You hit all the high points Bob. For me he’s a very ‘visual’ filmmaker. Even in color like Red Desert and The Passenger, his works always have that immediate look and feel – the composition, style and techniques matches, and conveys his usual themes of alienation, boredom and in the case among many of his characters, indifference. ( Kind of in a way Polanski, or John Frankenheimer present their ‘dark sinister forces hiding-behind-the-surface’ themes ) Antonioni’s characters are mostly affluent who seem to have everything, but still searching for something they themselves don’t know, just like Vitti and Gabriel Ferzetti in “L’avventura”. I really like the idea of their continued search for the missing girl Anna, but only as an excuse for them to be together that in the end, Vitti was afraid not that Anna was dead, but that she might be alive. I agree, the landscape – the crashing waves, desert, gray industrial skylines, empty streets – and every inanimate objects sorrounding seem to have more life than his detached characters (hell, I barely noticed Richard Harris in Red Desert). That mood is none more evident than that powerful ending of L’eclisse. The street lights flicker, water flows, buses continue to run – life goes on, but the lovers just simply gave up in the end.
I always admire Antonioni’s work but on a different level. Through the strenght of his style alone, I believe he created a unique cinematic language, in my opinion.
I agree with your observations, Noel, and that’s why, in spite of my reservations mentioned above, Antonioni is a very important director for me. I want to make that clear – I am not really knocking him or his great cinematic vision, just make a personal observation. I guess his ‘visual’ language is really the key, Noel. Thanks.
The films of Antonioni are cold and sterile like the things that sorround the human being. Antonioni is a poet of cinematic time always exploring the deep of the universe, the cold deep black hole of the cosmos. I like a lot the compositions of his images, very well constructed and cerebral, like a Mathematic equation, an equation that tries to discover some true about the space. His films are abstract enough that we are really unable to reach the true words that could describe his films. They are an absolute unsolved mystery.
I think his films are more ‘human’ than most of what passes for cinema.. he may be difficult and obtuse to some, but his films are mood pieces to get lost in. He seems to understand that we are alone, his philosophy I’d say is an existential one, where it falls to us to draw meaning from life at whatever level we can? I find them very beautiful and stark, humanist, but in a way, say Renoir was not.
My first look at Antonioni came in college, and we stood in a long line on opening night — not at the little art theater downtown, but at the large commercial show house near the campus — to see Red Desert. It was 1964. I took in the images and the colors that day, those cheerless industrial landscapes like paintings (only later did I learn that Antonioni had literally painted the grass), watching Monica Vitti, with her undefined malaise, wandering through it all. There is a way in which this film forever shifted my way of seeing certain things. Many, many years later, for just one instance, when I first saw Richard Serra’s monolithic rust-hued sculptures crowded into a large — but not large enough — space, I could only think of the hull of that huge ship coming down the narrow channel in Red Desert. I tried to watch it again two years ago (on Christmas Day) on the tiny screen, and there was very little left of it, and I couldn’t make it to the end.
I watched his so-called trilogy in no particular order over the next few years, found in the art houses of Boulder and Denver: L’Avventura), La notte, and L’Eclisse. They were all in one way or another about the decadence of the then (and still) bourgeois ruling class, about men and women in close quarters harming one another in small but terrible ways, presented with arresting images in black and white and the gray tones of available light. They were my education, along with the films of Bergman and Fellini and a few others, transporting me from America’s open ranges, city streets, and happy endings to a world of barren islands, shadowy bedrooms, circus tents, and subtitles, a serious world of ambiguity, of relentless probings into human relationship, and yes, into angst, despair, and alienation. I was already finding this world in books in those days, but these men were early illustrators who taught me that movies could be something different than three-act entertainments.
Then more long lines on another opening day, to get into Blow-up, so hip, so cool, so sexy on the big screen in 1966 (and no doubt bringing smiles of pleasure in the boardrooms of Nikon and Leica). England and the English language, vivid color, and the irrepressibly unhappy David Hemmings, the only marker that this was an Antonioni movie, but he was very good. I went back to look at it again not long ago and I still like it, with a few reservations. What’s good still is the park sequence and the darkroom sequence — the mystery still a mystery.
Then Zabriskie Point, a box office bust at the time, but a film that still has its admirers, even worshippers. I was never one of them. I took a nationalist’s stance against the film from the outset: another European comes to America to show us ourselves, but not knowing enough about us to get us right. The closing scene is powerful stuff, but even this can seem familiar if you know your Robert Aldrich.
