antonioni

at the time sight and sound said:

'film is about human relationships, not about spatial relationships' w/r/t antonioni. but of course the way cinema expresses human relationships is spatial -- and the themes of his films are very much of their times, you could call him an 'existentialist'. the blankness in his films corresponds to what he thinks are shallow characters.

the "spatial relationships" comment i believe came from lindsay anderson or one of the S&S crowd in reaction to a perceived formalism taking hold...it might have even been robin wood's work at the time that sparked that comment (wood has since psuedo-renounced his earliest film writing).

i tend to be sympathetic to the formalist tendency b/c i think art has its own imperatives sometimes, certain abstract patterns and formal designs that have an appeal in themself--but even more b/c i think the notion of what "human relationships" means is this context is impoverished and didactic.... things that would seem hopelessly abstract and unengaged to a self-proclaimed humanist seem the very stuff of life--or one part of it--to me. granted too many critics skip over the interesting part--the observation of how films are put together and how they achieve certain affects--right to the airy theorizing, which is perhaps what anderson et al were reacting against, but i think it was the wrong (and a much too defensive) reaction...

ok back to antonioni.

i dont know exactly what it "does well" - that's partly why i am using such vague terms. what i like about antonioni, and other filmmakers with similarly sleepy styles, is the emphasis on time. there is a feel of waiting, lingering, or even a vigil. thats something im not sure is in other art forms.

and the thing about speed in film is that it is conveyed through editing, etc. but with long takes the time is literally there, and it's not suggested through artistic means.

i honestly don't really know what i am getting at here, just making some observations.

But the very heavy deliberate laboriousness with which it was constructed put me off from whatever immediate striking effect it was supposed to have. There's a sense of imbalance that's almost comical, putting such narrative and emotional weight on what is a fairly casual gesture, in addition to the obviousness of the wall/vista split-screen. This is a general aesthetic bugbear of mine, not specific to Antonioni, but watching L'Avventura definitely set it off.

Antonioni's conceptual sequel to Blow-Up is an Italian leftist's goofball cinematic view of late '60s American counterculture. It features a long sequence with nude couples making love in the desert, for which Antonioni wanted Fahey to do the music. When Fahey arrived in Rome, Antonioni showed him the segment in a screening room. "Antonioni says, 'What I want you to do is to compose some music that will go along with the porno scene.' I kept saying, 'Yes, sir.' Then he starts this, 'Now, John. This is young love. Young love.' I mean, that's young love? All these bodies? 'Young love. But John, it's in the desert, where's there's death. But it's young love.' He kept going, 'Young Love/Death' faster and faster. I was sure I was talking to a madman. I'm still sure I was.

"So I experimented. I had instrumentalists come in and told them just to play whatever they felt like. They had to pretend to understand what I was talking about, especially if Antonioni came in the room. That was fun. They were very cooperative. I came up with some sections of music that sounded more like death than young love. It was actually pretty ominous. I played it for Michaelangelo and he thought it was great. So he took me out to dinner at this really fancy restaurant and started telling me how horrible the United States was. We were drinking a lot of wine and I don't remember which one of us started cussing. It started real fast and ended in a fistfight. You have no idea how much that guy hates the United States. What a jerk. I did like 20-25 minutes, but they only used about two minutes. Somebody's driving along in the car and the announcer says, 'And now some John Fahey.' And that's it -- young love and death."

(I'll take Antonioni over Fahey anyday.)

I've also had problems with Red Desert, though I'm told that it really needs multiple viewings to turn out. I don't know about that...I mean, it's been four months since I last saw it, and I was drinking some gin at a bar last night and thinking...I should see Red Desert again. It could comfort me, and I shouldn't have left it like I did - you see, it put me on the spot, and since then I've been just watching lots of other Italian New Wave directors, mostly one at a time, trying to prove to myself that I don't need Red Desert. Should I go back to it?

(I've definitely earned someone's undying hatred with this one.)

I love La Notte too! And Girolamo, Red Desert is far from my favorite of his, but I think it does reward repeated viewings. Anyway, I think he's my favorite director, and L'Eclisse probably my favorite film. Or at least I considered them as such at one point, i'm finding it hard to think in terms of favorites these days. I've seen everything he's done, including the early shorts, save for his 4 hour China documentary and Identification of a Woman (I actually own the latter on VHS but I'm waiting to see it on the big screen; someplace near me, screen the damn thing already!)

