On Mars in Aries's Wall

Re: Ray Carney I don't know about Pialat but this is one of many positive things about Antonioni. It's from page 34 of Carney's mailbag on his site: I agree. It's great! That reminds me, I should teach an Antonioni course sometime. "Funny how styles, fashions, trends come and go and reputations rise or fall in a decade or two, even in terms of the greatest art. Antonioni was all the rage 35 years ago. You could hardly pick up a critical essay without seeing a mention of his work, an allusion to it, a comparison with it (the sort of critical popularity that eluded Cassavetes throughout his lifetime, and that Hitchcock had then and still has now), but I hardly hear his name mentioned anymore. But of course the films are just as great as they ever were. And The Passenger is among his greatest." In his books on Cassavetes, he sometimes contrasts Antonioni's more cinematically pleasing visual style with the American filmmakers' occasionally oversaturated less polished look and suggests that this is a reason why the Italian filmmaker may be more revered, but he has generally taken a supportive view of Antonioni's films.