Then, my own favorite Antonioni, The Passenger … one of my favorite films, period.
I’ve gone back to look at his early films over the last decade: Crònanca Di Un Amore (1950) is a soap opera that barely announces who will be coming to us. But Le Amiche (1955), both in story- line and setting, can be seen as a kind of first rough draft for L’Avventura. Il Grito (1957) seems a step sideways, or more accurately, backward, to Visconti’s brilliant Ossessione. But it has evolved into a favorite of mine, even if it doesn’t fit neatly with the other work.
I have yet to watch his late films, Identificazione di una donna (1982) and Al di là delle nuvole (1995), but I did see Eros (2004), one of those gatherings of directors for short films around a theme they like to do in Europe. Antonioni’s contribution, “The Dangerous Thread of Things,” was hard to watch, sad to see, more smutty than erotic. Steven Soderbergh’s offering, “Equilibrium,” with Alan Arkin as psychiatrist and Robert Downey Jr. on the couch, wasn’t erotic either, but lightly entertaining. But Wong Kar-Wai’s “The Hand” on the other hand was the same intense, repressed, beautifully realized eroticism he had given us in In the Mood for Love and 2046. To watch the two together, it was more than seeing the changing of the guard, for that had happened a long time ago. Antonioni was long gone, replaced. I briefly went into a kind of mourning for him (and myself). But that didn’t last long. I just re-wound the spool, remembered his body of work, pulled out The Passenger … a good life, for a filmmaker.
… But I’ve gone on here even longer than Bob
Nicely put MM… this is what I look for on Auteurs… people who can write coherantly and well about films they love. Bob’s original thoughts and yours are great examples of that. Bravo!
….. and now I’m gonna have to track down Le Amiche, as Obsessione is a favourite already! thanks for the tip.
MUSYCKS: No, no, no. Not LE AMICHE.
IL GRITO is what you want to look at … not near so good as OSSESSIONE, but a hundred close parallels …
“Identification of a Woman” should be better known than it is.
“Zabriskie Point” is a masterpiece maudit.
MMoore said: They were all in one way or another about the decadence of the then (and still) bourgeois ruling class, about men and women in close quarters harming one another in small but terrible ways
Very well-stated. I always saw L’Avventua and L’Eclisse as remarkable morality plays – they are that, but considerably more complex than what the term usually implies. Antonioni’s films have a visual austerity than can be hypnotic (or distracting, if you’re not in the mood for it), but that sensibility serves a purpose beyond fashionable minimalism: his characters are not nearly as smart as they think they are, and given to abstract attempts at being cerebral. And if they are cerebral, it’s not in any way that’s doing them any good – it’s just (instead) another tactic for keeping people at arms’ length when anything beyond hypnotic looks arises. Thus they get into lots of trouble. And I think this is why (beyond looks) that Antonioni’s finest films seem so ethereal, but always manage to devasate.
L’Eclisse – beyond it’s structure (the inverted arc of a relationship: beginning, middle, end, not neccesarily in that order), broadens the focus a little, at the end. It’s a little easier to be voyeuristic in watching L’Avventura, by writing off the characters as some kind of idle rich, even if it’s something of a cautionary tale with somewhat broader implications. The crystalline ending of L’Eclisse gets rid of that relative distancing completely – gorgeous photography of dehumanized environments, moving out into the world, erasing any kind of “them” vs “us” in the process.
Antonioni is a director that I’ve only explored occasionally. I haven’t found his films difficult to understand, but rather to endure. “L’Avventura” is probably my favorite of his, but everything else has left me cold. I am, however, looking forward to seeing “The Passenger”, because anything with Jack Nicholson and Maria Schnider in the same movie can’t be all bad.
What surprises me most is how some people react to his films. I have never been able to think of them as being deep or profound. Why is it that when a director decides to abandon standard narrative conventions and structures, provide us with a humorless quasi-drama, and throw in some really fantastic cinematography, do we decide that the work is deep and profound? I don’t intend to be merely contrarian here. I’m genuinely mystified. It seems to me that by creating a world in which humans are only chess pieces who are only ever alienated from one another, except for that small spark of sexual tension, Antonioni’s films ring false. At least Fellini’s brand of alienation had a sense of humor and magic.
Again, I’m not trying to knock everything that Antonioni did. There have been fascinating passages in every film that I’ve seen of his, and I’m prepared to recognize that he has real talent – especially when it comes to the way he sees shot composition and architecture.
