Michelangelo Antonioni and Women in Film

Michelangelo Antonioni and Women in demandMichelangelo Antonioni was an Italian film director, he was born In Ferrara, northern Italy, 1929.With Fellini he go bads to a so c every last(predicate)ed provincial wave of Italian neorealist film birthrs, non so distant from the metropolitan colleagues De Sica, Rossellini and Visconti. (Chat valet 1985, Tinazzi 1994)While not ab initio fully appreciated by the tradition audience for his excessive intellectualism and pessimism. ( Crowther 1960, Hawkins 1960, Barthes 1994)Today, Antonioni is regarded one of the most influential personalities in flick. (Grenier 1960, Manceaux 1960, Fink 1935, Chat populace 1989, Koehler 2015)His most remarkable works concern the sentiency of anguish and fragility of the new society. (Di Carlo 1964, Lu tossonio 2011)The characters belong to the idle rich society of the Italian post war, their boredom and sense of ennui robbed them of their skill to gestate their feelings and reduced them to speak in a feeble troopskindner in attempt to conceal their sense of futility.(Chatman 1985, Pomerance 2011)Women, play toping rolesAntonioni emphases womens ability to be more honest with human relations.A capacity most lost by intellectual men who argon unable to supply each sort of sensitiveness. non give by their inability to provide an alternative to boredom, and by their established unresponsiveness.(Pomerance 2011)Alberto Moravia in his boredom (1960) wroteBoredom is not the opposite of amusementboredom to me consists in a kind of insufficiency, or inadequacy, or lack of reality. it originates in a sense of the absurdity of a reality which is unable, to convince me of its own effective existenceTo modern man, the means to restore a link with reality is given by sexuality, however, if sexuality provides only when a physical reliefEros is sick Antonioni (1962) saysIt is a symptom of the emotional sickness of our time man is unease, something is bothering him. And whe neer som ething bothers him, man reacts, but he reacts badly, only on erotic impulse, and he is unhappy.Embodying many of the philosophical concerns associated with European existentialists Antonioni exposed the existential dilemma of modern man.(Barthes 1994, Darke 1995, Giannetti 1999, Holden 2006, Tomasulo 2008, Bortolini 2011)Antonioni dehumanized his characters of their personality and utilise them as devices to show the high-pitched psychological complexity of the unstable neurotic personalities of our time. (Lunn 1982, Melzer 2010)Melancholia, incommunicability, emptiness, alienation.All elements that characterize a life lacking in purpose and a general sense of spiritual vacuityThemes that are well represented in LAvventura (1959) and Il Deserto Rosso (1960). (Hoberman 2006)Lavventura, set amongst the remote Sicilian seashore, sees the search for a missing person Anna, disappeared during a ride trip. Sandro, her fiance, and Claudia, her best friend, start a search in a vain attemp t to mark her during which go in attracted to each other and the search for Anna turns into a desire to not purpose her anymore.Il Deserto Rosso, set in the overly industrialized fringe of Ravenna, sees Giuliana, a neurotic woman, in the desperate attempt to keep a link with reality. Her troub lead personality is split between a worried mother for her son Valerio, who fakes to be paralyzed at one point and adulterousness with a Corrado, a business associate of his neglectful husband, Ugo.Claudia and Giuliana taste for utopian models into dystopian worlds.From a side the sentimental ideal of Claudia mor tout ensembley discomforted by choosing between finding her lost companion or keeping the shallow affair with Sandro.And on the other the existential ideal of Giuliana in the desperate attempt to survive her stamp in a sort of Darwinist mechanism of natural selection (Melzer 2010)To the neurotic personality everything appears absurd in life family, work or withal operate a car. Giuliana is a paradigmatic example of it.Jean Paul Sartre (1989) would say she lives in bad beliefLiving in bad credit means living not authentically, convincing one self that in that respect are no alternatives and pretending that something out there has marrow.Indeed, she bought a shop in Via Dante Alighieri, but she does not feel what to do with it or she escapes by fantasizing well-nigh azure lagoons and warm beaches. (Salinari 1960)Giuliana is not frightened by modernism, she is not in tune with the industrialized world that oppresses her stimulus.Giuliana ad rightful(prenominal)ed to this world, and learnt how to circulate in it and plane though everyone most her accepted it, she refuses to respond to itNeurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguityFreud