Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
The frenzy that Blow-Up caused upon its release in 1966 was tied to its confrontational and sometimes lurid depiction of Swinging London—rife with orgies, antiwar protesters, and the disaffected crowd of a rock concert. Although time has confirmed Blow-Up‘s status as a masterpiece, ironically it has lost some of its value as a shocking cultural document, particularly because so many films in its wake did an equally (or better) job of recording that period. What has continued to persist, however, is the film’s engagement with the photography, particularly how it regards truth and the depiction of what it means to have a passion for images. The most celebrated sequence in Blow-Up occurs when a jaded photographer (David Hemmings) closely inspects the pictures he’s taken and searches for a mystery hidden within them. His engagement with the photographs is inarguably the most interested he is in anything throughout the picture—there is an ironic contrast in his fascination with the images and the meaningless orgy he has partway through his investigation. Blow-Up questions the truth of images, both in the sense of how truth becomes adjusted with interpretation, and whether that truth persists once the images are no more. Lofty as these themes might seem, there are few images as primal and viscerally thrilling as Hemmings’ simple interaction with the photographs—shot in long silences (which asks Hemmings to communicate an impressive amount with only body language), these sequences have an almost humorous perspective on the futility of trying to communicate with a photograph and how the desperation to probe for the secrets hidden within only amplifies their elusiveness.
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
The culmination of Michelangelo Antonioni’s trilogy of modern alienation, L’Eclisse is a film of uncertainty and vagueness, a reveling in contradictions. While the scenes set on stock-exchange floors might play as simplistic denigrations of capitalism in other hands (even the apocalyptic hands of Antonioni himself in Zabriskie Point), one can’t deny the sense of vitality and life, a contrast to the expected ennui. Similarly, as with Red Desert, L’Eclisse’s Rome has the look of a science fiction utopia, with the early appearance of a modern EUR water reservoir resembling a mushroom cloud. Yet it is still a world that is enchanting in its mysteriousness, and the fragmentation of buildings transforms them into abstract works of modern beauty. Occasionally, these contradictions seem unnecessary–why does Alain Delon, initially mimicking the enthusiasm of the stockbrokers, eventually become an puppet of blank expression? Certainly themes related to alienation and failures of communication could be present even without reverting to such a listless, object-performance? Regardless, the final abstract sequence of L’Eclisse is a beautiful summation of Antonioni in this period, showing an affinity for the mystery and permanence of setting and a surprising nonchalance towards his characters.
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
What, in retrospect, might be called the emotional climax of the The Passenger occurs within the first fifteen minutes of the film. Jack Nicholson’s David Locke (he of the not-so-clever surname) finds himself stranded on a sand dune after his Land Rover has ceased to move. Frustrations at a boil, he resigns himself to his fate, temporarily giving up, as if recognizing that a higher force is punishing him and he can offer no rebuttal. The rest of the picture – a buddy action comedy, it turns out – shares some narrative similarities with a traditional Hollywood thriller, however is remains intentionally distancing and almost tortuously evasive. Of course, Michelangelo Antonioni was never a director to hold the audience’s hands – as much as L’Avventura‘s inaction has been discussed, however, The Passenger is perhaps more startlingly oblique if only because it is impossible to not acknowledge that it was released by a major studio and starred two name actors. Without explanation, the aforementioned Locke switches identities with a deceased companion in the first act, and soon is on the run from both the phantoms of his past life and the baggage that has come with his new persona. This revelation – of the inescapability of self – is the film’s best attribute, however such thematic concerns are never quite illuminating enough to generate a staying interest. The film is somewhat of a chore in the moment, regardless of the conversation that it stirs after the fact. While such criticism has been flogged at Antonioni’s cinema for decades, it seems much more applicable here than to his more conceptually audacious work, such as Red Desert.
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
In the early-1960s, black-and-white cinematography was still the aesthetic of choice for serious European dramas. Not only does Red Desert distinguish itself from the pack because it resisted this trend, but its experiments in color are so vivid and successfully world-building that it is fair to regard it as a significant landmark in the history of European cinema. Art director Piero Poletto famously painted streets and certain objects in order to suit Antonioni’s desired tone. The result sees mostly hues of brown, gray, and blue, with the occasional, shattering boldness of a red or yellow, usually accenting the film’s perceptions of modernity. Of course, modernity is the prime concern of the picture, but to suggest that it simply possesses a Luddite tendency is too reductive. As much as it expresses environmental concerns, Antonioni is equally fascinated and mesmerized by the utopian sculptures of his vast wasteland – even the poisonous, yellow smoke at the film’s end has a beauty worth mentioning. His point does not seem to be so much that technological innovations have exclusively led to the alienation that is suffered by the protagonist, but rather that mankind itself has not adjusted to their own self-imposed patterns of industrial living. The film’s most enchanting sequence – a fable of sorts told by Monica Vitti to her son – is certainly governed by a theme of isolation, despite the natural, idyllic pinks and blues of the gorgeous beach. While there is certainly environmentalism at play, Antonioni is at something much deeper – a sort of interpersonal pollution, in which communication is so crippled that the absence of meaningful human relationships becomes a catalyst for madness.
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