Nathan M: You have to see Antonioni’s Italian works of the 1960’s as typical of a certain period in time – a time when the word ‘alienation’ was on everyone’s lips. It was considered mandatory to be alienated from a society or a social structure that was widely viewed as corrupt and self-seeking. Antonioni’s own take was to view the subject of alienation from a social class he was very familiar with – his own. His Italian films resonate with the lives of the noveau riche – who were largely a recent invention during the time period of the early 1960’s Antonioni is describing.
Italy had suffered badly as a losing nation after WW II, and gone through a long period of economic stagnation – that became the birth of Italian neo-realism. Somehow, Italy managed to get itself out of this morass, and even achieve a modicum of economic prosperity in the late 1950’s – along with most Western capitalist nations. A class of well-educated, well-connected people emerged during this period who suddenly had more money, time, and leisure than they knew how to use productively. As Antonioni portrays – like an astute sociologist – this inevitably led to ennui and a feeling of entrapment.
To find fault with the films – which were a very accurate presentation of a certain social milieu – is to find fault with a documentary filmmaker for showing the reality. The four Italian films from the 1960’s must mainly be seen as an exercise in sociological critique. Antonioni lays bear the falsity, shallowness, and emptiness of the lives of these noveau riche. He does it brilliantly, using a cinematic palette of close observation to detail, long periods of silence, and setting each scene in a carefully crafted context. This is his genius. He is like a very astute photographer, who always reveals more of the subject he is taking than the subject would like.
You are right that Fellini did much the same in La Dolce Vita, for example – using a completely different style. Whereas Antonioni is oblique, analytic, and cerebral – Fellini is ironic, coy, and gently humorous. They are two different ways at looking at the same thing. One is not better than another – but your take on each is a matter of personal taste.
Somedays, I prefer Antonioni’s more abstract take – like looking at an abstract painting from the period. Other times, I like Fellini’s more humanistic, in your face, approach. But both are valid in the context of the times. Certainly, both artists are brutally honest in uncovering the hypocrisy that normally buries all this. What we need is as clear a vision as the two had to the times we live in today. But you must see these films in the context of the period, of which they very much were a part.
D-D-D: I completely agree with you that these films are indeed morality plays – of a very dense nature. Antonioni never gives away the answers or steers the viewer into a certain direction. In this, he is the exact opposite of his neo-realist brother Italian filmmakers, who were trying to lay bear the social inequities of their time – for all to see. Antonioni is much too detached – if that is the right word – from political action. He is cynical of any attempt to manipualte emotion or structure his work toward any type of sentimental or even normally proscribed cinematic resolution. His works are cool, detached, and relentless – but critical of the social milieu nonetheless. However, I much prefer your own description of this than my own. Thanks for your astute observations.
Bob – I guess then in the context of their period, I find Antonioni’s films dated.
But there is one point that I would hesitate to agree with you on. Antonioni’s films are nothing like a documentary. Nor is it even fair to assume that documentaries always reflect “reality”. All filmmaking is an attempt to frame the world around us in a particular way. Antonioni’s films are as dull as the milieu they portray. His approach to it is so cerebral that I can’t buy into it. It’s too cruel and self righteous. By abstracting people – a whole class no less – Antonioni dehumanizes them in a way that I can’t abide with.
In some says, due to his sleek directing style, I can understand why people embrace Antonioni’s work. But he seems to be taking pot shots rather than calm sociological observations. Every shot is a moral action, and so is every cut. Antoninoi’s films may be of their time or they may not be – either way, I can’t stand behind his vision of the world.
Well Nathan, I am not denying your right to your view, which is perfectly valid from your own description, but I just have a different reaction to his films. To me, he seems very realistic – perhaps too much so. This is what I meant by calling him a sociological filmmaker and like a documentary one. He turns his camera (through his cinematographer, of course – but you know what I mean) on his subjects and relentlessly exposes them – without embellishments. Look, for example, at the stock market scene in L’eclisse. To me, it is so much like a documentary that I found it boring. Of course, he was very careful in his staging and placement, so I only meant the documentary or sociological context to be seen ironically.
To me, his weakness is just the fact that his films often lack something like real drama or development of character. In that way alone, he is like a documentary filmmaker, who shows his/her subjects as they are – not necessarily in a dramatic context. However, if Antonioni’s own style doesn’t work for you, that is perfectly fine with me. We all have our own take on what moves us or feels right. I personally like a cooler, more abstract approach than a heavily dramatized one – or one full of emotive force. Not meaning I can’t occasionally enjoy the other kind, but it reflects a personal choice – as all choices do.
