In the days when Marilyn Monroe was just breaking into motion pictures, well before most people had ever seen her fully clothed, Silver Screen and the other fan magazines had already trumpeted her as the "new Jean Harlow" and the "most perfectly proportioned body in Hollywood." Today, a similar but more cultivated promotion campaign in the Sunday supplements and the New Yorker is massing public respect for Luchino Visconti.

Although only one of his full-length features (Rocco and his Brothers) has circulated widely in this country, far-flung and knowing correspondents tout him as Europe's most meticulous director in any medium. Those of us who couldn't make it to Salerno this summer for the shooting of the Leopard are now bombarded by the glossy monthlies with awe-struck accounts of Visconti's baroque sense of light and composition or his deft flair for leading actors like Burt Lancaster into deep and exacting performances. On the evidence of Rocco and that turgid domestic squabble in Boccaccio 70, I wasn't convinced. White Nights, however, is a better test case: it contains all the elements hitherto claimed for Visconti's style and it shows us just how much he has to learn to match his legend.

In the first place, he can do what they say he can. For once Marcello Mastroianni is more than a good-looking face, and Maria Schell reveals other, more complex moods to bolster that vacant sparkle which has long been her only strength. Visconti makes good theater out of Dostoevsky's romantic fairly tale, in which a young man and woman meet one evening in the street and spend the next few nights waiting for the woman's former lover to return. But Visconti's penchant for the stage is his downfall, since he handles a short story as if it were a stage piece, not a screen play. One wants to praise him for his blocking, for the gestures he has devised, or certainly for the quick and effective dramatic transitions he has directed, but such refinements continually have little relevance to Visconti's visual schemata.

He loves the swirling imbalance of the baroque, its angular geometry and its chiaroscuro effects. Certain of his street scenes would do credit to a landscape painter: complex diagonals draw the eye into the background. But the dramatic action of many of these scenes centers in the foreground so that the viewer must decided what to concentrate on: the drama or the beautiful, but extraneous street scene.

He must also decide what to make of Visconti's frequent use of chiaroscuro. Is there any further point, beyond mere decoration in all that flickering night light? Shadows shift and fade so often that at first I thought the print might be faulty. But no. Apparently Visconti wanted to "put Rembrandt on film." That is, he took a painterly technique and set it in motion. Intellectually this may sound fine, but it doesn't make much sense on the screen unless the director supports the tone of his narrative with it. In this case, he made me squint.

Despite the ever-present dichotomy between drama and visual effect, White Nights has at least one peerless scene. Mastroianni takes Schell to a rock-and-roll night club, and they watch some obviously rehearsed and ludicrous Italian jitterbugging. After a few painful moments, they join in. From here on until they leave the club, movement and light, words and action all merge together. When the music slows, pairs of faces pressed cheek-to-cheek fill the screen and revolve about each other. A baroque schema out of Rubens, which is attractive and dramatic in itself, also happens to be a very fine image for a crowded dance floor. If Visconti has learned by now to combine his talents consistently in this way, the Leopard will be worth the fuss.