Michelangelo Antonioni

Started by (kelvin), April 12, 2003, 05:23:31 PM

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tpfkabi

Movie Gallery has a free movie weekend and surprisingly they had two copies of The Passenger DVD.

***SPOILERS***

After watching it I went to the IMDB board to read other's thoughts.
I totally missed the reflection in the window during the last shot.
I figured Antonioni was leaving it up in the air, but after rewatching the scene and focusing on the window reflection, it is definitely there.
Originally, with the wife's answer (which can be interpreted more than one way) I thought that maybe Jack's character was one of the ones leaving in the car.
The two sets of one black man/one white man also makes it very confusing.
I'm listening to Jack's commentary right now.

p.s. Am I the only one that think Maria Schneider looks like a teenage boy in the film? I read that she was in Last Tango (which I have not seen) but when she walks away there is absolutely no presence of hips.
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

ElPandaRoyal

Quote from: bigideas on September 02, 2007, 04:45:12 PM
p.s. Am I the only one that think Maria Schneider looks like a teenage boy in the film? I read that she was in Last Tango (which I have not seen) but when she walks away there is absolutely no presence of hips.

When I went to see this, my girlfriend said the exact same thing when she saw her in some stills outside the theater: "...and who's the little kid?"
Si

tpfkabi

i'm wondering if she really knew English at the time and had not just learned the words (not knowing their meaning) because her conversations with Jack feel very awkward. her responses are fast and stacato, almost as if she needed to get them out before forgetting them almost.

listening to Jack's commentary and seeing the long take again - brilliant.
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

Gold Trumpet

As characterized by his films with Monica Vitti, it wasn't above Antonioni to cast a great beauty in the leading role instead of a great actress. In his own ways, Antonioni believed in need for cinematic language before he believed in getting quality acting. It was accepted in most corners of cinematic thought during the 1960s.

Maria Schneider was a beauty only in The Passenger and also in Last Tango in Paris. Her limitations are obvious. Most people forget to comment because it was accepted at the time.

The bigger concern about The Passenger is that has a similar theme to the one in L'Avventura and is considered an equal work to that film because both films have similar themes. I find that outragerous. Any professional filmmaker could have filmed the bulk of The Passenger. Only Antonioni in his prime could have created the structure and art in L'Avventua.

w/o horse

October 10 and 11 at the New Beverly they're playing Il Grido and Zabriskie Point.
Raven haired Linda and her school mate Linnea are studying after school, when their desires take over and they kiss and strip off their clothes. They take turns fingering and licking one another's trimmed pussies on the desks, then fuck each other to intense orgasms with colorful vibrators.

ElPandaRoyal

Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on September 03, 2007, 10:42:51 PMThe bigger concern about The Passenger is that has a similar theme to the one in L'Avventura and is considered an equal work to that film because both films have similar themes. I find that outragerous. Any professional filmmaker could have filmed the bulk of The Passenger. Only Antonioni in his prime could have created the structure and art in L'Avventua.

I can't really agree with that. Maybe L'Avventura is superior (love them both too much to choose one), but I don't really think anybody else could have made The Passenger, at least the way Antonioni did it - the same stuff, in the hands of another filmmaker would have been completely different. I mean, I can't even imagine anybody else making that movie at all. The pace, the shots... done by somebody else, it wouldn't have been the same movie, you know what I mean? It would have turned out to be something else; another movie. At least to me, there is no way any other filmmaker could have even made the movie.
Si

Gold Trumpet

Quote from: ElPandaRoyal on September 04, 2007, 12:18:04 PM
Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on September 03, 2007, 10:42:51 PMThe bigger concern about The Passenger is that has a similar theme to the one in L'Avventura and is considered an equal work to that film because both films have similar themes. I find that outragerous. Any professional filmmaker could have filmed the bulk of The Passenger. Only Antonioni in his prime could have created the structure and art in L'Avventua.

I can't really agree with that. Maybe L'Avventura is superior (love them both too much to choose one), but I don't really think anybody else could have made The Passenger, at least the way Antonioni did it - the same stuff, in the hands of another filmmaker would have been completely different. I mean, I can't even imagine anybody else making that movie at all. The pace, the shots... done by somebody else, it wouldn't have been the same movie, you know what I mean? It would have turned out to be something else; another movie. At least to me, there is no way any other filmmaker could have even made the movie.

Professional filmmakers are suppose to have a handle in shooting adaquately and developing a good pacing. It isn't a great accomplishment. The major shot that is distinctely Antonioni-esque is the final scene where the camera pans across a road to see the characters lost in a foreign world. It is a masterful shot. Maybe the rest of the film couldn't be done by anybody, but it is Antonioni heading towards the generic of filmmaking.