I hope to start a thread soon on Blow-Up, where we can discuss Antonioni from a different point of view – as a distinct cinematic artist of form and style.
Moderated
Moderated
Bob, I’m glad you used the term ennui. I thought it was just me.
Anyway, I think Antonioni, when he succeeds, registers (via extremely formal cinema) the contemplative state.
That state may be rooted in, or focussed on, emotion or intellect.
(I especially like those moments when it is uncertain which of the two responses
are called for).
Surely Antonioni had some sense of irony (or playfullness) with Blow Up,
in which certain very still and quiet longeurs show us only David Hemmings gazing at photos.
A motion picture depicting “no motion” pictures, you might say.
Then there are those times when Antonioni fails to recognize the inherent limitations
of his approach. Couple that with a bad screenplay and you get the failure
known as Zabriskie Point.
Maybe that wasn’t all his fault.
As the swinging mid-’60s merged into the radical late ’60s to early ’70s,
some studio heads at MGM began mulling over the potential for something
very loosely defined as a “youth market,” because no one knew quite
what to make of the phenomenal success of Easy Rider.
MGM had enjoyed a similar splash of their own with Blow Up,
a very mod and with-it production that ostensibly captured the vibe of swinging London.
Antonioni contractually owed the company another picture,
so the idea was to bring him stateside to direct another movie
that all the kids could get excited about—whatever that might mean.
Today what it means is that when anyone claims Antonioni is overrated, they probably have this unqualified disaster in mind.
Antonioni, a resolute formalist, decided to make his depiction of America a facile reduction
rather than an open-minded critique, so he utilizes almost every conceivable
agitprop caricature of American institutions and people.
The screenplay, written by Sam Shepard and tinkered with by other writers and Antonioni himself,
takes events nowhere, or rather, into the middle of nowhere.
That was apparently a very groovy thing at the time; a poster tagline reads:
“Zabriskie Point. How you get there depends on where you’re at.”
Hip dialogue provides mind-blowing, far-out exchanges between the principals.
Recall the forced locutions of the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever”
(That is, you can’t, you know, tune in, but it’s alright. That is, I think it’s not too bad . . .)
and you know exactly how the cool people (as opposed to the squares) talk here.
That’s roughly what happened when a director, completely out of his element
and backed by an out-of-touch production team, attempted to exploit an audience
he didn’t understand by flattering it with a mild bit of “radical chic” posturing.
(He may have been sincere, which is a more damning indictment.)
In any event, the detached, highly formalized style of Antonioni’s most critically acclaimed European pictures,
so appropriate for exploring the ennui and existential worries of the idle rich,
does not enhance a glum, meandering picture that from start to finish displays
contempt for the American middle class and consumer society.
The contemplation that those extremely long, unconnected scenes and
non-linear narrative supposedly invite instead render only tedium and incoherence.
Although it’s tempting to simply say that Zabriskie Point is boring and makes no sense,
doing so might prevent those who haven’t seen it from marveling at a genuinely risible time capsule.
Perhaps one day the team from Mystery Science Theater 3000 will return
to offer commentary on propaganda and political films (as opposed to science-fiction B-movies),
and this will be their masterwork.
DL: Ha, loved your take on Zabriskie Point – certainly one of the worst movies ever made by a major director – or any director. I was so annoyed and frustrated with Antonioni when I saw this (shortly after its release) that I gave up on him – as did many others. When The Passenger came along, I was very apprehensive, but not as disappointed. Still, I need to see The Passenger again (after these many years), to see how that film would work for me now. They should put Zabriskie Point in a time capsule alright – just to get rid of it now! The only thing that worked for me was the ending itself (talk about ‘Blow-Up’) – which is exactly what I wanted to do to the film stock! Thanks for your take on this Antonioni embarrassment. All your points are apt.
For those who don’t know, the lead in Zabriskie Point, Mark Frechette (who is horrible in it), had a lousy life after the release of this film, and died in prison a few years later under ‘suspicious’ circumstances. A bomb from every point of view.
Nathan: What surprises me most is how some people react to his films. I have never been able to think of them as being deep or profound. Why is it that when a director decides to abandon standard narrative conventions and structures, provide us with a humorless quasi-drama, and throw in some really fantastic cinematography, do we decide that the work is deep and profound?
