Michelangelo Antonioni
Encyclopedia
Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI
(29 September 1912 – 30 July 2007) was an Italian
modernist film director
, screenwriter
, editor
and short story writer.
, Emilia Romagna, in northern Italy. He was the son of Elisabetta (née Roncagli) and Ismaele Antonioni. The director explained to Italian film critic Aldo Tassone:
While still a child, Antonioni was fond of drawing and music. A precocious violinist, he gave his first concert at the age of nine. Although he abandoned the violin with the discovery of cinema in his teens, drawing would remain a lifelong passion. "I have never drawn, even as a child, either puppets or silhouettes but rather facades of houses and gates. One of my favourite games consisted of organising towns. Ignorant in architecture, I constructed buildings and streets crammed with little figures. I invented stories for them. These childhood happenings - I was eleven years old - were like little films."
Upon graduation from the University of Bologna
with a degree in economics
, he started writing for the local Ferrara newspaper Il Corriere Padano in 1935 as a film journalist.
In 1940, Antonioni moved to Rome, where he worked for Cinema, the official Fascist
film magazine edited by Vittorio Mussolini
. However, Antonioni was fired a few months afterward. Later that year he enrolled at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia to study film technique, but left it after three months. He was drafted into the army afterwards.
Antonioni died aged 94 on July 30, 2007 in Rome, the same day that another renowned film director, Ingmar Bergman
, also died. Antonioni lay in state at City Hall in Rome where a large screen showed black-and-white footage of him among his film sets and behind-the-scenes. He was buried in his home town of Ferrara on August 2, 2007.
and worked as assistant director on Enrico Fulchignoni's I due Foscari. In 1943, he travelled to France to assist Marcel Carné
on Les visiteurs du soir
and then began a series of short films with Gente del Po (1943), a story of poor fishermen of the Po valley
. After the Liberation, the film stock was stored in the East-Italian Fascist "Republic of Salò" and could not be recovered and edited until 1947 (the complete footage was never retrieved). These films were neorealist
in style, being semi-documentary
studies of the lives of ordinary people.
However, Antonioni's first full-length feature film Cronaca di un amore
(1950) broke away from neorealism by depicting the middle classes. He continued to do so in a series of other films : I vinti
("The Vanquished", 1952), a trio of stories, each set in a different country (France, Italy and England), about juvenile delinquency; La signora senza camelie (The Lady Without Camellias, 1953) about a young film star and her fall from grace; and Le amiche
(The Girlfriends, 1955) about middle class women in Turin. Il grido
(The Outcry, 1957) was a return to working class stories, depicting a factory worker and his daughter. Each of these stories is about social alienation
.
s as part of his film making style. Antonioni returned to their use in L'avventura
(1960), which became his first international success. At the Cannes Film Festival
it received a mixture of cheers and boos, but the film was popular in art house cinemas around the world. La notte
(1961), starring Jeanne Moreau
and Marcello Mastroianni
, and L'eclisse
(1962), starring Alain Delon
, followed L'avventura. These three films are commonly referred to as a trilogy because they are stylistically similar and all concerned with the alienation of man in the modern world. La notte won the Golden Bear
award at the 11th Berlin International Film Festival
, His first color film, Il deserto rosso
(Red Desert, 1964), deals with similar themes, and is sometimes considered the fourth film of the "trilogy". All of these films star Monica Vitti
, his lover during that period.
Antonioni then signed a deal with producer Carlo Ponti
that would allow artistic freedom on three films in English to be released by MGM. The first, Blowup
(1966), set in Swinging London
, was a major success. The script was loosely based on the short story The Devil's Drool (otherwise known as Blow Up) by Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar
. Although it dealt with the challenging theme of the impossibility of objective standards and the ever-doubtable truth of memory, it was a successful and popular hit with audiences, no doubt helped by its sex scenes, which were explicit for the time. It starred David Hemmings
and Vanessa Redgrave
. The second film was Zabriskie Point
(1970), his first set in America and with a counterculture
theme. The soundtrack carried popular artists such as Pink Floyd
(who wrote new music specifically for the film), the Grateful Dead
and the Rolling Stones. However, its release was a critical and commercial disaster. The third, The Passenger
(1975), starring Jack Nicholson
and Maria Schneider, received critical praise, but also did poorly at the box office. It was out of circulation for many years, but was re-released for a limited theatrical run in October 2005 and has subsequently been released on DVD
.
In 1972, in between Zabriskie Point and The Passenger, Antonioni was invited by the Mao
government of the People's Republic of China
to visit the country. He made the documentary Chung Kuo, Cina
, but it was severely denounced by the Chinese authorities as "anti-Chinese" and "anti-communist". The documentary had its first showing in China on November 25, 2004 in Beijing
with a film festival hosted by the Beijing Film Academy
to honor the works of Michelangelo Antonioni.
