Michelangelo Antonioni0

Michelangelo Antonioni was born on the 29^th of September in 1912 to a mid­dle class fam­ily in Ferara, Italy. Despite grad­u­at­ing from uni­ver­sity major­ing in eco­nom­ics, he was very inter­ested in archi­tec­ture and pup­petry and enjoyed paint­ing. He was an ardent movie-goer who fre­quently sub­mit­ted movie reviews for the local news­pa­pers. He wrote mostly about the kind of tech­niques and ways of express­ing the emo­tion even though he had not much knowl­edge in film-making. Antonioni enrolled into the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia and started for­mal film train­ing in 1941. He went on to make many films and was offered a 3-film con­tract by MGM in Hollywood dur­ing the 60s in which he made Blow Up(1966), Zabriskie Point(1970) and The Passenger(1974). Though he lived in Rome most of his life, he was very much attached to his birth city. He had fea­tured some of his child­hood mem­o­ries of Ferara in his ear­lier films. Antonioni suf­fered a stroke when he was in his 80s and lost his abil­ity to speak prop­erly, but he still con­tin­ued doing the things he loved – film­ing and paint­ing. He com­mu­ni­cated with the peo­ple around him through draw­ing and writing. His first film was a doc­u­men­tary, People of the Po Valley (1943−1947), which was about the lower-class peo­ple in Italy. It was also dur­ing this time which a sig­nif­i­cant film move­ment was started – the Italian Neorealism. People of the Po Valley was a doc­u­men­tary about street real­ism in Italy, thus it was said to be a pre­cur­sor on the Neorealist film move­ment. He went on to make Nettezza Urbana, which was about the street clean­ers of Italy. These doc­u­men­taries, although ear­lier than Rossellini’s Open City which was thought to be the first real neo­re­al­ist film(Wexman, 2006, p.149), were never really con­sid­ered a neo­re­al­ist film because these films had min­i­mal “polit­i­cal impli­ca­tion characteristic(Chatman & Duncan, 2004, p. 26)” and were filmed in a way that was “strongly real­is­tic yet intensely poetic(Brunette,1998, p.16)”. Although Antonioni did a num­ber of films dur­ing the neo­re­al­ist move­ment, he never really con­tributed dur­ing the start of the move­ment, but more in the 2^nd stage of neo­re­al­ism, when the film move­ment was evolv­ing and tran­si­tion­ing. Instead of just focus­ing on the poor, film­mak­ers includ­ing Antonioni incor­po­rated more nar­ra­tive and poetic ele­ments into their films and shifted their focus to the upper class peo­ple in Italy. Through the tran­si­tion, the films now por­trayed a fic­tional ele­ment together with the non-fictional real­ism in Italy. His favoritism over using female pro­tag­o­nists were espe­cially sig­nif­i­cant dur­ing the start of his career. His women char­ac­ters are usu­ally por­trayed as help­less women who are con­stantly con­tra­dict­ing them­selves and unsure of what they want. His men are usu­ally self-obsessed males who care about them­selves more and neglect the feel­ings of their female part­ners. Examples of such por­tray­als in his films include L’Avventura(1960), La Notte(1961) and Red Desert(1964). In L’Avventura, Claudia rejects the offer by Sandro to go look for her miss­ing friend Anna with her, but later watches as the train leaves, sep­a­rat­ing her and Sandro, whom she had devel­oped feel­ings for. In La Notte, Lidia feels no sat­is­fac­tion in her mar­ried life and faces sex­ual temp­ta­tion and threats of mar­riage fidelity. She does not know how to solve her prob­lems and what she wants out of life. The theme of unhap­pi­ness in love and rela­tion­ships, inter­nal tur­moil and strug­gle of the char­ac­ters are fre­quently seen in his films (i.e, Anna in L’Avventura who does not know what she wants in life, the trau­ma­tized Giuliana in Red Desert who rejects the love of her husband’s best friend but even­tu­ally gives in). Antonioni was a very visual artist who empha­sized on the com­po­si­tion and mise-en-scene of a film and con­cen­trated on the character’s inner feel­ings rather than the nar­ra­tive sto­ry­line of the film. He makes use of the things, envi­ron­ment and con­po­si­tion within the frame to por­tray the character’s emo­tions and thoughts. In Red Desert, Giuliana con­fronts her hus­band and his best-friend in a shop smeared with abstract paint to express her state of mind and con­fu­sion. In another scene, Giuliana sits by a fruit stall with Corrado, her envi­ron­ment, includ­ing the fruits in the scene are delib­er­ately painted grey to match Guiliana’s trauma. Corrado stands in front of her as she sits in a high-angle shot, mak­ing her look small. In both exam­ples, Giuliana is placed beside the set­ting that matches her emo­tions, it feels as if, she is attached to them and it por­trays exactly how she feels at that point.

