At first, I wanted to call this 60s film entry, “Trilogie a la Ennui.” Michelangelo Antonioni’s loosely connected trilogy, at least thematically, deals with man’s (and more specifically, woman's) alienation from a rapidly changing, post-war world in which social mores are shifting and relationships are not the traditional lifelong pairings that were once the norm. There are long takes, extended periods in which nothing really happens (or does it?), and relationships that inevitably fall apart. Antonioni is also known as a fiction writer, and these films are truly literature in visual form. These three films are amazingly put together, replete with meaningful yet spare dialogue, symbols, and existential drama. I can’t claim to understand everything that Antonioni is trying to express, but I feel as if these films are so packed, that even a portion of them being understood is enough. In this way, these films might not be for everyone. They are art films in every sense of those words, and deserve undivided attention and exploratory discussion.
L’Avventura (1960, Michelangelo Antonioni)
I first heard of Antonioni, not with his most popular, Blow-Up (which will be written about at a later date), but when a coworker at the Laemmle’s Royal Theater started gushing profusely about L’Avventura when it was booked to play a local art house theater (possibly the Aero? I don’t remember). I didn’t go see it then, and it’s probably a good thing. I don’t think I could have appreciated the film in my early twenties, but now, nearing forty, this film, and the other two in the trilogy, are more palatable due to my experience. L’Avventura is the type of film that starts out as one type of film, and then ends as a completely different one. At first, we are introduced to a strong female character, Anna, who doesn’t get along with her father, a diplomat. There are hints in the dialogue between them that Anna’s father lies to her and to others, but these secrets are never revealed. She admits that she is not really in love with her fiancée, Sandro, but is going to marry him anyway. This, too, turns out to be fairly unimportant, at least as it relates to popular narrative film, and this certainly isn’t that. In this type of film, the above issues are all crucial, meaningful, and interpretable.
Anna, Sandro, and friend Claudia take a boat trip to a remote volcanic island, Lisba Bianca, for a vacation. They are accompanied by other sets of couples, each of which have peculiar quirks and bits of revealing dialogue. But, the pivotal point of the film comes when Anna mysteriously disappears. The rest of the travelers are all lazily napping or paying attention to other things before anyone notices. After exhaustive searches, and the arrival of Anna’s father, not much else can be done. Anna’s friends all go back to their regular lives. Eventually, Sandro and Claudia strike up a relationship, though not as “eventually” as some might think. They end up together fairly quickly. The shift from the first act of the film to the second act, following the formation of Claudia and Sandro’s relationship, is deliberately flouts the rules of the mystery trope. All vestiges of the Anna storyline and her mysterious disappearance, as dramatic as they are, are dropped. It is more of a reflection of life’s odd events. Things happen, and we move on, and sometimes we don’t get any answers, nor do we adamantly seek them as some of our filmic heroes so valiantly do.
Claudio and Sandro’s relationship is put into stark relief with not only other relationships around them, such as their traveling companions, with their infighting and nastiness, but also with the original relationship of loss with Anna. One of the women has an affair with a 17-year-old painter. All of them search for meaning in their own individual ways. As Sandro and Claudia take their own trip together, we see a group of men recognizing her beauty, perched in sheer leering attentiveness. I’d say it was a fairly good homage to The Birds (another one I'll post at a later date), except that the Hitchcock film arrived three years later. This scene is just one example of how to dissect this film. Cinematography, dialogue, (or lack thereof), and the emoted feelings of the actors are everything in this film, along with others in the trilogy. Sandro convinces the beautiful Claudia, played masterfully by Monica Vitti, Antonioni’s girlfriend at the time, to marry him. Shortly after, she catches him with a young prostitute. Both irreparably damaged, the film ends with the indelible image of Claudia standing alongside a sitting Sandro, with Mt. Etna in the background. And immediately, we know that this dormant volcano is somehow related to the volcanic island where Anna disappeared, and that everyone will eventually disappear in their own way, and in their own time.
La Notte (1961, Michelangelo Antonioni)
Once again, Monica Vitti plays the other woman, though not as early on as in L’Avventura. In La Notte, we again start with a character who will soon disappear, in this case, the dying Tommaso, a friend of the couple, Giovanni and Lidia, played respectively by the magnificent Marcello Mastroianni and the radiant Jeanne Moreau. Rather than newlyweds, Giovanni and Lidia are a middle-aged, married couple, fairly successful and in the upper crust. Giovanni is a famous writer, with people generally praising his abilities while he undercuts their laudatory decrees with self-deprecation. The couple, having to face the imminent death of their friend, start to react in particular ways. Giovanni accepts the advances of a young, beautiful, disturbed, nymphomaniac patient, while Lidia wanders off to walk the streets of Milan, experiencing all sorts of odd bits of the flotsam and jetsam of life, such as a crying child, rotting buildings, people shooting off Roman Candles, and a street fight. Eventually, Lidia ends up at the couple’s old apartment building, representing a happier time in their relationship, where Giovanni finds her.
