antonioni

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????

we've dealt with this, upthread.

no it's not getting a release. someone copied me the japanese dvd.

i will have to look into this.

:P

This wins!

For sure. Also Rossellini's General Della Rovere. Um, and Along Came Jones, I suppose.

I'm just in love with the SOUND and COLOR of the film. All those clanging and wheezing oil rigs and freighters, that industrial machinery interrupting everybody's conversations at every turn. That big belch of steam that erupts at the beginning of the film, when the two men are trying to have a conversation. The juxtaposition of the idyllic story of the tropical island that the Vitti character tells her son at the end of the movie, with the ugly gaseous drilling fields she leads him past. The grey colors of the cityscape (physically painted to look that way - no filters here). The fog.

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.