Just one day after the death of celebrated Swedish film great Ingmar Bergman, news arrived that another legend of cinema, Michelangelo Antonioni has died at the age of 94 (they actually both died on Monday, 7/31).
The modernist Italian director – best known for his abstract swinging London masterpiece, “Blow Up,” its equally obtuse counter-culture follow-up and commercial disaster, “Zabriskie Point,” and his venerable ’60s modern world alienation and disaffection trilogy (“L’Avventura,” La Notte” and “L’Eclisse“) – died peacefully at his home in Rome his wife Enrica Fico, told La Repubblica newspaper.
“With Antonioni, not only has one of the greatest living directors been lost, but also a master of the modern screen,” said the mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni.
Renowned for his lyrical, oblique and deliberately slow-moving films, Antonioni’s snail-paced anti-narratives were both poetic and often languorously arty. Regarded as one of the founders of European avante-garde cinema, he excelled at thoughtful, beautiful films with long, wandering shots telling virtually no story whatsoever. The hack crit term, meditation on, may have been first coined for his unhurried examinations of young, well-dressed hipsters struggling with paralyzing existential crises.
In the twice Oscar-nominated “Blow Up,” the filmmaker bookended the film with frolicking mimes as a hail-mary attempt at profundity. As the Film Snob dictionary notes, the Antonioni-helmed, “The Passenger,” was the artiest film Jack Nicholson ever appeared in. The film’s completely silent, 10-minute final scene had some audiences ripping out the seats in protest while others stroked their chin with perplexed knowningness.
“He invented his own language of cinema – that’s what made him very, very inventive. He didn’t owe anything to anybody else. He was a total original, ” Richard Mowe, a film writer and co-director of the Italian Film Festival UK, said.
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, the author of a book on Antonioni’s film “L’Avventura” (The Adventure) and obviously a big fan of his sometimes plodding and pretentious work, said the filmmaker was, “The last link with the great days of European art cinema.”
The wilful disintegration of Monica Vitti’s character in the remarkably slow and directionless, “L’Avventura” provoked a near riot at the Cannes Film Festival in 1960. Both the director and Vitti thought their careers were over. Naturally, the film won the festival’s Grand Jury Prize. The film went became an international phenomenon and launched his career on the global stage. Vitti would go on to be the most dedicated member of this acting troupe (which sometimes included the suave and classy Marcello Mastroianni).
1964’s “Il Deserto Rosso” was also loosely considered the 4th film in what would be a modern alienation quadrology. In 1966 the director made a deal to create another loose trilogy of films with legendary Italian film producer Carlo Ponti that began with “Blow Up.”
After the international success of “Blow-Up,” Antonioni bit off more than he could chew with the ’60s American counter-culture film, “Zabriskie Point” (1970). His lone American production, starring non-actors, a typically non-narrative and a languid Pink Floyd score, the film concluded with the grand pretentiousness of a building blowing-up in slow-motion repeatedly for an arduous scene, that seemingly went on for an entire afternoon (this scene and film permanently wounded the reputation of art-film for years to come). ‘Zabriskie’ was a wonderfully absurd bomb and one of the most notorious commercial flops of its day (the Grateful Dead, John Fahey and Kaleidoscope also contributed to the soundtrack).
Not everyone was a fan of Antonioni’s work obviously; the feared doyen of film criticism Pauline Kael said filmmakers like Ben Hect made satirical comedies “that said most of what Antonioni and more, and were entertaining besides.”
In 1985, the director suffered a stroke that left him partially paralysed, but he continued to work behind the camera. “Filming for me is living,” he said.
In ’82 Antonioni won the Grand Prix at the Cannes festival for “Identificazione di una donna” (Identification of a Woman). He was awarded Venice’s Golden Lion in 1983 and given a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award in 1995 presented by his old pal, Jack Nicholson.
As the excellent Times obit remarks, Antonioni was enigmatic through and through.
Asked to reflect back on his life, he was asked once, “In a world without film, what would you have made?”
Antonioni replied: “Film.”Download: Caetano Veloso – “Michelangelo Antonioni” (from the film, “Eros“)
Download: Pink Floyd – “Heart Beat, Pig Meat” (from “Zabriskie Point”)
Download: The Grateful Dead – “Dark Star” (from “Zabriskie Point”)
Download: Jerry Garcia – “Love Scene” (from “Zabriskie Point”)
Watch: “The Passenger” (last scene)
Watch: “Zabriskie Point” (final scene)
