5 Great Directors From 5 Great Filmmaking Nations
3. Italy Michelangelo Antonioni
Of all the directors on this list, Michelangelo Antonioni is the least known. Why is this? I dont think itd be fair comment to say because his films are the least accessible; that prosthetic title goes to the German. But the films of Michelangelo Antonioni are aesthetically complexcritically stimulating though elusive in meaning. They are ambiguous works that pose difficult questions and resist simple conclusions.
Classical narrative causalities are dissolved in favour of expressive abstraction. Displaced dramatic action leads to the creation of a stasis occupied by vague feelings, moods and ideas. Confronted with hesitancy, the spectator is compelled to respond imaginatively and independent of the film. The frustration of this experience reflects that felt in the lives of Antonionis characters: unable to solve their own personal mysteries they often disappear, leave, submit or die.
Antonionis greatest achievement in film is LAvventura (1960) .Part of what makes LAvventura so impressive is that Antonioni developed a cohesion of narrative and stylistic devices that had only haphazardly surfaced in his earlier films.
It might not be too ridiculous to suggest that analogous to some of his characters, Antonioni was searching for something, a method of communication, which he finally "found" with LAvventura. That he wouldnt let go until he had explored the approach a couple of films further, is retrospectively understandable. The other two in loose trilogy are La Notte (1961), and Eclipse (1962), both equally as profound.