Michelangelo Antonioni
Wow, Antonioni died, a few hours after Ingmar Bergman. Michelangelo Antonioni was one of the few names as big in the art film racket as Bergman.
Their approaches were quite different. Bergman believed in actors' faces--closeups--to bring out emotion. Antonioni believed in distance--long shots, long takes--to show distance in space and time.
Antonioni broke from the Italian neo-realist tradition in the 50s and gained international fame in 1960 with the striking L'Avventura. His languorous style, where little seems to be happening, was controversial, but Antonioni always had--and continues to have--many defenders.
I wouldn't say I'm one. I don't hate him, but I think he can be dull. And while I prefer films that move, I'm not against filmmakers who attenuate scenes--such as Ozu or David Lynch. It's just that, too often, Antonioni strikes me as a hip style in search of meaning.
L'Avventura was followed by two similar films, making up a trilogy--La Notte and L'Eclisse. Then came another film in the same vein, except it was in color, The Red Desert (to switch to English titles).
All these movies featured his gal, Monica Vitti, and a bunch of others portraying oh-so alienated modern people.
Next, in 1966, probably his biggest hit, and his first in English, Blow-Up. It starts out seeming to have a plot, with a mod photographer in swinging London uncovering a murder plot. But soon Antonioni starts going off in strange directions and you're not really sure what's happening any more. (It features the Yardbirds--the Who turned down the film, thinking the scene mocked them. This is why suddenly the Yardbirds are breaking guitars.)
Antonioni went on to make other films in English which some people hold in high regard--Zabriskie Point and The Passenger. Unfortunately, he had a stroke in 1985 and, though he continued to direct, was never quite the same.
I hope I haven't given the impression I don't like his work. I recommend seeing his famous films--at least once. It's just that I'm not sure if I ever need to see most of them again.
I know at least two friends who are huge fans of Antonioni. I hope they leave comments telling me why I'm wrong.
posted by LAGuy @ 1:00 AM
4 Comments:
I'm not sure if I'm one of the 2 friends mentioned here or not. I'm not a huge Antonioni fan but I do like the films I've seen by him even though they can be slow & cryptic.
At first, in films like Story of a Love Affair (1950) and The Girlfriends (1955) Antonioni seemed interested in exploring how people related. The main woman in The Girlfriends is surrounded by a lot of gossipy girlfriends and hit on by a number of guys she can tell aren't serious about her. That's ok. She has her day job to do. But she would like a real relationship worthy of her intelligence. She finds a guy she likes but after being with him a while, she realizes that something's missing and she goes back to waiting. It's a film that tries to capture something honest about the way things are for people in certain circles. But already, you can see the alienation his name would become synonymous with creeping in.
By the time he started making the films he's best known for, his lost characters just can't relate or connect to anyone and so in desperation they reach out to everyone (briefly). They stumble through parties and landscapes as though they were zombies and the rooms were the post-apocalypse.
But one thing did root Antonioni to the real world and that was a sense of politics and ethics. Even if he showed people unable to relate, it's not like he was supporting this position, instead he was criticizing it.
The Red Desert stands out because of its formalism and surrealism. A key sequence involves a group of people standing in a pattern on a dock next to a freighter whose crew can't come ashore because they carry the plague. Everyone just stands there unable to move or do anything about this. Then fog drifts in to where people can barely see each other. If nothing else, this is striking imagery. But it points to a larger theme & concern--there are problems, the world is ill, and people haven't equipped themselves to deal with tragedy.
In The Red Desert, the main character played by Monica Vitti seems similar to Julianne Moore in Safe or any troubled teen character in films like Girl, Interrupted in that she's broken down and become mentally ill because, so it seems, there is pollution in the air and misunderstandings between people. What she needs is to create, to spend a couple of weeks camping in the woods in some Thoreau-like Walden, but that place doesn't exist because the woods and lakes are all polluted. This was an early statement on environmentalism, but a chilling one--not only were Antonioni's people all distanced from one another, they were alienated from nature as well.
