The Michelangelo Antonioni Poll

Blow up will win, for it has been seen by more people.

L'Avventura's dimmed somewhat from too many watchings, but L'Eclisse and The Passenger haven't. Either one.

The Passenger. My favorite movie of all time.

The Passenger. I find all of Antonioni's films pretty moving, but that one especially.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNk6MO7vy7w

Sublime.

When I first saw it, L'avventura definitely had the most impact - though I also think it was probably the first Antonioni I saw, which could have been part of it. But the style and unconventional weirdness of the structure as well as the themes really threw me for a loop. The Red Desert also stands out in my mind (weird that it still hasn't come out on DVD in R1, when even Zabriskie Point has).

The Passenger out of the measly three i've seen (Blowup, Zabriskie Pt)

seen 5 of these

l'eclisse>l'avventura>the passenger>blow up>zabriskie point

the last ten minutes of l'eclisse are among my favorite minutes of cinema i think

I've seen ten; btwn l'Eclisse, Blowup and Passenger

L'Eclisse is superb. I am drawn to David Thomson's incisive observation of L'Eclisse in which he implies, "we feel that there is some gentle force in the city and the world ready to wash over the characters, freeing us from the arid preoccupations of small, private stories. It isn't faith - Antonioni is an anxious unbeliever. Call it light or continuity."

The way Antonioni used Monica Vitti as a vehicle in that light or continuity is masterful and gorgeous. All the sixties films with Vitti are fabulous.

Seen 'em all, went w/Le amiche cause someone has to. Really though, this run:

La signora senza camelie (Camille Without Camellias, 1953)
Le amiche (The Girl Friends, 1955)
Il grido (The Outcry, 1957)
L'avventura (The Adventure, 1960)
La notte (The Night, 1961)
L'eclisse (The Eclipse, 1962)
Il deserto rosso (The Red Desert, 1964)
Blowup (1966)

is damn near unfuckwithable, with Camellas & Notte probably being the weakest, and those are mildly flawed at worst.

Red Desert is some kinda bullshit though.

It stuck with me though. Vitti's pretty inconsistent in it (tries too hard to sell being "crazy"). It holds up better than Zabriskie.

I like Zabriskie Point.

i really need to see the passenger and zabriskie point

I despised it both times I saw it. But I should check it out again since I imagine I'd be more open to its countercultural pretensions (or critique thereof? was never quite sure).

I saw Le amiche during the 1950s poll (probably on your recommendation, Grisso) and was unmoved. Certainly minor compared to anything in the 1960s (yeah but it's GREAT bullshit).

Never seen The Mystery of Oberwald but it looks exactly like the kind of film maudit I'd vote for.

I'm going with The Passenger. A tad too Oedipal for my tastes. But I think Antonioni did a superb job knocking some of the stuffing out of it, deliberately deflating his following-patterns (to borrow from Rick Altman). Kinda reminded me of Beau Travail. And maybe some Fassbinder. Of particular genius is how Antonioni reveals the mise-en-scene surrounding the documentary footage.

I despised Zabriskie Point both times I saw it, that is.

re: that clip above. so many shots of people drifting in space or suspended in air in that movie. my fav is nicholson leaning out of the gondola and "flying" over the water...

Never seen The Mystery of Oberwald but it looks exactly like the kind of film maudit I'd vote for.

Well, video maudit at any rate. It's fascinating and pretty great, but it's no L'aaventura or Blowup, et al.

Really need to see his early ones.

No nrq no credibility!

You're joking, right?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Someone I've had a lot of trouble with over the years. I've seen L'Avventura at least three times, and I basically draw a blank whenever I try to recall specifics. But I saw La Notte and L'Eclisse for the first time a couple of years ago, and finally made some headway. Blow-Up would be the easy vote, but I'd probably just be voting for the Yardbirds, so I'll go with L'Eclisse--great final image, and Monica Vitti's awesomely gorgeous. (Yes, I'm a real intellectual.) I saw Zabriskie Point in the same series, and actually enjoyed the nutty ending a lot; great songs from Jerry Garcia and a bizarrely anomalous Pink Floyd, too.