Michelangelo Antonino

In La Notte, Lidia is in the streets, she is framed with the tall build­ings and tall shad­ows over her in a high-angle shot, indi­cat­ing the pres­sure the world has on her. She is in an unhappy mar­riage, and she does not have any­one to con­fide in, she feels as if there is no mean­ing in life, as if the world is going to crash down on her. In the film, she is strate­gi­cally placed at the bot­tom left cor­ner of the screen, it seems as if she is being squeezed out by the sky­scrap­ers, just like in her life, she feels left out. In L’Eclisse(1962), Vittoria and Piero’s half faces are being blocked by a pil­lar in the cen­ter, show­ing how the character’s moti­va­tion are hid­den and unknown to each other and to the audience(Chatman & Duncan, 2004, p. 81). Opposition with the sur­round­ings is also another sig­nif­i­cant style of the visual mas­ter. The idea of con­flict between the char­ac­ter and their sur­round­ings is seen in an exam­ple in L’Avventura, Claudia sits with a beau­ti­ful scenery as her back­ground and Sandro sits against a wall, illus­trat­ing a bright future ahead of her and she has moved on but Sandro seems to be stuck in his own world. Antonioni brings across infor­ma­tion “purely through the psy­cho­log­i­cal effect of images rather than through words(Chatman & Duncan, 2004, p. 79)”. Long shots in deep focus are seen all the time in his films, to con­vey the feel­ing of empti­ness, lone­li­ness and iso­la­tion. In the start­ing scene of Red Desert, Giuliana walks with her son in the indus­trial area full of fac­to­ries emit­ting smoke, the dangerous-looking indus­trial site reflects her inse­cu­ri­ties and uneasi­ness. Antonioni felt that there was a need to “con­vey real­ity in terms which are not entirely those of realism(Chatman & Duncan, 2004, p. 11)”. Although he por­trayed real­ism in all his films, they were all done so in a way that is more poetic. He clev­erly made use of the set­ting and the envi­ron­ment to por­tray or rep­re­sent the character’s emo­tions. He made a strong effort in evok­ing a par­tic­u­lar emo­tion through the visual aspects of his films, through his cin­e­matog­ra­phy and his cam­era posi­tions and move­ments. His pre­cise­ness in por­tray­ing human emo­tions is what make him dif­fer­ent from other neo­re­al­ist films at that time. Dialogues were often used only to con­ceal and con­fuse the audience’s under­stand­ing of the char­ac­ter. They usu­ally do not say what is exactly on their mind, but instead, speak some­thing which is entirely the oppo­site or irrel­e­vant. In Blow Up, Thomas speaks to Patricia in his stu­dio, but the both of them are too absorbed in their own prob­lems that they do not respond to each other’s words, thus show­ing the absur­dity of their rela­tion­ship. Thomas is ask­ing her what should he do to the body, but Patricia talks about her own prob­lems. The con­ver­sa­tion does not serve any pur­pose in advanc­ing the story but instead, reveals their nonex­is­tent rela­tion­ship and each person’s inner thoughts. The scenes in Antonioni’s films do not always lead to one another; they occur as a result of the character’s needs and are mostly stand­alones. Just like in life, things do not have to hap­pen for a rea­son, they occur accord­ing to our needs and emo­tions, Antonioni shows this kind of real­ism in his films. His films always end with an open-ending, the res­o­lu­tion is not clear and the prob­lem mostly remains unsolved. In L’Avventura, Anna was never found and we do not know exactly what hap­pened to her, she even­tu­ally gets for­got­ten. In Blow Up, the dead body dis­ap­pears, and the mur­derer was never revealed. In La Notte, Lidia and Giovanni do not solve their rela­tion­ship prob­lems, and their mar­riage con­tin­ues with dis­sat­is­fac­tion. They make love even though they are not sex­u­ally attracted to each other any­more. It is his way of por­tray­ing real­ity in life, peo­ple do things for the sake of it, things do not always hap­pen for a rea­son, there may not always be an end­ing to every­thing, prob­lems may never be solved and peo­ple or things may be for­got­ten. Antonioni wants his audi­ence to know and under­stand the uncer­tain­ties of life. He does not like to hide or com­press any infor­ma­tion or action, so long takes are also an impor­tant char­ac­ter­is­tic of Antonioni’s films. His long takes are always filled with cam­era and char­ac­ter move­ments which makes the shot very dynamic and inter­est­ing to watch. It also show­cases the director’s skill in plan­ning his cam­era move­ments and com­po­si­tions. The Passenger con­tains a very impres­sive and detailed 7-minute long take which turns 360 degrees in and out of a build­ing. Within the take, char­ac­ters inter­act with one another as the cam­era moves through the whole loca­tion. His elab­o­rate plan­ning and well-rehearsed long take can also be seen in Blow Up, when Thomas devel­ops his neg­a­tives, the cam­era fol­lows his every move­ment into dif­fer­ent rooms in one take. I was very impressed by the way Antonioni makes his films, they are excel­lent works of art, it is like watch­ing a mov­ing paint­ing. He is a very per­sonal direc­tor who makes films for him­self than for oth­ers. His films may not all be crit­i­cally suc­cess­ful, but it is always his way of bring­ing across a mes­sage or a piece of real­ity to his audi­ence. I admire his artis­tic abil­ity to make his films so visu­ally beau­ti­ful and telling. He pushes against the lim­its of con­ven­tional film-making and explores the pos­si­bil­i­ties beyond. This is some­thing we can learn from Michelangelo Antonioni, that film is a way of expres­sion, and rules can be bro­ken some­times, what is most impor­tant is we stay true to our­selves. This review was writ­ten by Yeo Ning Pearlyn. We can’t find her details right now. So if you want to con­tact her, take a walk around the park