From the Antonioni Archives

Today, we’re celebrating iconic Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni on what would have been his 104^th birthday. A pioneering force in European cinema in the sixties, Antonioni won international acclaim for his breathtaking portraits of urban alienation and ennui. Marked by enigmatic narrative structures, languid atmosphere, and haunting visual compositions, Antonioni’s films continue to challenge audiences and influence contemporary filmmakers as disparate as Martin Scorsese, Michael Haneke, and Tsai Ming-liang. In honor of this master, we’ve gathered a selection of essays and videos that we’ve published that explore his legacy:

• First, read Geoffrey Nowell-Smith on the significance of Antonioni’s enigmatic 1960 masterpiece L’avventura: “What L’avventura showed was that films do not have to be structured around major events, that very little drama can happen and a film can still be fascinating to its audience. It also showed—and this was harder for viewers to grasp—that events in films do not have to be, in an obvious way, meaningful.”
• Next, read Antonioni’s Cannes Film Festival speech about the film, which famously declared that “Eros is sick.”
• This Three Reasons video showcases the visual splendor of Antonioni’s 1961 film La notte:
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• “Instead of establishing the movie’s locations as theaters of action, Antonioni turns them into the frames of abstract forms, which are the real stars of the movie,” writes Richard Brody on La notte. “He films buildings, interior design, and the innumerable incidental objects of daily life as a kind of visual music that is stretched out on staves of time.”
• “Speaking for myself, I find that the feminine sensibility is a far more precise filter than any other to express what I have to say,” wrote Antonioni in the February 26, 1961, issue of the French newspaper L’humanité. “In the realm of emotions, man is nearly always unable to feel reality as it exists.”
• Take a journey through Antonioni’s stunning landscapes:
• “Although Antonioni is rarely viewed as a director of actors, I would argue that L’eclisse features the most expressive and exuberant performances by Vitti and Delon in any movie, and that the achievements of this highly structured masterpiece would be unthinkable without them,” writes Jonathan Rosenbaum on Antonioni’s 1962 film L’eclisse.
• Read an excerpt from an article written by Antonioni for the 1962 issue of Film Culture. “Making a film is not like writing a novel,” he writes. “Flaubert once said that living was not his profession; his profession was writing. Making a film, on the contrary, is living—at least it is for me.”
• For Mark Le Fanu, “Red Desert is the most ambitious of all of Antonioni’s attempts to ground the condition of our modern existence in a theory of alienation.”

from The Criterion Current http://ift.tt/2duZ873