(The Mystery of Oberwald), an experiment in the electronic treatment of color, recorded in video and then translated to film, featuring Monica Vitti
once more. It is based on Jean Cocteau
's play L'Aigle à deux têtes
(The Eagle With Two Heads). Identificazione di una donna (Identification of a Woman, 1982), filmed in Italy, deals one more time with the recursive subjects of his Italian trilogy. In 1985, Antonioni suffered a stroke, which left him partly paralyzed and unable to speak. However, he continued to make films, including Beyond the Clouds
(1995), for which Wim Wenders
filmed some scenes. As Wenders has explained, Antonioni rejected almost all the material filmed by Wenders during the editing, except for a few short interludes. They shared the FIPRESCI Prize at the Venice Film Festival
with Cyclo
.
In 1994 he was given the Honorary Academy Award "in recognition of his place as one of the cinema's master visual stylists." It was presented to him by Jack Nicholson
. Months later, the statuette was stolen by burglars and had to be replaced. Previously, he had been nominated for Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Screenplay for Blowup
. Antonioni's final film, made when he was in his 90s, was a segment of the anthology film
Eros
(2004), entitled "Il filo pericoloso delle cose" ("The Dangerous Thread of Things"). The short film's episodes are framed by dreamy paintings and the song "Michelangelo Antonioni", composed and sung by Caetano Veloso
. However, it was not well-received internationally; in America, for example, Roger Ebert
claimed that it was neither erotic nor about eroticism. The U.S. DVD release of the film includes another 2004 short film by Antonioni, Lo sguardo di Michelangelo (The Gaze of Michelangelo).
Marxist
and existentialist intellectual." In a speech at Cannes about L'Avventura, Antonioni said that in the modern age of reason and science, mankind still lives by "a rigid and stereotyped morality which all of us recognize as such and yet sustain out of cowardice and sheer laziness". He said his films explore the paradox that "we have examined those moral attitudes very carefully, we have dissected them and analyzed them to the point of exhaustion. We have been capable of all this, but we have not been capable of finding new ones." Nine years later he expressed a similar attitude in an interview, saying that he loathed the word 'morality': "When man becomes reconciled to nature, when space becomes his true background, these words and concepts will have lost their meaning, and we will no longer have to use them."
One of the recurring themes in Antonioni's films is characters who suffer from ennui and whose lives are empty and purposeless aside from the gratification of pleasure or the pursuit of material wealth. Film historian David Bordwell
writes that in his films, "Vacations, parties and artistic pursuits are vain efforts to conceal the characters' lack of purpose and emotion. Sexuality is reduced to casual seduction, enterprise to the pursuit of wealth at any cost." Antonioni's films tend to have spare plots and dialogue, and much of the screen time is spent lingering on certain settings, such as the seven-minute continuous take
in The Passenger, or the scene in L'Eclisse in which Monica Vitti stares curiously at electrical posts accompanied by ambient sounds of wires clanking. Virginia Wright Wexman summarizes his style in the following terms: "The camera is placed at a medium distance more often than close in, frequently moving slowly; the shots are permitted to extend uninterrupted by cutting. Thus each image is more complex, containing more information than it would in a style in which a smaller area is framed ... In Antonioni's work we must regard his images at length; he forces our full attention by continuing the shot long after others would cut away." Antonioni is also noted for exploiting colour as a significant expressive element of his cinematic style, especially in Il deserto rosso
, his first colour film.
Bordwell explains that Antonioni's films were extremely influential on subsequent art film
s: "More than any other director, he encouraged filmmakers to explore elliptical and open-ended narrative". Film director Akira Kurosawa
considered Antonioni one of the most interesting filmmakers. Stanley Kubrick
listed La Notte as one of his ten favorite films in a 1963 Poll. Andrei Tarkovsky
also listed Antonioni as one of his favorite filmmakers. Miklós Jancsó
considers Antonioni as his master.
Antonioni's spare style and purposeless characters, however, have not received universal acclaim. Ingmar Bergman
stated in 2002 that he considered some of Antonioni's films, including Blowup
and La notte
, masterpieces for their detached and dreamlike quality, but found the other films boring and noted that he had never understood why Antonioni was held in such esteem. Orson Welles
regretted the Italian director's use of the long take
: "I don't like to dwell on things. It's one of the reasons I'm so bored with Antonioni - the belief that, because a shot is good, it's going to get better if you keep looking at it. He gives you a full shot of somebody walking down a road. And you think, 'Well, he's not going to carry that woman all the way up that road.' But he does. And then she leaves and you go on looking at the road after she's gone."
American actor Peter Weller
, whom Antonioni directed in Beyond the Clouds
, explained in a 1996 interview: "There is no director living except maybe Kurosawa
, Bergman
, or Antonioni that I would fall down and do anything for. I met Antonioni three years ago in Taormina
at a film festival
. I introduced myself and told him that I adored his movies, his contributions to film, because he was the first guy who really started making films about the reality of the vacuity between people, the difficulty in traversing this space between lovers in modern day... and he never gives you an answer, Antonioni – that's the beautiful thing."
Italian orders of merit
There are five orders of knighthood awarded in recognition of service to the Italian Republic. Below these sit a number of other decorations, associated and otherwise, that do not confer knighthoods...
(29 September 1912 – 30 July 2007) was an Italian
Italian people
The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...
modernist film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
, editor
Film editing
Film editing is part of the creative post-production process of filmmaking. It involves the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture. It is an art of storytelling...
and short story writer.
