Michelangelo Antonioni may be the only mid-century master of European cinema who remains fundamentally misunderstood. While Bergman's Christianity and Godard's Marxism were far from straightforward, both filmmakers tackled ideas their audiences recognized. Antonioni's subjects, on the other hand, are more difficult to pin down. His films are not so much about specific subjects as they are about his roving, provocative vision. Judging from the large turnout at BAMcinématek's June retrospective, it appears that this vision yet compels responses.
The trilogy comprised of L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), and L'Eclisse (1962) reveals the techniques and themes for which Antonioni became famous: elegant pans, sparse and elliptical dialogue, long takes in deep focus that give landscape as much importance as character, and a turn away from narration towards sequencing images to depict place, moment, or feeling. All three films feature romantic relationships, in imagery that is formal, almost mathematical. None of the couples that form and break apart -- Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti) and Claudia (Monica Vitti) in L'Avventura, Giovanni (Marcello Mastroianni) and Lidia (Jeanne Moreau) in La Notte, Piero (Alain Delon) and Vittoria (Monica Vitti) in L'Eclisse -- remain together for long. They all seem threatened by the possibility.
The interminable opening of L'Eclisse shows Vittoria wordlessly pursued by her fiancé (Francisco Rabal) through their impeccable yet claustrophobic home. In La Notte, Lidia and Giovanni resort to childish jealousy and provocation to maintain their connection. Each relationship is energized and threatened by third parties; the passion between Claudia and Sandro lasts only until he loses all hope of finding his missing fiancée, Anna (Lea Massari). Their distractions are not always human: Giovanni was at one time enraptured by his work as a writer, Piero is clearly in love with the abstract pleasures of the stock market. Whatever form it takes, this third term is never fully knowable or possessed, but necessary, to hold off a couple's commitment.
Because these films offer little dialogue or obvious moralizing, they are often misunderstood as shallow and self-absorbed, even nihilistic. Andrew Sarris coined the phrase "Antoniennui" to describe what he saw as the films' overwrought gloom. Antonioni's later work -- Blowup (1966), Zabriskie Point (1970), and The Passenger (Professione: Reporter 1975) -- are not less gloomy so much as they are mark a departure from Italy and the relatively sheltered lives of its upper classes, a movement into the world. Their concerns, however, remain much the same.
Blowup's portrait of '60s mod London, with Herbie Hancock's score, is today best remembered for its retro style. But it seems dated precisely because it is his most theoretical film. Thomas (David Hemmings) experiences the dangers of a decontextualized life as he becomes entangled the mystery suggested by a series of illicit photographs, all the while ignoring the fantastic excess that surrounds him. Antonioni's camera dwells increasingly and without explanation on absence -- an open sky, empty space, the mime troupe's imaginary tennis ball in the famous last scene. When Thomas disappears from the last shot, we see the final state of a subject lost in a perpetual present.
By contrast, Antonioni's earlier, lesser known features evoke a mythical filmic past. His first full-length feature, Story of a Love Affair (Cronaca di un Amore, 1950) hews closely to the contours of film noir. Paola (Lucia Bos), the socialite wife of factory owner Enrico Fontana (Ferdinando Sarmi), has an affair with the blue collar Guido (Massimo Girotti), even as Enrico hires a private detective to spy on her. When the lovers decide to kill Enrico, they can't know that they need him to spark their passion, and that they can never be together without him.
The Girlfriends (Le Amiche, 1955) and The Lady Without Camellias (La signora senza camelie, 1953) use romance conventions in order to frame Antonioni's aesthetic or philosophical interests. His most accessible and entertaining work, they are rarely screened and hard to find on DVD or video. Il Grido (1957), the best known of these early films, is the only one focused on working class characters. Its deeply affecting performance by Steve Cochran as the migrant worker Aldo makes it the darkest and saddest of all Antonioni's tales of unrequited love.
Other rarities on display in the BAM series included documentary shorts, the video experiment-cum-political fairy tale, The Mystery of Oberwald (Il Mysterio di Oberwald, 1981), the Chinese travelogue and documentary Chung Kuo Cina (1972), and The Vanquished (I Vinti, 1953), which consists of three vignettes about young bourgeois after the war.
Antonioni made The Vanquished for a Catholic production company, who wanted a critique the moral failings of contemporary youth; instead, it is a series of ruminations on art, modernity, and the search for meaning amid the physical and spiritual wreckage of postwar Europe (the only concession to the film's original purpose is a few seconds of hyperbolic narration between episodes). Exemplifying the director's oblique social commentary, its observations are detached without condescending toward its subjects.
The first episode, set in France, has a group of teenagers take off into the woods, where libido, boredom, and desperation culminate in murder. The second episode recalls Rebel Without a Cause, focused on the son of a wealthy Roman family whose secret smuggling operation goes disastrously wrong. The third and most effective episode, set in London, is a darkly comic tale of a poet who seeks fame by committing murder and writing about it in the newspaper -- or did he just write about it? This is the only episode of the three to include signs of contemporary life, including crowds, traffic lights, and noise.
Zabriskie Point was Antonioni's biggest commercial and critical disaster. It follows a young couple in 1960s America, hovering outside radical student movements. The acting (by non-professionals Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin) is wooden to the point of laughable, the dialogue (by several writers, including a young Sam Shepard) stilted, and the symbolism hackneyed. But the film is absolutely stunning to look at, especially the two dream sequences, one denoting love and the other destruction. For the latter, Daria imagines the violent explosion of her corporate employer's desert condo. A series of vivid explosions, in super-slow motion, demolish various objects, from outdoor pool furniture to a television, pieces floating directionless, accompanied by Pink Floyd track. The scene's unreality is intensified as recognizable items become almost abstract.
"They say people only act when they need to, but I need to sooner than that," Mark says, on rejecting student radicals who criticize his lack of pragmatism. Antonioni seems to have no argument with the claim that the white middle class' relationship to social revolution is superficial, yet the film shows empathy with the would-be revolutionaries just the same. They evince freedom of imagination, where the beauty of the film is to be found.
Most criticism of Antonioni cites his lack of political and social commitment. But his films repeatedly show that he cares deeply about the world around him. And up until the last few (starting with the mostly redundant Identificazione di unna donna in 1982), they indicate his efforts to engage. And so his films need to be read carefully. Though The Passenger seems to elide its African rebels' violent conflicts in favor of middle-class ennui, its identity-switching journalist (a remarkably tame Jack Nicholson) never escapes the responsibilities of his life.
And The Red Desert (Il Deserto Rosso, 1964), often criticized for its overbearing "emptiness," actually provides Antonioni's culminating statement on "modernity." In the aftermath of technological encroachment, Monica Vitti's character Guiliana physically suffers from her alienation (and recalls roles the actress played in three previous films with Antonioni, including Blowup). At the same time, her autistic child becomes increasingly unfeeling and mechanical, connected to the surrounding factory landscape. Their story reflects a world beyond it, in which every aspect of life is determined by technology.
In his review of L'Avventura, Roger Ebert underlines the powerful focus of Antonioni's films: "Why don't we have movies like L'Avventura anymore? Because we don't ask the same kinds of questions anymore. We have replaced the `purpose of life' with the `choice of lifestyle.'" Antonioni has dedicated his life and work to exploring these difficult, unresolvable questions.
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