Seen so few but LOVED The Passenger. One of the greatest final scenes ever.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Semi-surprising yet not all-together unexpected result. I have to admit that I'm happy to see this win. Good work ilxor. Honestly, Antonioni is so great, any result would gratify this fan.

Maria Schneider over Monica Vitti shockah!

http://www.amazon.com/Chung-Kuo-China-Bongo-Films/dp/B006MGWBWQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326644873&sr=8-1

l'avventura changed the way i watch movies, tho i'd have trouble pinning down exactly why.

Same here, and I doubt I could watch it again now.

Same here with l'avventura, and I still love to watch it. Can't believe The Passenger won this poll, weird. I can't remember much from watching that movie many years ago, but Antonioni's best? 50 - 62 Antonioni is really amazing, and everything afterwards fell short for me. So much promise in is his early work.

I have more affection for it and L'Eclisse in recent years, although I wouldn't watch them now.

I watched L'Avventura for the first time tonight and was bored as hell by it. I honestly can't say that I liked anything about it beyond looking at Monica Vitti. I'm a philistine... but, still, I have L'Eclisse lined up. I fancy that one. I liked The Passenger and Blow Up too, btw.

Feel like I could watch L'avventura forever. Feels fresher and less claustrophobic than L'ecclise. More of an "open" text to that movie's austerity and modernism, I guess you could say. Every shot is a beauty and so well composed.

The Passenger is my favorite though.

I'm close to jed here. I think I've tried six or seven times, spread out over 30 years--most recently a few months ago on DVD. I keep trying because, temperamentally, I feel like it's something I should be receptive to (unlike 8-1/2, which I don't think I'll ever go back to again--it's just not the kind of thing I like). L'avventura, I keep trying, and will probably try again in a few years. I love the music over the opening credits--it always makes me think "This is the time"--and, yes, looking at Monica Vitti. But I just don't care about any of it, even while appreciating its place in film history, and loving lots of films that are just as austere and clearly influenced by L'avventura.

(Have a feeling I've said all this in another thread...not in this one, anyway.)

The open secret of early days Euro art film boils down to: a pretty women to look at + weird shots of stuff.

I'd exclude Left Bank material out of that.

In his book on Stalker, Geoff Dyer claims that L'Aventurra is the most painfully boring film he's ever sat through, so you are far from alone jed (tho' I get the impression that Dyer hasn't actually seen that many movies...)

Part of the problem re: watching L'Aventurra today is that the narrative 'lack' (of resolution/refusal of meaning) that so shocked and inspired audiences at the time is nowadays fairly commonplace, so that you're constantly asking yourself, 'what's all the fuss about?', especially because lots of elements in the film - the social relations between characters, the manner of performance - are still pretty traditional, even 'melodramatic'. But aside from the beauty of Monica Vitti, there's always, w/ Antonioni, the beauty of landscape, of bodies moving through architectural spaces, that wonderful way he has of passing from the individual to the cosmic (eg that breathtaking shot when vitti opens out the window of the island shack, or the endings of the Passenger and L'Eclisse).

FWIW L'Eclisse is my favourite, because you have the two most beautiful ppl in the world acting together, because the theme of financial collapse and hysteria feels very timely and engaged, and because the final ten minutes are the most beautiful expression of entropic surrender even seen on film.

excellent post

Ward otm. The other problem: Gabriele Ferzetti is a limited actor and Vitti was already showing signs of same. Acting opposite Alain Delon sent an electric charge through her.

Centennial anniversary this Saturday.

Just 'need' to see 5 of those zero-vote films.

http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-antonioni-100

Third or fourth time for Red Desert last night--pretty well attended; they had to move it into a larger theatre than the one originally designated--came up a little short again. I wish I liked it as much as I love looking at this one still.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BOpxUI38PBI/TnjbAOv2lkI/AAAAAAAAAPY/LxyRLan2Tw0/s1600/cap260.bmp

Obviously (from what I remember from one screening when it came out) the blueprint for Safe; also thought of 2001 at moments last night. Some of Vitti's performance did seem a little overwrought.

