Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni
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5. Il Grido (1957)
Michelango Antonioni is typically known for venturing away from the visually gritty lower class struggles of the neo-realist movement and instead focuses on the fabrication and emptiness that lies at the heart of Italy's upper-classes. However, with "Il Grido," he makes his effort fully into the neo-realism that Italy's movement is most known for. As a man becomes a vagabond after running away from his cheating lover, he goes on an odyssey through the landscape of Italy. Although the film centers on his individual malaise, the real heart of the story can be found with the struggling lower class and impoverished community he comes across along the way. When the film was released, however, critics and audiences alike felt the film was too cold and inhuman. This is probably because Antonioni was struggling with depression at the time and "Il Grido" seems to pick up on this coldness and melancholy. Either way, the film is retrospectively favored as great Antonioni film and an important piece in his oeuvre.
4. Story of a Love Affair (1950)
Michelangelo Antonioni's feature-length film debut, "Story of a Love Affair," is a mélange of different inspirations. It is loosely adapted from the novel "The Postman Always Rings Twice," while also taking loads of inspiration from Luchino Visconti's 1943 film "Ossessione" and Billy Wilder's 1944 film "Double Indemnity." Two lovers attempt the murder of the woman's industrialist husband. All the while, characters' lives are filled with abundance and economic prosperity. Antonioni paints a post-war 1950s landscape of hollow characters desperate to satiate their restless desires. Mixing visual styles of neo-realism and film-noir, as well as uniquely original camera choices, Antonioni makes a splash with this debut and demonstrates an original talent with an expressive style.
3. Le Amiche (1955)
As the Italian neo-realist movement was drawing to a close, Michelangelo Antonioni's prowess for creating films inverted from this style began. While neo-realist films dealt with poverty, crime, and social survival in a visually gritty, realist aesthetic, Antonioni made crisp, restrained films about Italy's upper class. His 1955 film "Le Amiche" acts as a prototype to his later masterpieces. The film deals with a group of upper-class women all trying to satiate their restless emptiness. The fashion world, high art culture, and upper-class society all cover up selfish and superficial desires of its characters. There is an unspecified malaise at the heart of their lives and every action is an opportunity to cover up this malaise. As Italy was entering this same malaise, only superficiality acted as an antidote. Because of this, "Le Amiche" scratches at this invisible itch and even acts as a restrained prototype for the more maximalist "La Dolce Vita" by Federico Fellini 5 years later.
2. La Notte (1961)
After the controversial success of "L'avventura," Michelangelo Antonioni continued in his quest for replacing traditional storytelling narrative with visual composition, atmosphere, and mood with his 1961 film "La Notte." The film sees, over the course of 24 hours, a couple's deteriorating relationship. Antonioni creates longform situations where not a whole lot is happening and in doing so, allows for more intimate and subtle forms of drama to take place. The result is a series of compositions and moods that allow the spectator to experience the film from the inside out, as opposed to experience the film as a third party spectator. With "La Notte," we as the viewer experience the stagnation, resentment, and unfiltered emptiness of a couple who no longer love each other. There's nothing more to it than that in regards to the plot on paper, but Antonioni is somehow able to intellectualize vast concepts about class, modern isolation, and post-war malaise into a single, coherent idea only visualized through an internal drama.
1. L'avventura (1960)
After taking a few years off from making films, Michelango Antonino returned with a film that sparked controversy and drama at its 1960 Cannes Film Festival premiere. It is a bit ironic that said film, "L'avventura" caused so much drama, because the main complaint with the film was that it had no drama. The film centers on a young woman searching for her friend who has mysteriously disappeared. The approach by Antonioni in this film is strange and what many consider to be a sort of 'anti-Hitchcock' effect. Rather than situations occurring and characters behaving based on logical prior information, events happen and characters behave with a sort of randomness. This randomness is not exciting, however. Instead, the film, along with its characters, seems directionless. Its characters behave with no congruency. The purpose by Antonioni is to tap into the psychology of its wealthy characters caught in their respective bored malaise of existence. Nothing that happens is really truly meaningful. The characters' behavior and their motivations are as unclear to themselves as they are to us, the audience. The result is something that is more of a mood than an actual story. This radical approach to a sort of anti-drama created a whirlwind of reactions from critics and audiences. Many consider it to be pretentious arthouse snobbery with no true meaning. However, the whole point of the film is alienation and by alienating even its own audience, the film manages to succeed in its entire point that draws directly from the psyche of its characters.
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