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L'Avventura - Criterion Collection
: L'Avventura has a certain strangeness that goes beyond the archetypal film plot. Its minimal and effective way of conveying feeling and sensiblilty puts it side by side with other extraordianry films, and Antonioni in the Pantheon of filmmaking, along with Ozu, with Bresson, and others who invented new forms, but talked about common ideas and things.
"After finishing L'Avventura, I was forced to reflect on what the film meant." -director Michelangelo Antonioni. This is the greatest film about adult romantic relationships ever made. Every topic is touched on: infidelity, jeaslousy, male preoccupation with sex, female preoccupation with resistance, the urgency of love, and the futility ("why,why,why,why...") Is there a better? Perhaps I am underinformed. And the sheer beauty! My God, it's enough to make you forget the plot. For picturesque rocky islands and splashing surf, this must be the Ansel Adams of Palermo. This is not to mention the rest of the film. As a friend of mine said, every frame could be in a book of modern photography. Antonioni knows how to frame his shots. Enough, please, of this film being 'Boredom Personified.' Woe to those who are thoughtless enough to resist assimilating its message. This is not a film for children - or the childish. This film is partly about the psychological issues of love and romance in the modern industrial age. It is partly about keeping the difficulties thereunto connected, in proper perspective. Those who hold such an exercise as tedious, are advised to go back to the mall. Yet, "For those who wish to listen, it will have a value beyond words."
"L'avventura" inizzia il primo numero della trilogia che Michelangelo Antonioni continua con "La notte" e "L'eclisse" en in certo modo conclude con "Il deserto rosso" tutti quattro con la splendida partecipazzione di Monica Vitti. Ne "L'avventura" Antonioni rispecchia l'incomunicabilitý, la fragilitý dei sentimenti, l'incapacitý d'amare dei personaggi della borghesia del boom economico italiano degli anni '60. Maestro nei chiamati "tempi morti", lunghe sequenze dove gli attori guardavano la cinepresa in modo che lo spettatore potesse intuire cosa atraversava loro mente ed anima. Uno dei massimi capolavori del cinema italiano. Inmancabile in una videoteca!
Monumentally influential film from 1960, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. A disaffected group of idle, rich Italians take a cruise to the volcanic islands south of Sicily. After they pause at one of the islands, one of their number, a beautiful young woman named Anna, suddenly vanishes. Her lover (Gabriele Ferzetti) and her best friend (Monica Vitti) scour the island for the missing girl -- no trace. Like any man in his right mind, Ferzetti's character Sandro almost immediately finds himself attracted to Vitti's Claudia -- she's taken aback at first, but only on a superficial level. The movie then chronicles the search for missing Anna -- and the burgeoning affair between Sandro and Claudia -- back in Italy. The rest you can see for yourself. What *L'Avventura* did for cinema was to shine light on the interiors of the human heart in a way that movies had been afraid to attempt before. The obvious charge one can lay against Antonioni's masterpiece is that it's slow and dull for that very reason -- a film character thinking about something doesn't exactly constitute action-packed cinema. Do understand that this movie is not for all tastes . . . but if you're reading this review, you're probably already curious and are considering buying the movie, to which I say, Take the plunge. *L'Avventura* is about ennui in our modern life -- ennui in our personal lives, ennui in our professional lives. Go ahead, snicker. It's easy to dismiss the subject as pretentious. Perhaps it IS pretentious -- but can you really deny the relevance of the subject matter? Can any man -- deep down in his heart of hearts -- not identify with Sandro, an overgrown boy unhappy in love and work? Can any woman not be impressed with Claudia's inner growth from shallow party-girl at the beginning of the movie to the Rock of Gibraltar she evolves into at the end? *L'Avventura* is a grown-up masterpiece for grown-ups. [Criterion furnishes us with an immersive experience for this movie. You get the brilliant transfer, of course, but you also get instructive commentary from critic Gene Youngblood, from which I certainly learned a lot. The second disc features a documentary about Antonioni made in the mid-60's -- it's very French, very pretentious, and very interesting. It also includes Jack Nicholson, of all people, reading Antonioni's mid-life-crisis screed against traditional morality, another essay in which the director displays a hilarious contempt for the utility of actors in film, and finally some personal recollections from Jack himself, who good-naturedly puts the intellectual director firmly back into place. This whole package is well worth the money, if what I've described is up your alley.]
 Do we really need 2 and a half hours to figure out that the rich lead aimless lives? Shallow message, shallow movie. Not to mention its also boring, although I assume that was the point. Filling a movie with shallow, empty characters and engaging in upper class bashing does not make it a masterpiece, let alone any kind of artistic statement of any worth or insight. Watch "La Dolce Vita" to see how this kind of movie should be done.
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