L'avventura (1960)

 Michelangelo Antonioni's "L'avventura"

Michelangelo Antonioni's 1960 film "L'avventura" seems to live in infamy. The greatest moment of infamy for this widely discussed film is its premiere at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. At the screening, it received a notorious reaction. The entire film, despite its serious tone, was met with widespread laughter. The laughter was also joined by boos. The boos were usually hurled during scenes and sequence in which is appeared where nothing happens to further the film's plot. The actress and star of the film, Monica Vitti was so distraught by this reaction, she fled the theater. The next day, director Antonioni received a list of signatures from established filmmakers and writers declaring "L'avventura" the best film screened at the festival. After a second screening, the film went on to win the Jury Prize. This hysteria over the film and the disparate reactions were the subject of much publicity. When the film was released to a wide audience, it was universally praised. So, the question becomes...why did "L'avventura" received such a reaction out of audiences? 

A lot of why there was such a volatile reaction to the film has to do with the film's plot and pacing, both of which are extremely strange and unmoving. The film centers on a young woman named Anna, who embarks on a yachting trip along with Mediterranean with her friend Claudia. Claudia is there to meet up with her fiancé, Sandro. Claudia is facing a moment of crisis in which she no longer wishes to be with Sandro. While out on a small island, Claudia disappears. The remainder of the film follows Anna and Sandro as they attempt to locate Claudia, as they believe she somehow left the island. Along the way, Anna and Sandro end up in a romance of their own. 

The plot of the film seems relatively simple enough. So why all the hubbub? I feel as though when the film initially starts with the Mediterranean excursion and the subsequent initial disappearance, the film feels relatively in tune and normal, despite the malaise and uncertainty of the characters. However, whenever Anna and Sandro begin their more intensified search and then their subsequent romance, the film suddenly changes momentum. The search for Anna begins to become irrelevant, despite her absence being ever-present. Once the momentum changes, the film ventures into strange territory. 

This strange territory the film ventures into can be seen as something that film essayist Geoffrey Nowell-Smith calls "anti-Hitchcock." With Hitchcock, along with the basic fundamentals of storytelling, events that happen and decisions that are made are all logical events and decisions that extend from preexisting events and logical reasoning. Characters make decisions off the information they (and the audience) are provided and their motives are typically certain and clear to the extend that the audience has witness events that have led them to make said decisions. What Antonioni does with "L'avventura" is something that extraordinarily ventures from this model. In his film, events simply happen and nothing signals these events are even remotely significant. The events that unfold are simply by happenstance or chance and no set of prerequisite events ever set these events into motion. Because of this, very little 'drama' actually occurs. Tension does not build from a series of subsequent events. Tension instead builds obscurely, if at all. There are scenes in which very little is happening, and when things do occur, they do so out of obscurity rather than a need within the story. The same can be said of the characters, as their decisions appear somewhat illogical and are based on no previous understanding of the characters or their circumstances.

With all of this, the film and its plot seem directionless. Its characters behave with no congruency. The drama becomes absent and when it does arise, it arise out of no need within the story. Why would Antonioni film his story with no sense of drama or logic? After all, the Cannes audience booed because they felt that nothing was actually happening in the story and the characters and situation contained nothing to actually engage with. That is because Antonioni is more focused on infusing a sense of psychological connection with its characters. In this case, characters are in a bland malaise. They are all wealthy and upper-class and all of their actions seem to stem from boredom, uncertainty, or alienation. That is the reason why you feel so bored by the situations of the film: the characters feel bored. This is why none of the characters' behaviors feel grounded in anything or logical, because they are simply acting on whatever fleeting impulses they have in that moment. None of the events that happen in the film are at all meaningful. So too are the lives of our characters: without meaning. As Geoffrey Nowell-Smith puts it, "[the film] presents its characters behaving according to motivations as unclear to themselves as to the audience; they are sensitive to mood, to landscape, to things that happen...None of them, except Claudia...seem to have much consciousness of the lack of direction that afflicts them."

This weird and spellbinding result is something that throws its audience completely for a loop. The entire film is more of a mood than it is a story. Nothing that happens is consequential, none of the characters have any sort of engagement with us, and nothing presented to us is ever clear to be connected to much of anything. This is precisely why audiences laughed and booed at Cannes. The film itself alienated itself from the actual viewer. It did not provide any sort of clarity or point. It was directionless and adrift from even itself. Emotions are fleeting and events are unstable or are unclear to their intention. Because of this confounding nature of the film, many have considered it, along with the work of Antonioni as pretentious arthouse snobbery that hold no true meaning. Many consider it purely aesthetic with no real element of artistry. I would beg to differ, as I feel as though you are missing the entire point. Simply because you are bored by the film and it has detached itself from needing to provide any sort of story, that in itself is the art of its story because that is the connection Antonioni is psychologically examining within the characters themselves. The story itself is a mood brought out of the characters' psyches. 

Whether or not you can't engage with the film is not an issue with the film. In fact, it is the very point of the film all together. To me, that in itself is a finely crafted piece of artistic work. Whether or not you actually enjoy it and even want to bother watching it is another thing entirely. But, you can't deny that something that makes you feel the desired affect of its director is something of an artistic achievement. I feel like I had similar reactions, as well. The film alienated itself from me and I struggled with grasping its concepts and the point of its story. However, that irritation or disconnect you feel completely coincides with the whole point itself.