Personal life
Antonioni was born into a prosperous family of landowners in FerraraFerrara
Ferrara is a city and comune in Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy, capital city of the Province of Ferrara. It is situated 50 km north-northeast of Bologna, on the Po di Volano, a branch channel of the main stream of the Po River, located 5 km north...
, Emilia Romagna, in northern Italy. He was the son of Elisabetta (née Roncagli) and Ismaele Antonioni. The director explained to Italian film critic Aldo Tassone:
- My childhood was a happy one. My mother... was a warm and intelligent woman who had been a labourer in her youth. My father also was a good man. Born into a working-class family, he succeeded in obtaining a comfortable position through evening courses and hard work. My parents gave me free rein to do what I wanted: with my brother, we spent most of our time playing outside with friends. Curiously enough, our friends were invariably proletarian, and poor. The poor still existed at that time, you recognized them by their clothes. But even in the way they wore their clothes, there was a fantasy, a frankness that made me prefer them to boys of bourgeois families. I always had sympathy for young women of working-class families, even later when I attended university: they were more authentic and spontaneous.
While still a child, Antonioni was fond of drawing and music. A precocious violinist, he gave his first concert at the age of nine. Although he abandoned the violin with the discovery of cinema in his teens, drawing would remain a lifelong passion. "I have never drawn, even as a child, either puppets or silhouettes but rather facades of houses and gates. One of my favourite games consisted of organising towns. Ignorant in architecture, I constructed buildings and streets crammed with little figures. I invented stories for them. These childhood happenings - I was eleven years old - were like little films."
Upon graduation from the University of Bologna
University of Bologna
The Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna is the oldest continually operating university in the world, the word 'universitas' being first used by this institution at its foundation. The true date of its founding is uncertain, but believed by most accounts to have been 1088...
with a degree in economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, he started writing for the local Ferrara newspaper Il Corriere Padano in 1935 as a film journalist.
In 1940, Antonioni moved to Rome, where he worked for Cinema, the official Fascist
Italian Fascism
Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...
film magazine edited by Vittorio Mussolini
Vittorio Mussolini
Vittorio Mussolini was an Italian film critic and producer. He was also the second son of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. However, he was the first son of Mussolini with his second wife Rachele.-Biography:...
. However, Antonioni was fired a few months afterward. Later that year he enrolled at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia to study film technique, but left it after three months. He was drafted into the army afterwards.
Antonioni died aged 94 on July 30, 2007 in Rome, the same day that another renowned film director, Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera", he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and...
, also died. Antonioni lay in state at City Hall in Rome where a large screen showed black-and-white footage of him among his film sets and behind-the-scenes. He was buried in his home town of Ferrara on August 2, 2007.
Early film work
In 1942, Antonioni co-wrote Un pilota ritorna with Roberto RosselliniRoberto Rossellini
Roberto Rossellini was an Italian film director and screenwriter. Rossellini was one of the directors of the Italian neorealist cinema, contributing films such as Roma città aperta to the movement.-Early life:Born in Rome, Roberto Rossellini lived on the Via Ludovisi, where Benito Mussolini had...
and worked as assistant director on Enrico Fulchignoni's I due Foscari. In 1943, he travelled to France to assist Marcel Carné
Marcel Carné
-Biography:Born in Paris, France, the son of a cabinet maker whose wife died when their son was five, Carné began his career as a film critic, becoming editor of the weekly publication, Hebdo-Films, and working for Cinémagazine and Cinémonde between 1929 and 1933. In the same period he worked in...
on Les visiteurs du soir
Les Visiteurs du soir
The Devil's Envoys is a 1942 film by French film director Marcel Carné, famous for his romantic tragedy, Children of Paradise...
and then began a series of short films with Gente del Po (1943), a story of poor fishermen of the Po valley
Po Valley
The Po Valley, Po Plain, Plain of the Po, or Padan Plain is a major geographical feature of Italy. It extends approximately in an east-west direction, with an area of 46,000 km² including its Venetic extension not actually related to the Po River basin; it runs from the Western Alps to the...
. After the Liberation, the film stock was stored in the East-Italian Fascist "Republic of Salò" and could not be recovered and edited until 1947 (the complete footage was never retrieved). These films were neorealist
Italian neorealism
Italian neorealism is a style of film characterized by stories set amongst the poor and working class, filmed on location, frequently using nonprofessional actors...
in style, being semi-documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
studies of the lives of ordinary people.
However, Antonioni's first full-length feature film Cronaca di un amore
Cronaca di un amore
Cronaca di un amore is a 1950 Italian black-and-white drama film and the first full length feature film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. It stars Lucia Bosé, then 19-year old Miss Italy 1947 and a flame of Antonioni of that time...
(1950) broke away from neorealism by depicting the middle classes. He continued to do so in a series of other films : I vinti
I Vinti
I vinti is a 1953 film by Michelangelo Antonioni composed of three episodes. The film was dubbed into Italian, the three episodes, although the Paris episode is spoken in French, and the London episode in English. Italian DVD by Medusa Film offers the restored uncut trilingual version...