In terms of personal ethics, Blow Up is about a young amoral photographer who exploits his subjects and really doesn't care if a murder has been committed or not. In the last image, Antonioni fades his image to nothingness. Antonioni doesn't approve and considers the guy as he presents him, a nothing.
As the youth movement seemed to become more political and less aimless in the late 60s, Antonioni saw some hope in them and made Zabriskie Point. He set it in Death Valley and peopled it with non-professional actors playing cop-hating hippie protagonists. But even the counter-culture rejected the film and it was a bomb. Seen today, it is a period piece, it's interesting and well-rendered moments erased by changing times. But it's something else, a dead end. Because for 20 years Antonioni is pointing out alienation but not offering any solution. Here he finally proposes one in the finale where his female hippie protagonist fantasizes about a house blowing up--utter destruction and explosive revolution.
Well Mike, we could raze everything to the ground and start over from zero, but will that really solve things or just set them back to start over again? And isn't it less work to try and fix the plumbing we have than just tear it out and build an outhouse out back?
I have to admit it's kind of fun to go along with Antonioni as he blows up a bookcase and a refrigerator and to watch a package of Wonder Bread twist and turn in slow-motion through the air, but I wouldn't want this to inspire any real life explosions.
Antonioni didn't finish making films at this point. The Passenger has a thriller-like plot, a performance by Jack Nicholson that Nicholson himself is proud of, and a walk through Barcelona that shows off a great deal of Antonio Gaudi architecture. It's actually a film that returns to story-telling and interests and entertains.
Antonioni married a woman who stood by and took care of and protected him after he had a stroke and this may explain why Antonioni's last films, Beyond the Clouds and Eros, made under trying conditions as Antonioni could neither speak nor write, are more reconciliatory about love and relationships than any thing he made previously.
Perhaps in the end, this old cliche became his final statement, love is the response to alienation.
Thanks for your comments. Obviously you know the subject. I've only seen one Antonioni film from before the 60s.
Are you saying the photographer in Blow-Up doesn't care about the murder? He sure spends a lot of time looking into it. I've always seen this film as more about what is reality--for instance, a photo is a take on reality, but it's not reality itself.
By the way, if you want to see a real fun film about pollution, check out Bresson's The Devil Probably.
Looking past the surface reality into the seamier, hidden side of things is certainly an idea in this film. Antonioni's politics or take on reality is that people are corrupt and try to cover it up so that when you deal with people you're constantly facing a good-looking Dorian Gray and not the portrait of evil decay he has hidden in a room. So you don't even have to look too closely to find corruption--it's in the photo you take in the park, it's both outside you and even within you.
The photographer is curious. He wants to know why the girl is willing to sleep with him in trade for the film he's shot in the park, so he gives her a useless roll and looks at the photos. Through blowing up the image he sees the mysterious blur. And he's curious enough to go to the park and see what this blur might be (it turns out to be a murdered body), but I think he's doing all of this out of curiosity or just because there might be something in it for him. When he finds out what the blur is and decides there is nothing in it for him, he doesn't even report the dead body to the police. So in that respect he doesn't care about the murder ethically even if he plays detective for the midsection of the film.
I'm not sure if I'm the other Antonioni friend of LA Guy, but I've seen a good number of his films: At least half of the features before 1960 and everthing afterward. I also went to the Antonioni festival at LACMA a few years back and got to watch La Notte while sitting behind him.
It's interesting reading this thread about Blowup in that it reminds you why it's arguably (or is that "easily") the most discussed, and-over discussed film of all time.
I DO think the David Hemmings character is interested in solving the murder. It's definitely still important to him when he's telling his friend about it at the party. It's just that the character (and maybe all young people at the time?) are so easily destracted. The David Hemmings character can't focus on anything in the film for long.
Post a Comment
<< Home