antonioni

just starting to watch Antonioni films again. loved Le Amiche, but L'Avventura was baffling to me, for a second time

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.