L'Avventura again, and again

Here is an early post of mine from 2 years ago, on Antononi's L'AVVENTURA:

The late English film critic and writer Alexander Walker [whom I used to see around town regularly] was very perceptive in his movie reviews and his biographies on the likes of Vivien Leigh, Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison, Garbo and the silent era. His Thursday reviews were essential reading.

Here are his comments from a recommendation on a screening of L'AVVENTURA:

"Not all great movies, as Pauline Kael tartly observed, are received "in an atmosphere of incense burning". Michelangelo Antonioni's L'AVVENTURA was greeted at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival with a storm of cat-calling and booing. Yet within the year it had become the most fashionable film in European arthouses, and one that set the tone of other bleakly visionary film-makers. It begins with an almost glossy magazine depiction of the affluent Rome middle-class on a yachting holiday in the Lipari islands. Tensions are perceptible, but enigmatically conveyed. Then, as they prepare to leave an island, one woman (Lea Massari) is found to be missing. A search is mounted. With marvellous sleight-of-hand, Antonioni misdirects our attention: gradually we realise that instead of being looked for by her friends, she is being forgotten as two of them fall in love. The film changes key subtly, yet again to suggest how the emotions of a social class have become deadened and selfish. Monica Vitti made her name with this puzzle picture. The last sequence in a Taormina luxury hotel became notorious for her apparantly endless walk through the midnight corridors to discover her treacherous lover (Gabriele Ferzetti). It tried the patience of the black-tie crowd beyond endurance; yet The Walk soon became the trademark of other heroines, in other movies, who exemplified the sick soul of sixties Europe."

L'AVVENTURA was though the most problematic of the Antonioni films for me, I much preferred L'ECLISSE but now I have seen L'AVVENTURA a few more times and suddenly I think its wonderful in all its stark beauty. Our arty film channel Film4 ran it again last week, and despite having the Criterion dvd, I recorded it and found myself returning to it several times. It is pure cinema and I can now lose myself in it repeatedly. The first section on the island is brilliant - the photographs here show what a difficult shoot it must have been on the island in that magic year 1959. Monica Vitti is mesmerising and its a very multi-faceted performance: her anguish on the island searching for Anna, then trying to evade Sandro and finally giving in to her feelings and being deliriously in love and then that climax at the hotel in Taormina in that cold dawn ... a gold plated classic then and as I said in other posts on it, it and PSYCHO usher in that new modern world of 1960, both in their way about a woman who disappears and the people looking for her.

L'Eclisse, revisited (for Martin Bradley)

L’ECLISSE in 1962, one of THE key movies of the early '60s arthouse scene, and seen as the final part of Michelangelo Antonioni's early '60s trilogy, sees Monica Vitti at her peak as Vittoria and the film is all about her and her reactions to the people and events around her. Her solitude in her apartment, her ending with one lover (Francisco Rabal), the Rome financial markets as her mother gambles on the stock exchange, how she follows a man who has lost huge amounts, her pleasure in the air flight among the clouds, and getting involved with the brash young stockbroker, Alain Delon, who has no problems at all, apart from the drunk driving his car into the river.

Individual sequences stand out like where she and neighbours play at being in Africa and that well-known final sequence as the camera turns up at the lovers’ meeting place but they do not as life goes on and we study inanimate things like street lights, are endlessly fascinating. There is a sense of dread, as this is the early 60s and the nuclear age. There is so much in these films that one can’t really gloss over them, but Monica is marvellous here and is really the epitome of early 60s chic. It’s a timeless look and the film is an enduring classic.

For a film heading for 50 years old it is a surprisingly 'modern' film. A characteristic Antonioni sequence is the flight from Rome to Verona in the aircraft - nothing happens in the conventional sense, the journey has no dramatic aim or climax, it just is, but it conveys the mercurial Vittoria's elation and also isolation. Then there is that brief affair with Piero and then, after arranging their next meeting, both characters slip out of the film, as neither turns up but the camera does. For a full seven minutes it records the world that carries on without them as the streets empty and darkens as day turns to dusk. This is an extraordinary sequence: Antonioni seems to be saying that people and events are transient, that only places last. Other lives which we know nothing about cross the screen and disappear leaving in the end just the city continuing to function automatically as street lights come on and darkness falls... its as powerful as the end of THE PASSENGER or indeed any of Antonioni's films!