stated (1977)The agonizing malaise of Giuliana, is given by her inability to tolerate a world that does not support her ideals and obliged her to accept her faithIn contrast Ugo and Corrado have embraced the spiri t of the XIX CenturyThe industrial progress proceeds by neglecting the family bond or slowly crumbling it.Corrado has the spirit of the traveller and sees objects by dint of the ornament in motion.For Corrado it means where to go, what to buy, who to hire, it is all about progress.For Giuliana it means where to stay, who to make boundaries withShe needs to see things for their presence and perspectiveIn LAvventura Claudias desire to find Anna is sincere.In spite of Sandro that has no real desire to find her.He would rather leave the arcanum unsolved and move on.The characters vagabondage plays as an ephemeral mechanism of self relief to avoid get along disquiet or sense of guilt by not even try (Chatman 1989)Both bring togethers lead through a sense of mutual pity.They try to explain their problems in virtually psychotic terms, though they fail to communicate to each other as they struggle to communicate with themselves first.They suffer from existential anxiety they are in de sperate need to fulfil their sterile lives but, they dont k today how.As much as Sandro and Corrado try to be supportive they at the end surrender to sexual temptation.Their emotive instinct profuse in consequence of repression and has been endlessly replaced by substitute-objects. (Chatman 1985)Corrado and Sandro are emblematic examples of the Freudian dyad of the modern manwhere the only two concerns of life are work and sex.Their sexual fulfilment is unsatisfactory and guilt ridden, eroticism is used as an anodyne to their moral dilemma and an outlet for frustration. (OLesser 1964)For modernists, sex is a contest and they would swap their lamb to the same extent they would accept or decline a work offerThe room where they just spent hours talking about eroticism has no less meaning for them than for us, it can be interpreted apart to feed the fire as effortlessly as they can meet in there for a party. (Pomerance 2011)The dystopian realities depicted by Antonioni are environment s that prevent emotions to flourish and the characters seem almost touch on by a shapeless pain that withers their response to emotions. (Chatman1985)AnomieAs called by the cut sociologist Emile Durkheim(Slattery 2003)He described it as a malaise of the individual which absence of values and associated feelings of alienation lead him to a general sense of purposelessness in life.A concept that Albert Camus perfectly summed in the source of his The Stranger (1942)Anomie is common in those societies that have gone through a period of important economic changes and no exception is the post war Italy of the miracolo italianoIndustrialization led men to bring together all their knowledge and strength into a sort of Nietzschean superhuman creation where the efficient modern man now, extension of the machine, seems to be at one with life but not less alienated, just unwitting of his own condition.Modernity promoted an ideological discrepancyThe ever-increasing split between moral man and scientific man leads to the prevalence of eroticism as a symptom of the emotional sickness of our timeAntonioni (1962) saidModern man does not have the moral tools to match his technological skills and he is incapable to set authentic relationships with all his surrounding or fellows.It is true that Antonioni translated through abstract images the Marxist theory of alienation in roam to explain the sense of frustration and rejection of todays society.Nevertheless, it is too simplistic to say that Antonioni is condemning modernity to have created such an unhuman world where the individual is led to neurosisAntonioni (Brunette 1998) intended to translate the poetry of the world where even factories can be beautifulThe complexity of lines, shapes and colours merge into a steampunk dichotomy of functional cup of teaThe sublime stunner of such brutalistic architectures matches what George Orwell wrote in The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)All round was the lunar landscape of slag-hea ps you could see the factory chimneys sending out their plumes of smoke. The canal path was a mixture of cinders, frozen entangle and pools of stagnant water It seemed a world from which vegetation had been banished. But even Wigan is beautiful .I do not believe that there is anything inherently and unavoidably ugly about industrialism. A factory or even a gasworks is not obliged of its own nature to be ugly, any more than a rook or a dog-kennel or a cathedral.Of all the contributions Antonioni gave to