Driving home, I was writing a post in my mind about how I've tried harder to like L'Avventura than any film I can think of...and I see I wrote it above already. I want to step out the theatre and feel like Phillip Lopate did when he saw it as a teenager in 1961. Still not there. Maybe the themes have been so thoroughly absorbed into so much else that I take them for granted; Don Draper crossed my mind tonight.

One thing I try not to do is hold older art too stringently to the attitudes of today. I don't mean egregious stuff like Birth of a Nation and such, but less obvious moments of awkwardness. The last shot--I see it as a moment of acceptance and empathy (profound empathy, even if I don't feel it deeply myself), and I'm sure that was Antonioni's intention, but do modern-day critics ever complain that it's self-serving exoneration from a male director?

Very detailed piece about the london locations in Blowup

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/blowup-michelangelo-antonioni-london-locations

Wow, no punches pulled against Charlton! Maryon Park is hardly the raggedy trash heap it's portrayed as here. And the desolateness of Woolwich Road is actually quite charming in its way... Great article though, thanks. Love this film.

“I don’t think there is any love in this world…Also, there is no feeling for family. No religion…LSD and mescaline are better for [the young] than love.”

http://www.filmcomment.com/blog/cinema-67-revisited-blow/

1963 Antonioni challops

Michelangelo Antonioni, the shallow bore

Focusing on the shallow selfishness of our existential angst is exactly what makes Antonioni essential, and seems more relevant now that it must have at the time.

Not that I claim to understand the nuances of internet-speak, but doesn't challops mean to dispute overwhelming consensus in a really contrived way, just to get a reaction? At least in the context of 1963, Antonioni was still pretty divisive; I don't think the writer's point of view would have been all that unusual, and may have even represented majority opinion.

In the 1962 Sight and Sound poll, L'Aventura came second after Citizen Kane as the greatest film ever made, so while there certainly were critics hostile to Antonioni at this point in time, I'm not sure theirs was a majority opinion.

most all-time polls favor feverish minorities

(xpost) Fair point. I don't know where The Guardian would fall on the spectrum of, say, mainstream reviewing and more specialized criticism, but I should have broadened that to include both. People famously walked out on L'Avventura three years earlier; the Sight & Sound poll notwithstanding, I don't Antonioni had become a beloved figure in the interim. And I know you don't hold her in high regard yourself, but I'm also thinking of one of his more vocal critics, Kael.

Red Desert is some kinda bullshit though.

― Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, October 14, 2009 12:49 PM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

:|

L'Avventura also famously booed at Cannes 1960. It was a call to arms in those years.

xpost

Orson Welles often seemed to single out Antonioni in particular for criticism, so I'm guessing he at least was looking at who has nipping at Kane's heels in the Sight and Sound poll.

Yes, not a Kael expert, but didn't her criticism of Antonioni mainly come later in the decade? Guardian film criticism in the early 1960s would I guess sit somewhere between 'mainstream' and 'specialised' film criticism (as it does now) - ie talking to a broadly leftist, university educated middle class audience with some interest in 'modern culture' without necessarily being cinephiles.

Kael's "The Come-Dressed-as-the-Sick-Soul-of-Europe Parties" (about La Notte, Marienbad, and La Dolce Vita) came out in book form in '65, but it might have originally been a radio broadcast a couple of years earlier--at work, so I can't check.

Kael loved "L'Avventura" but turned on him after that.

“The Come-Dressed-As-the-Sick-Soul-of-Europe Parties: La Notte, Last Year at Marienbad, La Dolce Vita" seems to have first appeared in The Massachusetts Review (Winter 1963), sex this guy.

http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com/2010/10/searching-out-sick-soul-la-dolce-vita.html

um, sez

it's Monica Vitti, so sex

I went through a phase in college 20+ years ago when L'Avventura, which I'd copied from a horrible VHS, was a touchstone; I wrote a terrible script that was supposed to be a modern South Florida pastiche. These days I prefer L'Eclisse because of the opening sequence + Alain Delon.