Well said! It’s funny, I honestly think many times that a movie like “Superbad” explores human relations much better than some of these cold, detached dramas that I’ve seen. But because it’s got some raunchy humor, “cinephiles” would never consider it to be as worthy as some older foreign film. Too many people confuse “intellectual” films with being “deep” films.
With regards to Antonioni, I’ve liked all of his films that I’ve seen so far…but I haven’t absolutely loved them. I really like his angles, it almost seems like each frame is a stand alone portrait. But I agree, his distance from his characters can only make me look at them on an intellectual level…I don’t FEEL them. That’s why I gravitate towards Cassavetes movies so much, he loves each of his characters so much that I feel them on every level, on top of lots of questions that Cassavetes presents to the audience and the amount of participation that he makes them do. I think it’s possible to think about a movie AND feel it AND marvel at the picturesque shots…Which, I think Antonioni only did 2 of those 3 things. Keep in mind, this is all based off of the films of his that I’ve only seen thus far.
I have to respectfully disagree with those who dislike Zabriskie Point. Maybe I missed my calling when I turned down that job offering at Mystery Science Theater 3000?
No, that’s just another silly statement about this film. You see, it’s language like that which really highlights where you’re coming from; you’re talking as an American here, not a film buff. Antonioni was a stylist, you kow that. This film is the removal of everything he was minimizing in his work since the early sixties. It also increases visual and narrative abstraction (which he also had been increasing since L’avvnetura). Form and content are the same for Antonioni. Abstract images equal abstract emotions, abstracted stories. It’s a difficult film, but hardly the incompetent film that you describe. It follows a certain train of cinematic thought that Antonioni was reknowned for.
Words are nearly removed. I don’t think that the last forty minutes even have six words in them. The boy even writes: “No Words” on his plane. And the second last images of the film? It’s books blasting into a million pieces as Pink Floyd starts to scream. This is not, in my opinion, an anti-intellectual statement, but a restatement of his aims and means in the movie (which is the total abstraction of his style and the most extreme and exaggerated possible vision of temporal and spatial reality). The acting was never important in Antonioni. He’s interested in character, not actors.
I wrote this someplace else, but it’s relevant here:
He uses the background to comment on the character. He wants to discuss the character himself, yes. But really: Who needs an actor? Think of him as an artist who draws a figure on a blank page of paper. Most directors cut the figure out and simply hold up that cut-out: the character is there-made present by the artistic intrepretation of the performer. Antonioni is unusual. He draws the figure, yes, he cuts the figure out, yes, but after that he discards the cut-out. It’s of no use to him. He is an abstract painter of the cinema, of course. He uses the blank page with the cut out hole of where that figure was to explain and explore the character. When you think about it: it’s just the same, isn’t it? The cut-out and the remaining page with him missing offer no information than the other to explain the outline of the character, do they?
For example: Alain Delon, Marcello Mastroianni, Richard Harris. All three worked for Antonioni and if yet you were asked which of three was the strongest actor you probably wouldn’t say Delon, would you? But it’s Delon who comes out the strongest because his presence is correct within the frame. He works properly against his space. The stock market scenes and all of the chaos followed by the silences of the night sky with Delon in the foreground give us enough of the character without his help. He really only smiles and shrugs in the film. The two youths were chosen according to this system. As someone who claims to be familiar with Antonioni’s movies I find this argument you make to be tiresome and, frankly, a cop out. It’s his politcs that annoy you, not his “performers.”
But your real mistake is in seeing this film as strictly political: “Perhaps my movie, my film, is the historv of a search, an attempt for liberation, in a private, personal sense, but this attempt for liberation in front of the reality of the entire America.” -Michelangelo Antonioni, March 1970. Now, does THAT sound political? You see the film as agit-prop. It isn’t. Even Godard realized that any style is inherently middle-class. That’s why the Dziga Vertov collective rejected composition. Antonioni’s film has been attacked and attacked by Americans of your generation for this very reason, but by the sound of it, Antonioni was interested in pushing his own cinema farther, not some “comment” on your country.
The ending is, like the love scene, from the girl’s perspective. It is also ironic. She is imagining the house blowing up. Why? Because she believes that the land developers will destroy the beautiful Arizona desert (which brings her back to the boy and Zabriskie Point). What she doesn’t know, but we do know (from the prior scene) is that the deal feel through. It’s a deal that Lee Allen (Rod Taylor) had been working on for the entire film at that point. It’s a disaster for him personally. She vents and imagines the house exploding, but in reality, when she walks off with that smile on her face, she’s just executed the wrong man. How’s that for one-sided? I’m not saying he is being objective here, but he’s no propagandist.