However, once separated from this happy place, Lidia is once again despondent and restless. She suggests that they go out for the evening, first to a nightclub, and then to a party with friends. Again, characteristic of Antonioni, there is a lot to see, but not really a lot going on, at least in the narrative sense. The two watch an amazing nightclub act that we could easily stretch to represent the acrobatic nature of relationships, but that might not be necessary. The party is where most of the film takes place, and where most of the issues are set into motion. Lidia wanders around, alone though surrounded by people, not having much fun. Giovanni, in the meantime, becomes the focus of the party, being offered jobs and getting a lot of female attention. A simple game of flirtation, Giovanni and Valentina sliding her compact along a checkered floor in an imitation of shuffleboard or curling, turns into a spectator sport and a gambling affair. Everything seems to go Giovanni’s way. Lidia and Valentina end up connecting in their own awkward, yet straightforward and unpretentious manner. It forms a strange sort of love triangle.
Lidia eventually admits, as they leave the party as dawn breaks over the surrounding golf course, that she doesn’t love Giovanni anymore. They sit, and she reads a love letter to him that she has secreted in her purse. It is poetic and beautiful, speaking of a love that we have not seen displayed anywhere in this film. He asks her, “Who wrote that?” It is a double insult as this insinuates that she has a secret lover that he doesn’t know about, meaning that he is unattending and absent, and even more insulting in that it was he who wrote it in the early days of their courtship, proving himself more of a cad. It is no wonder that Don Draper, a character from AMC’s Mad Men, says that he enjoyed La Notte. Giovanni and Lidia are prototypes and molds for Don and Betty Draper. The elite circles, loveless relationship, and complete façade are near replicated in the hit show that takes place at the same time as Antonioni’s films. It is yet another heartbreaking ending, yet more real than most other films.
L’Eclisse (1962, Michelangelo Antonioni)
I saw these three films out of order and I wish I hadn’t. Ending with L’Eclisse would have been tragically magical. I’ll explain what I mean. Just as the other two films the “Trilogie a la Ennui,” L’Eclisse is rife with sadness, existential angst, strong, yet troubled female characters as central figures, and long takes, scenes, and shots without a lot going on but what is in the viewer’s mind. This pretty much sums up these films of Michelangelo Antonioni. So, T.S. Eliot’s poetic refrain ends up being fairly prophetic. Once again, we also have Monica Vitti, this time not playing a tertiary character, but as the focus. She is Vittoria, a literary translator who falls for a young stockbroker, Riccardo, played by the awesome Alain Delon, and begins a summer fling with him.
The movie opens with playful pop music, somewhat a staple of the French New Wave movement at the time, reminiscent certainly of Godard. But, the music shifts to eerie, ominous music. It is overpowering foreshadowing of what is to come. Everything that comes before, her breakup with her original boyfriend, her fascination with a neighbor and her African art and music collection, and visits to the stock exchange are merely prelude to one unifying event. Oddly, though the event unifies the segments of the film, it does the opposite with our characters. The relationship between Vittoria and Riccardo is fraught with problems. She seemingly tries to give herself over to her passions but cannot commit fully. He grows frustrated, torn between his passions of work and of a love that seems like it would be hard work that would conflict with his profession.
The two make a date to meet on “their corner,” a special place they have designated their own. It has a rain barrel that is somewhat their touchstone. As the hour draws near for their rendezvous, we are graced with a series of evocative shots. Time passes, day turns into dusk and then into night. We see people getting off busses. We see the sprinkler the couple played in on a previous date being ceremoniously shut off, acting as another symbol. The rain barrel on the corner begins to leak, draining its contents as if signifying the love that escaped their relationship. We see a blonde woman and wonder if she has made the date, both getting our hopes up and letting us know that this kind of situation would be devastatingly one-sided. But no, it is not her. Neither appears, but does this mean something? Is this just reality, that people eventually abandon each other? Possibly, but is it inevitable? I don’t know.
Regardless, L’Eclisse is a wonderful and tragic film. The last thirty minutes are spellbinding. They brought me to tears. Martin Scorsese called L’Eclisse the boldest film in Antonioni’s trilogy and I am not inclined to disagree with him. This trilogy, being made in a three-year span, is truly remarkable. I don’t know how he did it. Now, some fifteen plus years after the fact, I finally understand my coworker’s passionate pleas to see these films. If only more people would come and go, talking of Michelangelo.
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