("The Vanquished", 1952), a trio of stories, each set in a different country (France, Italy and England), about juvenile delinquency; La signora senza camelie (The Lady Without Camellias, 1953) about a young film star and her fall from grace; and Le amiche
Le amiche
Le Amiche is a 1955 Italian black-and-white drama film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. It is adapted from Cesare Pavese's 1949 novella Tra donne sole and centers on Roman couturier Clelia , who leaves Rome to work at a boutique in Torino.-Production:The script for Le Amiche is adapted from a...
(The Girlfriends, 1955) about middle class women in Turin. Il grido
Il grido
Il grido is a 1957 Italian black-and-white drama film, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Its title means "The Outcry", but it was originally released in the English-speaking world as The Cry. The DVD release uses the Italian title. The film stars American actor Steve Cochran, Alida Valli, Betsy...
(The Outcry, 1957) was a return to working class stories, depicting a factory worker and his daughter. Each of these stories is about social alienation
Social alienation
The term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...
.
International recognition
In Le Amiche (1955), Antonioni experimented with a radical new style: instead of a conventional narrative, he presented a series of apparently disconnected events, and he used long takeLong take
A long take is an uninterrupted shot in a film which lasts much longer than the conventional editing pace either of the film itself or of films in general, usually lasting several minutes. It can be used for dramatic and narrative effect if done properly, and in moving shots is often accomplished...
s as part of his film making style. Antonioni returned to their use in L'avventura
L'avventura
L'Avventura is a 1960 Italian film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and developed from a story he created. Monica Vitti and Gabriele Ferzetti star. It is noted for its careful pacing, which puts a focus on visual composition and character development, as well as for its unusual narrative structure...
(1960), which became his first international success. At the Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
it received a mixture of cheers and boos, but the film was popular in art house cinemas around the world. La notte
La Notte
La Notte is a 1961 Italian film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. It is considered the central film of a trilogy beginning with L'avventura and ending with L'Eclisse.- Plot :...
(1961), starring Jeanne Moreau
Jeanne Moreau
Jeanne Moreau is a French actress, singer, screenwriter and director.She made her theatrical debut in 1947, and established herself as one of the leading actresses of the Comédie-Française...
and Marcello Mastroianni
Marcello Mastroianni
Marcello Vincenzo Domenico Mastroianni, Knight Grand Cross was an Italian film actor. His honours included British Film Academy Awards, Best Actor awards at the Cannes Film Festival and two Golden Globe Awards.- Personal life :...
, and L'eclisse
L'eclisse
L'eclisse is a 1962 film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. It is considered the last part of a trilogy which was preceded by L'avventura and La Notte....
(1962), starring Alain Delon
Alain Delon
Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon is a French actor. He rose quickly to stardom, and by the age of 23 was already being compared to French actors such as Gérard Philipe and Jean Marais, as well as American actor James Dean. He was even called the male Brigitte Bardot...
, followed L'avventura. These three films are commonly referred to as a trilogy because they are stylistically similar and all concerned with the alienation of man in the modern world. La notte won the Golden Bear
Golden Bear
According to legend, the Golden Bear was a large golden Ursus arctos. Members of the Ursus arctos species can reach masses of . The Grizzly Bear and the Kodiak Bear are North American subspecies of the Brown Bear....
award at the 11th Berlin International Film Festival
11th Berlin International Film Festival
The 11th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from June 23 to July 4, 1961.-Jury:* James Quinn * France Roche* Marc Turfkruyer* Satyajit Ray* Gian Luigi Rondi* Hirosugu Ozaki* Nicholas Ray* Falk Harnack* Hans Schaarwächter...
, His first color film, Il deserto rosso
Il deserto rosso
Red Desert is a 1964 Italian film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, written by Antonioni and Tonino Guerra and starring Monica Vitti with Richard Harris. This was Antonioni's first color film. The working title was Celeste e verde . Il deserto rosso was awarded the Golden Lion at the 25th Venice...
(Red Desert, 1964), deals with similar themes, and is sometimes considered the fourth film of the "trilogy". All of these films star Monica Vitti
Monica Vitti
Monica Vitti is an Italian actress best known for her starring roles in films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, her lover at that time, during the early 1960s...
, his lover during that period.
Antonioni then signed a deal with producer Carlo Ponti
Carlo Ponti
Carlo Ponti was an Italian film producer with over 140 production credits, and the husband of Italian movie star Sophia Loren.-Career:...
that would allow artistic freedom on three films in English to be released by MGM. The first, Blowup
Blowup
Blowup is a 1966 film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, his first English-language film.It tells of a British photographer's accidental involvement with a murder, inspired by Julio Cortázar's short story, "Las babas del diablo" or "The Devil's Drool" , translated also as Blow-Up, and by the life...
(1966), set in Swinging London
Swinging London
Swinging London is a catch-all term applied to the fashion and cultural scene that flourished in London, in the 1960s.It was a youth-oriented phenomenon that emphasised the new and modern. It was a period of optimism and hedonism, and a cultural revolution. One catalyst was the recovery of the...
, was a major success. The script was loosely based on the short story The Devil's Drool (otherwise known as Blow Up) by Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar
Julio Cortázar
Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar, was an Argentine writer. Cortázar, known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, influenced an entire generation of Spanish speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.-Early life:Cortázar's parents, Julio José Cortázar and...
