Italian cinema titan Michelangelo Antonioni died last July just one day after Swedish film icon Ingmar Bergman passed away. Obviously, it was a huge blow to cinema even though these two were both old and frail and had essentially stopped making films. We wrote a long and loving tribute to both of them, but the Italian modernist’s films have a real spot in our hearts and he was one of our favorite filmmakers. But an incredible article about Antonioni’s death, with his widow, Enrica Fico, surfaced last week via Spoutblog (via Hollywood Elsewhere) and some of the details are rather shocking.
While a stroke in 1985 left him partially paralyzed and unable to speak (he had to make his last film with Wim Wenders; 1995’s “Beyond the Clouds,” an admittedly kind of terrible movie for even the biggest Antonioni fans, us, even if it did star the incomparable and gorgeous Irene Jacob), another stroke apparently left the filmmaker completely blind, something he found “completely unacceptable.” The filmmaker apparently asked his wife to shoot or poison him, but she refused and instead allowed him to starve himself by only allowing him a few teaspoons of food a day from September ’06 to his death the following summer. God, is that fucked up or what? Growing old sucks.
Even more messed up is this quote from his wife comparing his filmmaking style to his finale. “Like his films, even his death was a masterpiece. It went quiet in absolute and embracing the absolute, as if it were a mystic.” Jesus.
This is depressing. To get over this (sort of not really), we have a bunch of score music composed by Antonioni’s long-time music collaborator Giovanni Fusco, including meditative and eerie tracks from “L’Avventura,” lilting and somber jazzy tracks from “L’Eclisse” and outre, out-there/proto-electronic experiments from ‘Il Deserto Rosso”; three masterworks of the Italian filmmaker (RIP).
Download: Giovanni Fusco – “Eclisse Slow”
Download: Giovanni Fusco – “Nervosi” (from “Il Deserto Rosso”)
Download: Giovanni Fusco – “Finale” (from “L’Avventura”)
Download: Giovanni Fusco – “Astrale” (from “Il Deserto Rosso”)
Download: Giovanni Fusco – “Tema Dramatico” (from “L’Avventura”)
To deviate slightly, the devastating finale scene of Antonioni’s “La Notte” starring the classically resplendent Jean Moreau and the inimitable Marcello Mastroianni as estranged and disaffected lovers. Their isolation and inability to connect is so disquieting, so full of desperation and so damn sad.