I want to scribble more thoughts but I've been kinda busy today ... hopefully tonight I can add some more.

(apologies...)

what do people think of "blow up"? who else has read j. hoberman's piece on its enormous success?

do you mean gillian hills or jane birkin????

L'Avventura meant enough to me at 20 that I wrote my own script updated for the modern era. La Notte is what I re-watch.

The Other Side of the Wind has a sexier version of Zabriskie Point as its film-within-a-film.

sorry Orson, you didn't know arty sexploitation from Antonioni...

you don't know from passive screen boys

lol

planning to see La Notte and L'Eclisse next

haven't been able to watch Il Grido

interesting to see the progression from L'Avventura to La Notte to L'Elclisse. it seems that all his films about people talking about their feelings

*are* about

well you gotta either talk about em or not talk about em

love Alain Delon and Monica Vitti

and Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau

Vitti and Delon are remarkably blank and emotionally absent in L’Eclisse, and the depiction of their alienation feels more and more oppressive as the film goes along

still not sure what its title refers to, was thinking maybe it had something to do with what Rosenbaum referred to as “Antonioni’s preoccupation with objects and spaces overtaking and supplanting people”

really liked Il Grido, Antonioni’s “working class bummer” (to use morbs’ words). it has the themes of alienation and ennui of later films but with a more conventional, albeit meandering, story. loved every minute of seeing Steve Cochran on screen

Red Desert is next on my list. I remember seeing it in college and thinking of it primarily as a visual experience, as something to love just for its aesthetic appeal. If that's the only level I relate to it on at a second viewing, that will again be enough I think

at the moment I think I love Red Desert more than any other Antonioni movie

Bradshaw compared it to Alphaville and Solaris in it’s sci-fi eeriness and suggested that it may have been an inspiration for Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman (which I *really* loved), but watching it again I’m wondering if Todd Haynes was influenced by it when he made Safe

the experience of alienation in modern society expressed as fear of environmental poisoning, filmed in a surreal manner and playing out as a horror movie

good call, I could see that. and the Solaris connection - particularly the fire juxtaposed against all the gray

I loved the juxtaposition of painted color and gray in the film

Can't think of any movies with the color palette of Red Desert. it's really startling, particularly that first shot of flames shooting out of the factory

re: Red Desert and Safe: it feels like there is something very deep about the spiritual malaise of the Monica Vitti and Julianne Moore characters in the two films

in my young adult life among my friends Blow Up was considered THE Antonioni film. I'm interested to see it and Zabriskie Point again. I loved both of them at the time

watching Blow Up again, I'm not sure I understand exactly what it’s about. I feel like I'm not giving enough of myself to it to really appreciate it

the mystery seems incidental, I read somewhere it's a film about someone waking up from a numbing life and living fully for a moment, that makes sense to me

liked the Ebert review of Zabriskie Point:

!https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/zabriskie-point-1970

"Michelangelo Antonioni is a fitfully brilliant director whose best, and basic, insight is that the fashionable cultivation of boredom can break down our ability to feel and love. In the 1950s, it seemed to him, people became so shy of spontaneity that they lost the knack. His characters were so alienated and spiritually exhausted they could hardly even get through breakfast together.

We loved it. "Eclipse" (1962) had us leaving the theater feeling deliciously betrayed and alone. "Blow-Up" (1966) was even better. It was set in swinging London and left us feeling betrayed, alone, and with-it. In between, Antonioni gave us "The Red Desert" (1964), possibly the most passive and empty serious movie of the decade."

"possibly the most passive and empty serious movie of the decade" also one of the best

saw The Passenger again. I had forgotten how amazing the ending was in the way it resolved the story, shot first through the bars of a window in a room at the Gloria Hotel looking outside, then moving through the bars to the courtyard, then looking back again through the bars into the room

What helluva film L'Avventura remains. My seventh or eighth viewing, this time with a superb Gene Youngblood commentary track.

Michelangelo Antonioni on the set of Zabriskie Point in 1968, photographed by Bruce Davidson. pic.twitter.com/0K7mW9TYTE

— 💜💜ค Ŧคภ๒๏ץ кภ๏ฬร ค ђคՇєг💜💜 (@NickPinkerton) April 23, 2020

That's so you don't catch him smiling.