As ever Antonioni’s use of space and landscape and how characters move and fit in it repays several viewings. Sound plays an important part too – the wind rattling the railings here is as evocative as the wind sighing among the leaves of the park in BLOW-UP.

Monica Vitti - art-house comedienne

It is rumoured that Monica has Alzheimers now, and has not been seen for some time - but back in the '60s she had that unique face, voice and manner, that certainly registered with me. She was the latest in that line of great Italian actresses with stunning looks.

The Antonioni films of course have been endlessly written about and analysed since the 60s, so I am only mentioning them in relation to Vitti's roles. L’AVVENTURA set the pace in 1960 and was of course the sensation of the Cannes Film Festival and together with Fellini’s LA DOLCE VITA and Visconti’s ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS ushered in the new age of Italian and then international cinema. One could almost say modern cinema began in 1960 with both Hitchcock and Antonioni making films about a woman who vanishes and the people looking for her. We find out what happens to her in the Hitchcock, but we don’t in Antonioni’s vision of the indolent rich at play as they sail around Southern Italy ending at that bleak dawn (often where Antonioni films end, as in LA NOTTE and BLOWUP) at the hotel in Taormina where her Claudia accepts the limitations of love.

LA NOTTE in 1961 is really Mastroianni and Moreau’s film as the married couple visiting a dying friend in Milan and whose marriage is failing, with another less-optimistic dawn reconciliation after an all night party. Vitti is featured as Valentina, the daughter of the host of the party, who flirts with Mastroianni, but realises it is not going anywhere as they surrender to the boredom of modern life.



L’ECLISSE in 1962, seen as the final part of this trilogy, sees Vitti at her peak as Vittoria and the film is all about her and her reactions to the people and events around her. Her solitude, ending with one lover, the Rome financial markets as her mother gambles on the stock exchange, how she follows a man who has lost huge amounts, her pleasure in the air flight among the clouds, and getting involved with the brash young stockbroker, Alain Delon, who has no problems at all, apart from the drunk driving his car into the river. Individual sequences like where she and neighbours play at being in Africa and that well-known final sequence as the camera turns up at the lovers’ meeting place but they do not as life goes on and we study inanimate things like street lights, are endlessly fascinating. There is a sense of dread, as this is the early 60s and the nuclear age. There is so much in these films that one can’t really gloss over them, but Monica is marvellous here and is really the epitome of early 60s chic. It’s a timeless look and the film is an enduring classic. As ever Antonioni’s use of space and landscape and how characters move and fit in it repays several viewings. Sound plays an important part too – the wind rattling the railings here is as evocative as the wind sighing among the leaves of the park in BLOW-UP.

A 1963 film CHATEAU EN SUEDE surfaced only here in the UK on BBC television but it was an interesting oddity by Roger Vadim with Vitti leading an interesting cast which also included young pop singer Francoise Hardy in this Francoise Sagan story set in – yes – a castle in Sweden.

After several more movies came her fourth Antonioni – IL DESERTO ROSSO, or THE RED DESERT, and it’s a pleasure to see it newly released on dvd. Vitti looks wonderful here with red hair as she grapples with a very bored Richard Harris (who did not get on with Antonioni at all and in fact he walked off the picture). Vitti is Guiliana who may be driven to a breakdown by the industrial nightmare of Ravenna with its factories spouting pollution and her indifferent husband, hence her fling with Harris, all loving photographed in Antonioni’s first color feature, with locations and objects painted (as they would in BLOW-UP) to reflect the heroine’s mood: the red room, and grey fruit on a market stall.

She was of course the art-house goddess of those Antonioni films which we all flocked to then, and are still relevant and endlessly discussed today. But Monica wanted to be a comedienne. She brought a lot of fun to Losey's MODESTY BLAISE which is a very misunderstood film, but in Italian comedies like her sketches in LE BAMBOLE, LE FATE or THE SCARLET LADY she is very funny and deadpan. It is lovely now seeing her being glamorous and funny wearing fabulous clothes in those Italian comedies, but a lot of them did not get international release. One that did was the very funny PIZZA TRIANGLE with her and Mastroanni and Giannini. It was nice seeing her contributing to that BBC series 'Hollywood England' a dozen or so years ago which disucssed all those key British films of the '60s, where she, Bogarde, Stamp and others discussed MODESTY BLAISE and others. Cannes Film Festival poster for 2009 was a nice tribute to her and L'AVVENTURA...

My full IMDb appreciation on Monica is at:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0900143/board/nest/131550690?d=131550690#131550690