This thread revive has driven me back to the excellent BFI Film Classic volume on L'avventura by the British film theorist/historian (and relative of a former ilxor) Geoffrey Nowell-Smith. He writes: "It is hard to overstate the importance of L'avventura when it came out in 1960" and "The feeling that L'avventura was a revolution in the making was widespread when it came out." Nowell-Smith saw the film in 1960, not long after its Cannes premiere, and he reminds us that the next morning "a statement had been issued, signed by twenty-five film-makers and critics and datelined 2am, denouncing the behavior of the audience and affirming their belief in the film" (Rossellini was among the signatories). I guess my point is that anti-Antonioni sentiment was, by the time of that Guardian piece, definitely a bit of a challops within film buff/snob discourse (I think Kael, always keen to point out that she was the first to spot the emperor's nudity, enjoyed writing against this kind of hardening critical orthodoxy.) And I'm sure it's age and sentiment, but I find there's something quite moving and inspiring in the response that British cineastes like Nowell-Smith had to this 'moment' in world art cinema - it was an opening of the mind to new and challenging experiences, and like L'avventura itself a journey, out of post-war dourness into the sunshine of a small Italian island, and from there to eternity, or infinity (the unresolved ending suggesting the impossibility - or imposture - of narrative closure.) Yes, Kael's 'The Come-Dressed-as-the-Sick-Soul-of-Europe Parties' is a good one liner, and points to some kind of common truth about these films (L'avventura lost out to La Dolce Vita at Cannes) but it also, to me, feels pinched and sneery and ultimately indifferent to the sheer beauty of Antonioni's imagery.

Kael herself said that L'Avventura did for cinema what Woolf, Joyce, and Lawrence did for literature.

She was middling on Blow-Up, with one line that would neatly separate those who love her from those who despise her: "Yet despite Antonioni's negativism, the world he presents looks harmless, and sex without 'connecting' doesn't really seem so bad."

(Was going to post just before Ward did--another example.)

As I alluded to upthread, Philip Lopate is great on L'Avventura. Found one excerpt online:

"It was the movie I had been preparing for, for it came at the right time in my development. As a child, I had wanted only action movies. Dialogues and story set-ups bored me; I waited for that moment when the knife was hurled through the air. My awakening in adolescence to the art of film consisted precisely in overcoming this impatience. Over-compensating, perhaps, I now loved a cinema that dawdled; that lingered. Antonioni had a way of following characters with a pan shot, letting them exit and keeping the camera on the depopulated landscape. With his detachment from the human drama and his tactful spying on objects and backgrounds, he forced me to disengage as well, and to concentrate on the purity of his technique. Of course the story held me, too, with its bitter world-weary disillusioned tone. The adolescent wants to touch the bottom, to know the worst. His soul craves sardonic disenchantment."

The essay that's taken from is better--about discovering art houses in general at exactly the right moment in the early '60s.

I own that Lopate collection; he introduced me to Ozu and Naruse.

sex without 'connecting' doesn't really seem so bad."

no wonder she hooked up w/ gay men

complete retro in NYC

https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/3894?locale=en

Wow

Michelangelo Antonioni's original ending was a shot of an airplane sky-writing the phrase "Fuck You, America," which was cut by MGM president Louis F. Polk along with numerous other scenes. Louis F. Polk was eventually replaced by James T. Aubrey, who had most of the cut footage restored, but without this final shot.