The lack of artistry in the filmmaking makes the story also appear to me as ham. Antonioni was never a dramatist in a classical sense. The lack of a larger filmmaking scheme to help elevate the story makes the story here seem bare and open for criticism. The Passenger will be compared alongside other filmmakers like Bergman and others who know how to handle story and delve into it for depth. Antonioni doesn't make a film that is significant. The fact its obvious he has limited himself greatly makes the film look noticeable for only its shortcomings.

tpfkabi

Listening to the commentary with the screenplay writer, originally the film was written to be a thriller.
This was Antonioni's idea of a 'thriller.'

***spoiler***


I think Jack asked him why he went to the trouble of building a hotel (what Jack says) for the final shot - cause Antonioni didn't want to shoot a murder.
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

ElPandaRoyal

Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on September 04, 2007, 12:31:43 PM
Professional filmmakers are suppose to have a handle in shooting adaquately and developing a good pacing. It isn't a great accomplishment. The major shot that is distinctely Antonioni-esque is the final scene where the camera pans across a road to see the characters lost in a foreign world. It is a masterful shot. Maybe the rest of the film couldn't be done by anybody, but it is Antonioni heading towards the generic of filmmaking.

The lack of artistry in the filmmaking makes the story also appear to me as ham. Antonioni was never a dramatist in a classical sense. The lack of a larger filmmaking scheme to help elevate the story makes the story here seem bare and open for criticism. The Passenger will be compared alongside other filmmakers like Bergman and others who know how to handle story and delve into it for depth. Antonioni doesn't make a film that is significant. The fact its obvious he has limited himself greatly makes the film look noticeable for only its shortcomings.

Well, I just don't agree. There are some masterful shots at the desert, in Barcelona, etc that not only are absolutely gorgeous to look at, but also are astonishing while revealing the sense of isolation of its character in the world (pure Antonioni). This is a guy who just doesn't know how to exist, and just like Thomas in Blowup or Anna in L'Avventura or the pair in L'Eclisse, he disappears (in this case, he takes somebody else's identity and just keeps the rest of the movie trying to go, but unlike other Antonioni movies, he can't quite vanish because a woman keeps looking for him, and trying to make sure he doesn't go away). It's just one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen, and I just don't see it lacking the goods that Antonioni usually provided.

This is a guy who, unlike Bergman, seems to get away from its characters (by compositions as much as by story) as much as he can, in order to try and give us a greater scheme of things and, truth be told, just like Bergman, he made me look at movies differently (mainly with Blowup) and even at life. That being said, I still can't believe these two masters have gone for good   :(
Si

ElPandaRoyal

Quote from: bigideas on September 04, 2007, 03:02:34 PMI think Jack asked him why he went to the trouble of building a hotel (what Jack says) for the final shot - cause Antonioni didn't want to shoot a murder.

Yeah, I remember that. It's just... beautiful.
Si

tpfkabi

if anyone has the dvd, que it up to 17:20 and look between Robertson's legs at his left thigh...surely an accident?
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

Gold Trumpet

Geniuses: Some Notes

Stanley Kauffmann



They might have smiled. Averse as they were to plot mechanics in their work, they might have been amused at the blatant coincidence of their deaths on the same day. Or they might have been amused at those who believe it was planned by a cosmic trickster. In any case, July 30, 2007 is now a signal date in film history. Michelangelo Antonioni was ninety-four, Ingmar Bergman was eighty-nine.

Their work now moves into a different light. Almost all the art that is valuable to us is encased in history: it comes to us from the past, recent or remote. These two men, however, were contemporaries of ours: I even knew one of them a bit. Still, in a doubtlessly romantic view, any prosy connections between them and the present were jarring. In 1976, Bergman had severe publicized troubles with the Swedish government about taxes. In 1984, newspapers carried a photo of Antonioni standing guard with other directors at the coffin of an esteemed political figure. It was a faint shock to see the creators of the art that is part of my secrets involved in these daily doings.

But now their art moves into history. In Godard's Breathless the matter is well put. A novelist is asked his ambition. He says: "To become immortal and then to die." Exactly so here, twice.

 



The proximate deaths of Antonioni and Bergman prompt something that was rare during their lives: comparison with each other. One way to do this job is to compare their views of the theater and the relation of those views to their films.

No obituary of Bergman that I have seen has mentioned his film of The Magic Flute. Such a film would quite obviously have been impossible for Antonioni. Not only is The Magic Flute the best film ever made of an opera--modest distinction though that is--but it marries beautifully the main currents of Bergman's life. His theater career was even more prolific than his film work. (There are several books solely about his theater productions.) Bergman, in the Mozart piece, seemed to want to dramatize his twofold being. The opera is handled with innumerable theatrical and cinematic delicacies, and we are also taken backstage from time to time into the lives of the people who are making the marvel. Bergman seems to be fusing his several masteries before our eyes.