. Although it dealt with the challenging theme of the impossibility of objective standards and the ever-doubtable truth of memory, it was a successful and popular hit with audiences, no doubt helped by its sex scenes, which were explicit for the time. It starred David Hemmings
David Hemmings
David Edward Leslie Hemmings was an English film, theatre and television actor as well as a film and television director and producer....
and Vanessa Redgrave
Vanessa Redgrave
Vanessa Redgrave, CBE is an English actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a political activist.She rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since made more than 35 appearances on London's West End and Broadway, winning...
. The second film was Zabriskie Point
Zabriskie Point (film)
Zabriskie Point is a 1970 film by Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, widely noted at the time for its setting in the late 1960s counterculture of the United States...
(1970), his first set in America and with a counterculture
Counterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
theme. The soundtrack carried popular artists such as Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...
(who wrote new music specifically for the film), the Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
and the Rolling Stones. However, its release was a critical and commercial disaster. The third, The Passenger
The Passenger (film)
The Passenger is a film directed and co-written by Michelangelo Antonioni, released in 1975, in which Jack Nicholson stars as a television reporter in Africa who assumes the identity of a dead stranger. The film competed for the "Palme d'Or" award at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival.-Cast:*Jack...
(1975), starring Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson
John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times, and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the...
and Maria Schneider, received critical praise, but also did poorly at the box office. It was out of circulation for many years, but was re-released for a limited theatrical run in October 2005 and has subsequently been released on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
.
In 1972, in between Zabriskie Point and The Passenger, Antonioni was invited by the Mao
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
government of the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
to visit the country. He made the documentary Chung Kuo, Cina
Chung Kuo, Cina
Chung Kuo, Cina is an Italian Documentary directed by Michelangelo Antonioni in 1972. It focuses primarily on the lives of working class Han Chinese during this time period.-Plot:...
, but it was severely denounced by the Chinese authorities as "anti-Chinese" and "anti-communist". The documentary had its first showing in China on November 25, 2004 in Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
with a film festival hosted by the Beijing Film Academy
Beijing Film Academy
Beijing Film Academy is a coeducational state-run higher education institution in Beijing, China. The film school is the largest institution specialised in the tertiary education for film and television production in Asia...
to honor the works of Michelangelo Antonioni.
Later career
In 1980, Antonioni made Il mistero di OberwaldIl mistero di Oberwald
Il mistero di Oberwald or The Mystery of Oberwald is a 1981 drama film, written, edited and directed by Italian Director Michelangelo Antonioni. It was filmed on video...
(The Mystery of Oberwald), an experiment in the electronic treatment of color, recorded in video and then translated to film, featuring Monica Vitti
Monica Vitti
Monica Vitti is an Italian actress best known for her starring roles in films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, her lover at that time, during the early 1960s...
once more. It is based on Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
's play L'Aigle à deux têtes
L'Aigle à deux têtes
L'Aigle à deux têtes is a French play in three acts by Jean Cocteau, written in 1943 and first performed in 1946. It is known variously in English as The Eagle with Two Heads, The Eagle Has Two Heads, The Two-Headed Eagle, The Double-Headed Eagle, and Eagle Rampant...
(The Eagle With Two Heads). Identificazione di una donna (Identification of a Woman, 1982), filmed in Italy, deals one more time with the recursive subjects of his Italian trilogy. In 1985, Antonioni suffered a stroke, which left him partly paralyzed and unable to speak. However, he continued to make films, including Beyond the Clouds
Beyond the Clouds (1995 film)
Beyond the Clouds is a 1995 Italian-French-German film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and Wim Wenders.- Plot :Four stories of love and illusion are told from the perspective of a wandering film director. In the first story, two beautiful young lovers are unable to consummate their passion...
(1995), for which Wim Wenders
Wim Wenders
Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders is a German film director, playwright, author, photographer and producer.-Early life:Wenders was born in Düsseldorf. He graduated from high school in Oberhausen in the Ruhr area. He then studied medicine and philosophy in Freiburg and Düsseldorf...
filmed some scenes. As Wenders has explained, Antonioni rejected almost all the material filmed by Wenders during the editing, except for a few short interludes. They shared the FIPRESCI Prize at the Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
with Cyclo
Cyclo (film)
Cyclo is a 1995 film by Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung . It stars Le Van Loc, Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Trần Nữ Yên Khê. Le Van Loc plays a young cyclo driver who is forced into working for a gang after his cycle is stolen. Soon, his sister also comes under the influence of the gang and becomes...
.
In 1994 he was given the Honorary Academy Award "in recognition of his place as one of the cinema's master visual stylists." It was presented to him by Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson
John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times, and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the...
. Months later, the statuette was stolen by burglars and had to be replaced. Previously, he had been nominated for Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Screenplay for Blowup
Blowup
Blowup is a 1966 film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, his first English-language film.It tells of a British photographer's accidental involvement with a murder, inspired by Julio Cortázar's short story, "Las babas del diablo" or "The Devil's Drool" , translated also as Blow-Up, and by the life...
. Antonioni's final film, made when he was in his 90s, was a segment of the anthology film
Anthology film
An anthology film is a feature film consisting of several different short films, often tied together by only a single theme, premise, or brief interlocking event . Sometimes each one is directed by a different director...