motion picture the most important relies in his ability to correlate character to environment. (Tassone 2002, Antonioni 2007)Antonioni was a long-time student of architecture and all his filmssince his early documentaries of Gente del Po (1947) and Nettezza Urbana (1948) show a keen interest in public and private spaces. (Di Carlo 2002)The social and economic changes of post war Italy led to his attentionthe relation existing between place and individual.Movies like LAvventura wou ld be unconceivable without its images of ordinary Sicilian life.Antonioni shows the complex novelty of modernity through modernist aestheticsand uses the socio political situation of Italy as device to show the self sensation of the film. (Reyner 2013)Explanatory dialogues are minimized and architecture, whether natural or artificial, gains its own narrative autonomy.The use of pre diegetic and post diegetic shots as well known as temps mort enhances the simulacral quality of the topographics that through their contemplation reveal their implicit meaning. (Chatman 1978, Lefebvre 2006, Bruno 1997, Reyner 2013)The sublime, merciless and bare beauty of inimical Lisca Bianca.The omnipotence and cosmic indifference of cold and distant industrialized Ravenna.The haptical influence of such places on the prosecute of the characters resonates with strong expressive analogy. (Cuccu 1973, Antonioni 2007)Dialogue and architecture play as co-metonyms, they not only symbolize modernity but t hey are crude examples of it.The buildings reflect the characters psyche by association.At the beginning of Lavventura Anna speaks to her dad, she is identified through the noisy new building, and similarly her father is matched with the magnificent dome in the distance.The uncanny battlefield of industrial wastage and the jet of steam and flames act as Giulianas repressed inner force which neurosis synthesized in self destructive attitude. (Bruno 1997)The inhospitable rock of the Aeolian Islands stresses the strangeness of the characters to this environment.The haunting silence of Noto resonates with an existential sense of non-belonging.The euclidian geometry and surface of modern materials dwarfs our characters.Modernity is reflected by the solid appearance of these facilities.And if the sense of security should be provided by their appearanceWhat security does modernity provide if it only causes unease?A place built by man that rejects man.The space lost its true very own essenc e to be dwelled.This place has frame absurd stripped out of its functionality there is goose egg left but a mere compact of stones and concrete.The camera movement is perversely spectral and fascinating.The city has become a rational entity.A unfriendly alien force that seems to reject the characters.A composition that evokes De Chiricos metaphysical period. (Antonioni 1961)Even though De Chiricos paintings suggest that this now inhabited town, once occupied, will be dwelled again, in Lavventura the town seems as it has never been lived.As if a premonition warned the Sicilians to have nothing to do with it. (Costa 2002, Tassone 2002)Finally the epilogue of Lavventura reaches the climax in the evolution of the couple in crisis.The composition is emblematic, split in between a void and a fill.The far set of a volcano island and an empty wall.The will to forgive and the inability to reason own existence.This frame shows all the uncertainty and suspension upon which the movie ends. Antonioni does not reveal in these places cataclysmic sceneries.He rather makes a commentary on the personal problems that bad building and misused spaces created and are afflicting modern man.The macabre visions of environmental exploitation and building speculation revealed the collapse of safety of our surrounding and have become concrete verbal expression of the emotional sickness of our timeWhen Lavventura was published it was said of giallo alla rovescia, or noir in reverse. (Cuccu 1973)While De Sica would have bring out the drama of these individualsAntonioni instead uses his exceptional dispassionate photography to dedrammatize the events. (Cuccu 1973)This is why it no longer seems to me important to make a film about a man who has had his bicycle stolenit is important to see what there is in the mind and in the heart of this man how he has adapted himself, what remains in him of his past experiences.