You can critique Antonioni for choosing to remove theater and literature from his movies, but make no mistake he did CHOOSE to do so. Attacking the film based on these parameters means ignoring what Antonioni was actually doing. How can you fail at something you never even attempted, that you fought valiantly against? Antonioni is a great artist and I admire him. He reminded us that words, heavily plotted narratives, and actors were not cinema and cinema alone. That films are no more or less than images and sounds, and that these other elements were indulgences, not obligations. You, however, are welcome to your own assessment. Maybe you’ll blow me off and not even consider that the film just MAY have some good things in it…that’s what I bet will happen, actually. Oh, well…
L"Eclisse" is especially interesting vis-a-vis ennui. It starts in that mode as the dawn breaks on the ashes of Vitt’s affair with Francesco Rabol. But when she (finally) walks out on him it becomes different movie. She starts getting back into the world, and a whole new relationship comes roaring in when she meets her mother’s stockbroker – Alain Delon at his most beautiful. He’s the opposite of the men she’s been with in the past. Smart, but not an intellectual, living in the moment rather than lingering over it in any way, with a touch of ruthlessness. The stock market crash sequence is a perfect example of why Antonioni is a master. It builds beuatifully through rhythm and detail. Plus it exposes the stock market as little more than gambling casino.
The subtle diminuendo of the ending has left audiences wondering “what it all means” ever since. But in its own way it’s perfect. The film is a real “slice of life” — with delicately rough edges
It’s not just “Zabriskie Point” that’s misunderstood, for better or worse, it’s everything he’s done. I’ve noticed many smug and self-satisfied people on the above posts assert that Michelangelo is an intellectual. That he’s cold. I think he represents film passion as purely as any director you can name. The person, above, who said Antonioni is humanist in a way Renoir never could be got it absolutely right. He is a director of space, yeah, but to illuminate the people who inhabit those frames. How many Antonioni compostions have NO people in them-other than the endings of ZP and (much of) Eclipse? There are not many. He was all about people, but in a different way.
I’d also like to add that people harken back to the word “alienation” far too often. It’s not inaccurate, just an oversimplification and a little off. They are responding to idea of Antonioni “The Intellectual.” Not Antonioni the poet, the painter. Antonioni is a director who made films about many other things than lovelessness and isolation. For example: Red Desert is about adaptation, neurosis and filmic color. Blowup is a personal manifesto (far different than a philosphical film about “reality and illusion”).
The Italian trilogy is about love and what keeps people from it. The list was long; social codes, old morals, physical/superficial attraction with no real underlying affection. Each film put the emphasis on a different issue, but these thoughts appear to some extent in all of those wonderful films.
I love the formalism of Antonioni, but ultimately I have to discuss content, because these are narrative pieces, so for me, it’s that content that shapes the work.
There are a lot of aspects to the human condition. I find the modern masters, among whom I’d include Antonioni and Fellini, among others, to represent the more expansive, subtle, and contemplative aspects. Antonioni in particular, at least in his films I’ve seen (Blow-Up, The Passenger) directs from a perspective of profound loneliness and aimlessness.
Fellini seems to direct more from a position of irreverence and frivolity that’s distracting, but short-sighted, that ultimately just mitigates the isolation that we all have to deal with. Where Antonioni writes about the existential condition itself, Fellini writes about the gloss we place over it to protect ourselves from it.
MA creates films from a very particular frame of mind, and it’s a frame of mind I don’t experience very often. However, I think it’s a very honest source of inspiration, and I think he captures it extremely well.
For another example:
Eclipse is about a very special topic. It’s often misunderstood why Antonioni said that it was such an “optimistic film” and why Antonioni imploys a series of elliptical touches to the romance section of the narrative. Keep in mind Antonioni wrote the script with Tonino Guerra (a well-known poet and collaborator) and TWO other relatively well-known poets of the time, notice that I didn’t say “intellectuals.” I’d like to offer an unusual perspective, if I could:
Eclipse is a work of “poetry” (yes, I know that’s an incongruous phrase for a medium of images, but I’ve no other word at my disposal) I loved it for that reason and saw its genius for that reason. Did you know that Antonioni referred to an “eclipse of all feelings” in a discussion about this movie. What did he mean by that? The ending perhaps? No, I don’t think so. FORGIVE ME IF THIS ALL SOUNDS HOKEY (AND IT WILL):
The girl, Vittoria, is like The Sun (don’t laugh). She is warm, humanistic, interested in other people and in their happiness and suffering (you can see it quite well when she follows the man who lost all of his money in the market crash). We follow her for the first bit of the movie. We learn about her personality and her bearings toward the world around. That scene at the airport, where she observes all of the people around her and feels so at ease with the soft jazz playing, is a masterstroke of vision, in my opinion. I knew it was my favorite film right then and there.