Eros
Eros (film)
Eros is a 2004 portmanteau film consisting of three short films: Wong Kar-wai's The Hand, Steven Soderbergh's Equilibrium and Michelangelo Antonioni's The Dangerous Thread of Things.-Releases:...
(2004), entitled "Il filo pericoloso delle cose" ("The Dangerous Thread of Things"). The short film's episodes are framed by dreamy paintings and the song "Michelangelo Antonioni", composed and sung by Caetano Veloso
Caetano Veloso
Caetano Emanuel Viana Teles Veloso , better known as Caetano Veloso, is a Brazilian composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist. Veloso first became known for his participation in the Brazilian musical movement Tropicalismo which encompassed theatre, poetry and music in the 1960s,...
. However, it was not well-received internationally; in America, for example, Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
claimed that it was neither erotic nor about eroticism. The U.S. DVD release of the film includes another 2004 short film by Antonioni, Lo sguardo di Michelangelo (The Gaze of Michelangelo).
Reception
Film historian Virginia Wright Wexman describes Antonioni's perspective on the world as that of a "postreligiousIrreligion
Irreligion is defined as an absence of religion or an indifference towards religion. Sometimes it may also be defined more narrowly as hostility towards religion. When characterized as hostility to religion, it includes antitheism, anticlericalism and antireligion. When characterized as...
Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
and existentialist intellectual." In a speech at Cannes about L'Avventura, Antonioni said that in the modern age of reason and science, mankind still lives by "a rigid and stereotyped morality which all of us recognize as such and yet sustain out of cowardice and sheer laziness". He said his films explore the paradox that "we have examined those moral attitudes very carefully, we have dissected them and analyzed them to the point of exhaustion. We have been capable of all this, but we have not been capable of finding new ones." Nine years later he expressed a similar attitude in an interview, saying that he loathed the word 'morality': "When man becomes reconciled to nature, when space becomes his true background, these words and concepts will have lost their meaning, and we will no longer have to use them."
One of the recurring themes in Antonioni's films is characters who suffer from ennui and whose lives are empty and purposeless aside from the gratification of pleasure or the pursuit of material wealth. Film historian David Bordwell
David Bordwell
David Bordwell is an American film theorist and film historian. Since receiving his PhD from the University of Iowa in 1974, he has written more than fifteen volumes on the subject of cinema including Narration in the Fiction Film , Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema , Making Meaning , and On the...
writes that in his films, "Vacations, parties and artistic pursuits are vain efforts to conceal the characters' lack of purpose and emotion. Sexuality is reduced to casual seduction, enterprise to the pursuit of wealth at any cost." Antonioni's films tend to have spare plots and dialogue, and much of the screen time is spent lingering on certain settings, such as the seven-minute continuous take
Long take
A long take is an uninterrupted shot in a film which lasts much longer than the conventional editing pace either of the film itself or of films in general, usually lasting several minutes. It can be used for dramatic and narrative effect if done properly, and in moving shots is often accomplished...
in The Passenger, or the scene in L'Eclisse in which Monica Vitti stares curiously at electrical posts accompanied by ambient sounds of wires clanking. Virginia Wright Wexman summarizes his style in the following terms: "The camera is placed at a medium distance more often than close in, frequently moving slowly; the shots are permitted to extend uninterrupted by cutting. Thus each image is more complex, containing more information than it would in a style in which a smaller area is framed ... In Antonioni's work we must regard his images at length; he forces our full attention by continuing the shot long after others would cut away." Antonioni is also noted for exploiting colour as a significant expressive element of his cinematic style, especially in Il deserto rosso
Il deserto rosso
Red Desert is a 1964 Italian film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, written by Antonioni and Tonino Guerra and starring Monica Vitti with Richard Harris. This was Antonioni's first color film. The working title was Celeste e verde . Il deserto rosso was awarded the Golden Lion at the 25th Venice...
, his first colour film.
Bordwell explains that Antonioni's films were extremely influential on subsequent art film
Art film
An art film is the result of filmmaking which is typically a serious, independent film aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience...
s: "More than any other director, he encouraged filmmakers to explore elliptical and open-ended narrative". Film director Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 filmsIn 1946, Kurosawa co-directed, with Hideo Sekigawa and Kajiro Yamamoto, the feature Those Who Make Tomorrow ;...
considered Antonioni one of the most interesting filmmakers. Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
listed La Notte as one of his ten favorite films in a 1963 Poll. Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky was a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director, widely regarded as one of the finest filmmakers of the 20th century....
also listed Antonioni as one of his favorite filmmakers. Miklós Jancsó
Miklós Jancsó
Miklós Jancsó is a Hungarian film director and screenwriter.Jancsó achieved international prominence from the mid-1960s onwards, with works including The Round Up , The Red and the White and Red Psalm .Jancsó's films are characterized by visual stylization,...
considers Antonioni as his master.
Antonioni's spare style and purposeless characters, however, have not received universal acclaim. Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera", he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and...
stated in 2002 that he considered some of Antonioni's films, including Blowup
Blowup
Blowup is a 1966 film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, his first English-language film.It tells of a British photographer's accidental involvement with a murder, inspired by Julio Cortázar's short story, "Las babas del diablo" or "The Devil's Drool" , translated also as Blow-Up, and by the life...
and La notte
La Notte
La Notte is a 1961 Italian film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. It is considered the central film of a trilogy beginning with L'avventura and ending with L'Eclisse.- Plot :...
