Why don't we wit for the dawn?

I remember one evening thirty-one years ago in Turin. At the Cineforum, where Darko was one of the most dedicated organizers, they were screening Godard's latest film, Pierrot le fou. Godard was probably the most prominent representative of that new cinema that was exciting us at the time, and we followed every one of his works. We really liked the film, and after the screening, Darko and I took a walk along the Po River. We talked about the film, went over the story, analyzed the transitions and images, trying to uncover and understand the thousands of messages hidden in each fragment of the work. And so, without realizing it, we walked through the city, which was becoming increasingly deserted, well into the night. It was 4 AM when Darko said, “Why don’t we wait for the dawn?” We returned to the riverbank. As we walked, Darko started listing all the cinematic mornings he had seen on screen or read about in scripts: the transformed morning in Dreyer’s Ordet, the tragic morning of Carne, the leaden morning in Visconti’s La terra trema, all the hopeful mornings in Rossellini’s films. For each image, Darko reconstructed the backgrounds, interpreted their messages, translated their meanings...