The boy, Piero, he’s cold, remote and distant. He’s self-possessed. He’s, in this sense, like The Moon. We follow him after Vittoria. We see how treats people and the narcissism and lack of restraint that occupy his every action. He even approaches call girls on his way to see Vittoria. Antonioni is not attacking Piero anymore than he is praising Vittoria. He’s just showing how distinct and ill-matched they are for each other.
Their relationship, when they meet and fall into a kind of summer romance is The Eclipse of the title. A Lunar Eclipse to be exact. The Moon passes over The Sun. But in an eclipse there is no light and there is no darkness, only void. And that’s how Antonioni sees their relationship. Did you know that the Italian word for “The Ellipsis” is “L’ellissi?” Sounds a bit like “L’eclisse,” no? The elliptical structure was there to highlight the disorientation and randomness of their time together, but also to point you in the right direction. A direction it seems nobody follows.
Their relationship is not legitimate in Antonioni’s view. They have little real affection for another. It’s purely physical. Vittoria could be described as lonely after her recent breakup with her longtime lover, Riccardo, which begins the film. From her point of view this romance is a rebound on her part. Piero just wants some-how should I put it?-skin. The sickness of Eros. A wonderful example of such a thing. They never argue, that’s not the problem, it’s that there’s no deeper connection at all whatsoever. At one point Piero even says something like, “I don’t get you.” He doesn’t.
The relationship is a waste in Antonioni’s eyes and dangerous too. At the beginning of the picture Antonioni shows us the breakup with Riccardo and Vittoira. Vittoria tells him something like, “I’ve known for a long time this could never work.” I forget what exactly she says. We learn they’ve been together for a long time (five years if memory serves). We learn the affection they maybe once had is long dead. Even worse we learn that they’ve stayed together knowing this to be the case. Why do they stay together then? Why all of this nothingness? It’s so very common in life. Antonioni is almost as perplexed as anyone, this trilogy is about trying to understand-not preach about-why people act the way they do. The list I offered in a prior post gives some reasons Antonioni as to why people do these things.
The last scene is so very powerful and so very optimistic, because it’s only natural: every eclipse ends. The Moon a goes to the nighttime, The Sun goes to the daytime-where they each belong. It should never have lasted because they don’t belong together and they don’t understand each other and the film makes this obvious to us in a poetical and visual way. Vittoria in the last scene decides not to meet up with Piero and continue the relationship. That’s wonderful. What took five years to do with with Riccardo she did in less than five months with Piero. She’s grown more aware and more mature. What makes the ending such a happy surprise is that Piero hs also learned to let it go. He moves on as well. He matures. That’s a shock, but an optimistic one. This proves they are both, now, interested in a relationship with another person they care about more deeply-more appropriate to their needs, to their souls. They choose love, not sex. That’s far more meaningful afterall, isn’t it? Finally, Antonioni gives us characters who can identify and breakthrough their problems.
A masterwork of poetry, this film is. Not intellectuality. Please start viewing Antonioni as a poet, not a “thinker.” He’s not Sartre, you know. He’s Antonioni.
The ending is as poetic as you can imagine. Antonioni was going to just show an eclipse of the sun at the end, but he preferred the greatest metaphor in the history of the cinema instead. Thank God.
Antonioni always said that his motivation to do Red Desert was to “paint in technicolor” and study neurosis arising from difficulties to adapt, but the truth of the matter is that Giuliana suffers because she doesn’t know how to love her son and husband. Her inadequacy to love is the justification that Antonioni provides for her to be estranged from the world.
Personally, I find the overall thesis of the movie that modern industrial culture is crippling us all very naive and outdated but I think I am minority around here.
It’s not about that at all! Who said it was crippling EVERYONE? He’s talking about Monica Vitti in the film, not necessarily all humanity. Talk about putting words in a director’s mouth! That is nonsense. The film is about a neurotic woman in a poor environment FOR HER. It is a bad place FOR HER and makes her prexisting condition far worse, that’s all. Antonioni said that he IS IN AWE OF “MODERN INDUSTRIAL CULTURE,” as you call it. You have no idea of what your saying. Remember when Antonioni said the most interesting thing in “2001: A Space Odyssey” were the machines? Here we see Antonioni’s fascination with these factories, NOT HIS RESENTMENT.