, masterpieces for their detached and dreamlike quality, but found the other films boring and noted that he had never understood why Antonioni was held in such esteem. Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
regretted the Italian director's use of the long take
Long take
A long take is an uninterrupted shot in a film which lasts much longer than the conventional editing pace either of the film itself or of films in general, usually lasting several minutes. It can be used for dramatic and narrative effect if done properly, and in moving shots is often accomplished...
: "I don't like to dwell on things. It's one of the reasons I'm so bored with Antonioni - the belief that, because a shot is good, it's going to get better if you keep looking at it. He gives you a full shot of somebody walking down a road. And you think, 'Well, he's not going to carry that woman all the way up that road.' But he does. And then she leaves and you go on looking at the road after she's gone."
American actor Peter Weller
Peter Weller
Peter Frederick Weller is an American film and stage actor, director and lecturer.He is best known for his roles as the title character in the first two RoboCop films and Buckaroo Banzai in the cult classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension...
, whom Antonioni directed in Beyond the Clouds
Beyond the Clouds (1995 film)
Beyond the Clouds is a 1995 Italian-French-German film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and Wim Wenders.- Plot :Four stories of love and illusion are told from the perspective of a wandering film director. In the first story, two beautiful young lovers are unable to consummate their passion...
, explained in a 1996 interview: "There is no director living except maybe Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 filmsIn 1946, Kurosawa co-directed, with Hideo Sekigawa and Kajiro Yamamoto, the feature Those Who Make Tomorrow ;...
, Bergman
Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera", he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and...
, or Antonioni that I would fall down and do anything for. I met Antonioni three years ago in Taormina
Taormina
Taormina is a comune and small town on the east coast of the island of Sicily, Italy, in the Province of Messina, about midway between Messina and Catania. Taormina has been a very popular tourist destination since the 19th century...
at a film festival
Taormina Film Fest
Taormina Film Fest, a historic film festival, and Italy's oldest began in 1955 under the name Rassegna Cinematografica Internazionale di Messina e Taormina...
. I introduced myself and told him that I adored his movies, his contributions to film, because he was the first guy who really started making films about the reality of the vacuity between people, the difficulty in traversing this space between lovers in modern day... and he never gives you an answer, Antonioni – that's the beautiful thing."
Feature films
- Cronaca di un amoreCronaca di un amoreCronaca di un amore is a 1950 Italian black-and-white drama film and the first full length feature film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. It stars Lucia Bosé, then 19-year old Miss Italy 1947 and a flame of Antonioni of that time...
(Chronicle of a Love, 1950) - I vintiI VintiI vinti is a 1953 film by Michelangelo Antonioni composed of three episodes. The film was dubbed into Italian, the three episodes, although the Paris episode is spoken in French, and the London episode in English. Italian DVD by Medusa Film offers the restored uncut trilingual version...
(The Vanquished, 1952) - La signora senza camelie (Camille Without Camellias, 1953)
- Le amicheLe amicheLe Amiche is a 1955 Italian black-and-white drama film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. It is adapted from Cesare Pavese's 1949 novella Tra donne sole and centers on Roman couturier Clelia , who leaves Rome to work at a boutique in Torino.-Production:The script for Le Amiche is adapted from a...
(The Girl Friends, 1955) - Il gridoIl gridoIl grido is a 1957 Italian black-and-white drama film, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Its title means "The Outcry", but it was originally released in the English-speaking world as The Cry. The DVD release uses the Italian title. The film stars American actor Steve Cochran, Alida Valli, Betsy...
(The Outcry, 1957) - L'avventuraL'avventuraL'Avventura is a 1960 Italian film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and developed from a story he created. Monica Vitti and Gabriele Ferzetti star. It is noted for its careful pacing, which puts a focus on visual composition and character development, as well as for its unusual narrative structure...
(The Adventure, 1960) - La NotteLa NotteLa Notte is a 1961 Italian film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. It is considered the central film of a trilogy beginning with L'avventura and ending with L'Eclisse.- Plot :...
(The Night, 1961) - Eclipse (1962)
- Red Desert (1964)
- BlowupBlowupBlowup is a 1966 film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, his first English-language film.It tells of a British photographer's accidental involvement with a murder, inspired by Julio Cortázar's short story, "Las babas del diablo" or "The Devil's Drool" , translated also as Blow-Up, and by the life...
(1966) - Zabriskie PointZabriskie Point (film)Zabriskie Point is a 1970 film by Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, widely noted at the time for its setting in the late 1960s counterculture of the United States...
(1970) - Chung Kuo, CinaChung Kuo, CinaChung Kuo, Cina is an Italian Documentary directed by Michelangelo Antonioni in 1972. It focuses primarily on the lives of working class Han Chinese during this time period.-Plot:...
(documentaryDocumentary filmDocumentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
, 1972) - The Passenger (1975)
- Il mistero di OberwaldIl mistero di OberwaldIl mistero di Oberwald or The Mystery of Oberwald is a 1981 drama film, written, edited and directed by Italian Director Michelangelo Antonioni. It was filmed on video...