Here the use of those masteries is explicit, but it is present in all his work. The second time I saw Fanny and Alexander I was especially wonderstruck by the way he handled his actors' movement--not camera movement, at which he was a wizard, but the choreographing of actors as if they were on stage. His excellence with actors has a history. For many years he worked with a group of actors at various theaters during the season, then used some of them in films made during the sum- mer. He and they knew one another in coded but clear ways. In the very first sequence of Scenes From a Marriage, see how Erland Josephson and Liv Ullmann move together into the screenplay like experienced dance partners into a pas de deux.

Antonioni, after some theater work during his university days, had small interest in the field. He did some theater directing, including the Italian premiere of Osborne's Look Back in Anger, but when I asked him once if he was interested in more theater work, he shook his head. "No," he said. "Always the same shot."

This complete immersion in cinema led him to achievements that were possible only in cinema. Think of Jeanne Moreau's long walk through the streets of Milan in La Notte, in which virtually nothing extraordinary happens but which, sheerly through selection and silence and concentration, becomes a kind of melancholy poem about inner loneliness in the modern world. Think of the long last sequence of Eclipse, which is only a series of street scenes in Rome with none of the actors, scenes that might have been places of rendezvous for the two lovers we have come to know but are now peopled only by passers-by. Subtly, we face the eventual passing of the lovers' affair, along with the shaky nature of truths about which we are hotly convinced at many moments in our lives. Neither of these two sequences, or plentiful others in Antonioni's work, would have been likely in Bergman.

Another means of comparison is in their differing views of time, views that are related to the theater. Excepting the Bergman films that were originally made for television and later condensed for the large screen, works thus born in different concepts of time, most of his pictures are tight, less than ninety minutes. Never is there any sense of imposed pace: only the theater's ethic that every moment must be utilized in character or dramatic development.

Antonioni, with no such imperative, wanted to employ time, real elapsed time, as a character, as a power that film gave him. The scene in L'Avventura in which two lovers kiss near the railway, really kiss for the first time, could conventionally have been condensed to half its length. Antonioni wanted us to breathe through the experience, to take something like the number of breaths that the lovers are taking in that scene (as they are in fact altering their lives), to feel its impact almost physically.



That fundamentally links Antonioni and Bergman, despite their differences, is a common theme: the question of God. Do we live in a godless universe? If this is so, how do we go about living? How do we make our choices? A generalization about these two artists is possible. For Bergman, the son of a clergyman who in a sense harassed him all his life, the question pressed constantly. For Antonioni, the question was answered early on, thoroughly, finally. Most of his films are about the result of this vacancy--the murkiness of compass points.

Bergman confronts the basic question intensely in a trilogy. Here are the titles, with his comments: "Through a Glass Darkly--certainty achieved. The Communicants--certainty unmasked. The Silence--God's silence--the negative impression." The centerpiece, known in America as Winter Light, is a drama about a clergyman whose faith is shaken but who is, so to speak, trapped in his religious office and continues in it doggedly, yet almost gratefully. Bergman once said of the film, "Everything became stations [of the cross] on the road for the priest."

Antonioni never deals extensively with religion in his films. (Elsewhere, in interviews and articles, he was explicit.) But his view of it underlies very much of his work, his sense that religion is a function of the past, now outworn. Look, for instance, at the stock-exchange scene in Eclipse. The building was originally an imperial basilica that had been converted into a Catholic church and then converted again into the Borsa. William Arrowsmith says: "Everything ... about the stock exchange in Antonioni's film tells us that the director is conscious of its religious nature." Its religious devolution, one might say.

Thus the past clings, or tries to cling, to us. But what of the present, asks Antonioni, even the future? Look at the last scene of L'Avventura. Sandro is a middle-aged man, successful, self-despising, who persuades a young woman, Claudia, to become his lover. She hesitates because his previous lover was a friend of hers who disappeared, possibly a suicide, only three days earlier. At last Claudia, not untroubled, consents. A day or so later she and Sandro stop in a luxe hotel. She is sleepy; he goes downstairs. In the early morning she goes to look for him and discovers him with a tart. Sobbing, she runs outside to a terrace, stands there against the railing. (In one shot a ruined church is in the background.) Surely she is not only shaken by his action but is very possibly linking it with her own action in becoming his lover so soon after her friend was gone. Sandro comes out behind her slowly and sits on a bench, his back toward her. She turns, approaches him. She sees that he is weeping, surely facing the void in himself. After a moment she puts a hand gently on the back of his head, and the film ends.

