I like golf, tennis, cars, parties.
- Giovanni: Nothing else? Isn't there anything else?
- Valentina Gherardini: Yes. Everything.
- Valentina Gherardini: Confessions aren't my strong point anyway. In fact, I wonder what is? Not love, not vices. I've plenty of vices, but I hardly practice them. I don't even like whiskey.
- Lidia: [takes the whiskey] Well, I think I've found the vice that suits me. It's nice and warm.
- Lidia: How old are you?
- Valentina Gherardini: Twenty-two - and many, many months.
- Lidia: You don't know how it feels when the years with on you and no longer make any sense. Tonight I just feel like dying. I really do. At least this agony would end and something new would begin.
- Valentina Gherardini: It may be nothing.
- Lidia: True. It may be nothing.
- Giovanni: This isn't a racetrack and don't take me for a horse.
- Valentina Gherardini: Is there a friskier horse?
- Giovanni: Valentina, I'm rather disappointed.
- Valentina Gherardini: In me? How can I put that right? Shall we read a few pages together?
- Giovanni: That would be one way of getting closer.
- Valentina Gherardini: Are you craving for affection?
- Giovanni: Aren't you?
- Valentina Gherardini: I felt miserable this evening, but, our game cheered me up. Now the misery is creeping back like a melancholic dog. Have you got a cigarette?
- Giovanni: Sentiment is back in style even in novels these days.
- Valentina Gherardini: I see, you're gathering material tonight.
- Giovanni: No, I don't think I'll ever be able to write again.
- Valentina Gherardini: I don't have some overpowering vocation. Besides, Mother says scribbling indoors all day ruins the complexion.
- Giovanni: It's a sin to waste such intelligence.
- Valentina Gherardini: I'm not intelligent. I have a sharp eye. That's different. Observe things is enough. I needn't write about them. Last year I went to the United States to see Julia.
- Giovanni: Who's Julia?
- Valentina Gherardini: A hurricane.