(The Mystery of Oberwald, 1981) - Identificazione di una donna (Identification of a Woman, 1982)
- Al di là delle nuvoleBeyond the Clouds (1995 film)Beyond the Clouds is a 1995 Italian-French-German film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and Wim Wenders.- Plot :Four stories of love and illusion are told from the perspective of a wandering film director. In the first story, two beautiful young lovers are unable to consummate their passion...
(Beyond the Clouds, 1995 - co-credited with Wim WendersWim WendersErnst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders is a German film director, playwright, author, photographer and producer.-Early life:Wenders was born in Düsseldorf. He graduated from high school in Oberhausen in the Ruhr area. He then studied medicine and philosophy in Freiburg and Düsseldorf...
) - ErosEros (film)Eros is a 2004 portmanteau film consisting of three short films: Wong Kar-wai's The Hand, Steven Soderbergh's Equilibrium and Michelangelo Antonioni's The Dangerous Thread of Things.-Releases:...
(segment : "Il filo pericoloso delle cose") (2004) co-direction with Steven SoderberghSteven SoderberghSteven Andrew Soderbergh is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and an Academy Award-winning film director. He is best known for directing commercial Hollywood films like Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and the remake of Ocean's Eleven, but he has also directed smaller less...
and Wong Kar-WaiWong Kar-waiWong Kar-wai BBS is a Hong Kong Second Wave filmmaker, internationally renowned as an auteur for his visually unique, highly stylized, emotionally resonant work, including Days of Being Wild , Ashes of Time , Chungking Express , Fallen Angels , Happy Together and 2046...
.
Short films
- Gente del Po (People of the Po, 10 min, shot in 1943, released in 1947)
- N.U. (Nettezza urbana) (Dustmen, 11 min, 1948)
- Oltre l'oblio (1948)
- Roma-Montevideo (1948)
- L'amorosa menzogna (Loving Lie, 10 min, 1949)
- Sette cani e un vestito (Seven Reeds, One Suit, 10 min, 1949)
- Bomarzo (1949)
- Ragazze in bianco (Girls in white, 1949)
- Superstizione (Superstition, 9 min, 1949)
- La villa dei mostri (The House of Monsters, 10 min, 1950)
- La funivia del Faloria (The Funicular of Mount Faloria, 10 min, 1950)
- Inserto girato a Lisca Bianca (TV, 8 min, 1983)
- Kumbha Mela (18 min, 1989)
- Noto, Mandorli, Vulcano, Stromboli, Carnevale (Volcanoes and Carnival, 8 min, 1993)
- Sicilia (9 min, 1997)
- Lo sguardo di Michelangelo (The Gaze of Michelangelo, 15 min, 2004)
Episodes in omnibus films
- Tentato suicido ("When Love Fails", episode in L'amore in cittàL'Amore in CittàL'Amore in Città is a 1953 anthology film composed of six different segments, each with a different writer or director...
, 1953) - Il provino (segment in I tre volti — The Three Faces of a Woman, 1965)
- Roma (segment in 12 registi per 12 città, promotional film for Soccer World Championship1990 FIFA World CupThe 1990 FIFA World Cup was the 14th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial international football world championship tournament. It was held from 8 June to 8 July 1990 in Italy, the second country to host the event twice. Teams representing 116 national football associations from all six populated...
, 1989) - Il filo pericoloso delle cose ("The Dangerous Thread of Things", segment in ErosEros (film)Eros is a 2004 portmanteau film consisting of three short films: Wong Kar-wai's The Hand, Steven Soderbergh's Equilibrium and Michelangelo Antonioni's The Dangerous Thread of Things.-Releases:...
, 2004)
Further reading
- Antonioni, Michelangelo. Michelangelo Antonioni: An Introduction. Trans. by Scott Sullivan. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963.
- Arrowsmith, William and Ted Perry, ed. Antonioni: the poet of images. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
- Brunette, Peter. The Films of Michelangelo Antonioni. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
- Chatman, Seymour. Antonioni or the Surface of the World. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1985.
- Lyons, Robert Joseph. Michelangelo Antonioni's Neo-Realism: A World View. Diss. Bowling Green State University, 1973.
Documentaries on Antonioni
- Antonioni, Enrica. Fare un film per me è vivere (Making a Film for Me is to Live), 1996. (52')
- Di Carlo, Carlo. Antonioni su Antonioni (Antonioni on Antonioni), 2008. (55')
- —. Antonioni: Lo sguardo che cambio il cinema (Antonioni: the Gaze that Changed Cinema), 2001. (60')
- Labarthe, André S. L'ultima sequenza di Professione: Reporter (The Last Sequence of The Passenger), 1974. (12')
- Miccichè, Lino. Antonioni visto da Antonioni (Antonioni Seen by Antonioni), 1978. (28')
External links
- Michelangelo Antonioni This site collates the writings and interviews of film director Michelangelo Antonioni.
- Antonioni Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)
- En la muerte de Antonioni (written in Spanish)
- Photography as a Framing Art
- Antonioni writing on the sound of New York City, early 1970's (via BldgBlog)