Her gesture is for me a terrifying moment. Claudia is not forgiving him: she doesn't have or want that power. She is acknowledging that Sandro, like her, is something of a victim--stranded in a hollow universe, left with only inutile shards of order. They are, in a profound sense, alone.



In 1979 Roland Barthes sent an open letter to Antonioni apropos of a retrospective of the director's work in Bologna. In my view the letter can be read as also addressed to Bergman. Barthes called Antonioni "not only in the realm of cinema--one of the artists of our time." He cited "the specters of modern subjectivity" that plague artists these days: "ideological lassitude, bad social conscience, the attraction to and distaste left by facile art, the trepidation of responsibility, and the incessant scruple that tears the artist apart, between solitude and gregariousness." He closed:


It is therefore necessary that you take full advantage of this peaceful, harmonious moment in which an entire assemblage comes to recognize, admire, and love your work. Because tomorrow the hard work begins again.

As it did, addressed by both Antonioni and Bergman, not only with their gifts but with their generally unremarked courage. What legacies they leave. Countless beneficiaries are yet to come.

Personal notes. I had an appointment to meet Bergman in Stockholm in the summer of 1964, but when I arrived, a colleague of his presented me with the director's apologies and the excuse that he had gone to his island to write a screenplay. I saw some other interesting film people in Stockholm; still I was, of course, disappointed. Two years later the film appeared for which--at least I told myself--Bergman had abandoned me. It was Persona, a sublime masterwork, so I forgave him.

I met and dined with Antonioni several times, in Rome and Venice and New York. From a cluster of Antonioni vignettes, here are two.

In 1966 I interviewed him for an hour and a half on PBS. Two years earlier in Rome he had promised to appear on television with me when he was next in New York--I was busy on the PBS station in those days--and when he arrived for the American premiere of Blowup, he kept his word. At the time he understood English but wasn't confident about speaking it; so a translator was there for his replies to my questions. After the taping he and I went back to the dressing room where we had been made up before the show. He picked up a towel, wiped his face, and was dismayed by the big red-brown smear. "Good heavens," he said. I laughed at the perfectly enunciated phrase in English coming from someone who had just needed ninety minutes of translation. He laughed, too, a little.

I saw him last in New York in 1992. He had come for the opening of a retrospective of his work despite the fact that in 1985 he had suffered a stroke that paralyzed his whole right side and left him speechless. (Yet he had continued, with assistants, to work.) When I arrived at the theater, I saw him in the lobby, with two or three people but not really listening to them. They went, and I walked up to him. His face warmed. He put out his left hand, and I grasped it in both of my hands. He made some sounds in his throat. After a moment, which was both long and short, I left.

last days of gerry the elephant

I bought The Passenger to watch tonight and have already watched L'Eclisse last week.

Mr. Merrill Lehrl

Towards the end of last year I went on a L'Avventura binge.  Probably all cinephiles know this type of binge:  I watched L'Avventura whenever I could.  Parts before I went to bed, parts when I woke up, and I watched the whole movie whenever I could, repeat, over and over for about a month.  Anyway, yesterday I opened a book and tucked inside it was a piece of paper with notes I had taken from a book of criticisms on L'Avventura.

I fell back in love, of course, which is what happens when you read old love letters.  May they do the same for you.

QuoteIt is a picture of great, unsparing severity, of keen morality, because it is firmly grounded in today's humanity, not in gratuitous or literary abstraction.

QuoteL'Avventura...heavily influenced by existentialism...as a serious modus vivendi, a "belief that human beings can find a rationale, a morality, in the living of their lives, rather than huddling under a canopy of doctrine constructed to reassure."

QuoteThat plight, [Antoniono] thought, is most acutely displayed in the affluent because only they have the time and leisure to be preoccupied by it.  As John Galbraith observes, "The poor man has always a precise view of his problem and its remedy:  he hasn't enough and he needs more.  The rich man can assume or imagine a much greater variety of ills and he will be correspondingly less certain of their remedy."

(Italo Calvino for sure:)
QuoteThe theme of L'Avventura is the faculty of people to choose and determine their own behavior, out of the chaos of casual gestures, instincts, careless or contradictory words...the spectators are forced to make the same efforts and judgments they normally do, or ought to do, when confronted by reality.
"If I had to hold up the most heavily fortified bank in America," BolaƱo says, "I'd take a gang of poets. The attempt would probably end in disaster, but it would be beautiful."

wilder

Dear Antonioni (1997), a documentary portrait of the director, from the British TV series "Arena".