I’m sick to death of such misinformation.
The real question is: WHY DO YOU PEOPLE EVEN WATCH HIS MOVIES? All you ever do is (in a very feeble manner) attack him-no matter if it’s justified or not. I get it: you hate art! Just watch something else if it’s such an issue, but don’t MAKE STUFF UP. This place is very annoying.
I can’t get over that. Is that how you people really see these film? “Alienation?” “Anti-industry?” “Anti-American?” That’s all you really see when you see his beautiful movies? That’s sad.
I’ve read it on here before, but I’m starting to endorse that loon who said Antonioni is antithetical to our postmodern, somewhat nihilistic world and that they should be prohibited for a period of time. How do you people see his films, anyway? They must play them in the bigger cities, right? New York. Los Angeles. Great. Fantastic. You know what? Why can’t you just forget about him? Why do always want to tear him down? He meant a lot to me. His movies mean a lot to me. This is depressing.
Bob Stutsman
Abstraction and boredom – ennui – seemed the hallmark of Antonioni during his most prolific period, the 60s, and continued throughout his limited career afterwards. He was the articulator of the films of alienation, of man’s indifference to man, with sexual tension the only thing creating any sort of spark. For this reason, I find his films in this period benefit greatly from the lively, dynamic Monica Vitti. She animates the screen in a way that provides an exact counter-point to the other distant, ennui-laden characters and actors. As a result, his other characters seem to lack dimension and personality. We become just as bored with them as they are with one another. Also, Antonioni purposefully keeps his characters at a distance in his films, always framed by strategically placed inanimate objects and buildings or even, as in L’avventura, the landscape and sea itself. Their sense of alienation is heightened by this effect, but we the viewer, also tend to detach from his characters and situations.
Thus, Antonioni is one of those directors I admire, but with a few serious reservations. The major problem I have with Antonioni stems from his strength. He is excellent in capturing a certain look or feel in his films. Like a great photographer, he captures the essence of a character in a look or in a setting. L’eclisse is a classic example of how he frames each shot and character to look like a still-life. He admired the abstract pinter de Kooning, and told him he saw things the same way as de Kooning’s canvases. There is a look of abstraction in all Antonioni’s greatest works, that reflects his concern for surfaces that mirror hidden depth. The classic ending of L’eclisse, where we no longer see the two main protagonists, but the empty comings and goings of people against buildings and objects seen obliquely is, perhaps, the best example. The austere urban landscapes in Red Desert also shows Antonioni as the master of the film still-life, where objects or buildings sometimes have more life than people.
In Blowup, his tendencies are most obvious. His protagonist, played so well by David Hemmings, is a bored fashion photographer, who is trying to expand his own artistic horizons by taking pictures of men in a doss house, and idyllic scenes in a city park. Again, when viewing this film now, it is difficult to have any connection to Hemmings’ character or the comings and goings of the other characters until the climactic moment when he thinks he has discovered a murder, when blowing up his ‘idyllic’ pictures taken in the park. Antonioni sets up the mood of suspense perfectly, as Hemmings keeps blowing up his prints to see what is underneath. Still, when the Vanessa Redgrave’s character comes along to seduce him and steal these prints, and he becomes ‘distracted’ by the two girl models, the theme of alienation and boredom become ever clearer, and harder to take on repeated viewings. Hemmings goes to a party, tries to explain to a stoned friend what he has seen, and ultimately steps away from any type of interaction from the situation, much as we the viewer. We are left with the scene of him viewing the mimes playing tennis with an invisible ball, the very mimes that were at the very beginning of the film. When Hemmings takes the invisible ball, lopped by the mimes over the fence, and throws it back at them, he seems to have become part of the whole charade, and to have lost interest in his quest for a solution to the murder. He then is seen at a distance, obliquely, in a typical Antonioni end shot that leaves all questions up in the air.
It is precisely his stengths, his abstraction and delineation of boredom, that sometimes make his films seem somewhat lifeless and static. His characters, again excepting Vitti, are moved like chess pieces in a clinical, detached way. This is why I personally find it hard to engage in his films on any but an intellectual level. They are cold and distant, like the world seen from far out in space. His is a world of abstraction and disengagement. How do you see his films?