^ Zabriskie Point

lmao

maybe we could rescue that shot for a(ny) current film

Louis F. Polk OTM, the destruction of the house says exactly the same thing

the ending is already amazing and "Fuck You, America" is maybe too on the nose but damn I wish that footage was extant

polk not otm, he shd have cut everything else as well

the myth of Zabriskie Point being a piece of shit.... ugh. I avoided the movie for many years, in fact I remember the day Antonioni (and Bergman) died, my best friend's dad went on a long rant about how much ZP sucked. he compared it to Heaven's Gate (also unfairly savaged but still by no means a great film). But Zabriskie Point is an astonishing movie, easily one of his best and rivaled only by L'avventura & Red Desert imo. Blow-Up is the overrated one.

blow-up is also bad

blow-up sucks

But it was the first Antonioni I saw, will definitely see it again next time it plays in a theater in town.

it will still suck

man, mark s taking the Orson Welles view of Mike

ZP >> Blow-Up.

i think I like The Passenger and L'Eclisse better than either

well, yeah

but i like em all. really haven't seen any loathsome Antonioni.

Ditto. Really like some of the pre-L'Aventurra films too, Le Amiche in particular.

They're all pretty much great. L'eclisse narrowly first among a bunch of equals.

I love how they were able to work the title into the lyrics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZwdTkBJxcU

I got to see ZP in 35mm during a full retro in '07. That print had the correct Pink Floyd music at the end instead of this studio-imposed Roy number, which unfortunately isn't the case with the DVD.

I find Red Desert pretty silly (ZP too) but I'm in the minority.

"Listen man, a molotov cocktail is a mixture of gasoline and kerosene. White radicalism is a mixture of bullshit and jive."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK0g_J1hhDc&t=243s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK0g_J1hhDc

ZP was my first Antonioni - made very little impression. I think it was the only one screened on TV regularly before The Passenger started doing the rounds.

That quote displays his reactionary politics (I guess this is where the doc on China might be useful to delve into this a bit more). I really don't care for almost any of the dialogue in his films, or what he thinks that could be written down. All the depth, focus and thinking went on in the image. Amazing any of it holds up over the length of a film, never mind four of them.

Watching Zabriskie Point.

Zabriskie Point is interesting as a marker for the beginning of the 70s

His most memorable films to me are from the 60s -
L’avventura, La notte, L’eclisse, and Il deserto rosso

Blowup was good too, but seemed more shallow when I watched it recently


I still haven’t seen The Passenger

Diana Halprin was married to Dennis Hopper for four years.

The energy or the vibe reminds me of The Model Shop in some ways - a shaggy story, a lot of drinking in of scenery (though this film has a lot of manufactured backdrops that help set a certain scene).

And man, what a soundtrack.

It got torn to shreds at the time, but I saw a good print in a theater once and enjoyed the apocalyptic trippiness and the soundtrack.

Has the Dick Cavett Show appearance been discussed yet?

PINK FLOYD RULES

Pink Floyd sucks but directors like Antonioni and Barbet Schroeder are good at framing them to make them look good

Blowup was good too, but seemed more shallow when I watched it recently

Interested in hearing why you think that about this one in specific. Most Antonioni I've seen boils down to beautiful people looking sad while walking down the streets of European cities - Zabriskie Point actually the closest I've seen him to being cerebral. But I think that kind of pure vibe filmmaking has its place and the pure beauty makes up for some of the emptiness.

Has the Dick Cavett Show appearance been discussed yet?

Amazing stuff. "Tonight on the show, Mel Brooks and TWO FUCKING CULT MEMBERS."

I remember reading in Astral Weeks about Jonathan Richman referring to “that Mel guy.”

The leader of the cult I mean, not Brooks.

I think he may have even built him a pizza oven.

Not guy, fellow. That Mel fellow.
Eden Ahbez, Jack Parsons, and other LA kooks...

Did we mention Antonioni visiting The Band whilst they were recording The Band in Sammy Davis Jr’s poolhouse?

gnna start saying that zabriskie point is actually abt jack parsons, hence the explosion at the end (spoiler)

(sadly it isn't tho, yet another reason why it's rubbish)

Relevant discussion starts around here: The Band.

Now starting to imagine Zabriskie Point with a Harry Nilsson soundtrack.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FmRosJmWIAMnNsP?format=png

Mark Frechette gave a good performance (dubbed into Italian) in Francesco Rosi's very dark and grim Many Wars Ago.