(Bondanella 1943)This does not mean his movies are not dramatic, but on t he counterpart the events do not follow a conventional chain of causalities.The common cinematic technique of resolution suggests that Anna will eventually be ensnare and Giuliana will recover.Antonioni does not offer any solution to act on the present. (Nowell-Smith 1995)Using ellipses the temporality of the events is uphold and their reality enhanced however, the events are not strictly related by a cause-effect succession but rather linked by contingency.As matter of fact we are not given any further information when Giulianas depression started or when Anna decided to leave to never come back again. for each one event is no less accidental and casual than the others.As casual as the disappearing of Anna and the complete abandon by Claudia and Sandro that revealed at the end a cold and unforgiving disappearing of a disappearance.We are not given to know what has been of Anna or whether Claudias hand resting on Sandros head in the most splendid of all acceptances means she forg ave Sandro or if she was consenting him.We cant be sure about Giuliana either, whether she recovered from her depression or if she adapted to the modern world as explains to Valerio how birds adapted to that poisonous environment. (Chatman 1985)The events we expect to happen never happen.The title shows its ambiguity as it works symbolically and not visually.The Red Desert, the desert of the alienated things, the aridness of the human emotions.The adventure, the journey Anna undertakes swimming overboard, the sentimental adventure of Sandro and Claudia.And even the intentions behind the films are ambiguousWe cant really tell if Lavventura and Il Deserto Rosso are about moral decay or an outcry about the effects of technology on the humans sensitiveness.Whether the inhabited rock of a Sicilian island or the outskirt of an industrialized city,Antonioni was capable to film modernity through the bare appearance of things. (Gilman 1962)Although, it is difficult to tell what Antonionis mo vies are about,Antonioni himself after a visit to Mark RothkosaidYour paintings are like my films-theyre about nothingwith precision. (Gilman 1962)Antonioni was a poet of the form and the meaning of his works comes from the interaction between suggestive architectures and the ambiguity of the human emotions.He depicted a utopian desire to regain a sense of human connection with the environment.His shots offer nothing more and nothing less than the sheer wonder of existence.BIBLIOGRAPHY AND FURTHER READINGSAntonioni, M., 1961. Fare un film per me vivere. Scritti sul cinema. Ed. 2009. Venice Marsilio Editore, 43.Antonioni, M., 1962.A talk with Michelangelo Antonioni. exposure Culture, 24 (1962) 51.Antonioni, M., 2007. The computer architecture of Vision Writings and Interview on Cinema. Chicago University of ChicagoBarthes, R., 1994. Caro Antonioni. In Barthes, R. Ed. 1997. Sul cinema. Genoa Il Nuovo Melangolo, 172-173.Bondanella, P., 1943. Italian Cinema From Neorealism to the Pres ent. Ed. 1984. newfangled York Frederick Ungar Publishing Co, 108.Bortolini, F., 2011. Forme dellesperienza e del linguaggio. Camus, Sartre, Bergman, Antonioni. Milan Unicopli.Bruno, G., 1997. Site-seeing architecture and the moving image. Wide Angle, 19 (4), 8-24.Brunette, P., 1998. The films of Michelangelo Antonioni. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 96.Camus, A., 1942. The Stranger. New York Vintage Books.Chatman, S. 1989. LAvventura. New Brunswick Rutgers University Press.Chatman, S., 1985. Antonioni, or the surface of the world. London University of California Press.Costa, A., 2002. Il cinema e le arti visive. Torino Einaudi.Crowther, B., 1961. Italian Film Wins Cannes Top Prize. The New York Times online, 5 April 1961. Avilable from http//www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9400e0db133de733a25756c0a9629c946091d6cf Accessed 21 October 2016.Cuccu, L., 1973. La visione come problema Forme e svolgimento del cinema di Antonioni. Rome Bulzoni.Darke, C., 1995. Lavventura. locowee d and hefty, 5 (12), 55.Di Carlo, C., 1964. Michelangelo Antonioni. In Fink, G., ed. 1983. Michelangelo Antonioni, identificazione di un autore gli anni della formazione e la critica su Antonioni. Parma Pratiche Editrice, 74-75.Di Carlo, C., 2002. Il cinema di Michelangelo Antonioni. Milan Il Castoro.Fink, G., 1983. Michelangelo Antonioni, identificazione di un autore gli anni della formazione e la critica su Antonioni. Parma Pratiche Editrice, 103.Freud, S., 1977. Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety. New York Norton Company.Gente del Po, 1947. film, DVD. Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Italy Artisti Associati ICET.Giannetti, D., 1999. Invito al cinema di Antonioni. Milan Ugo Mursia Editore.Gilman, R., 1962. On Antonioni. discipline Arts, 46 (1962), 7.Grenier, C., 1960. Reflections on the Parisian Screen Scene. New York Times, 20 November 1960.Hawkins, R. F., Focus on an Unimpressive Cannes Film Fete. The New York Times, 29 May 1960.Hoberman J., 2006. Seeing and Nothingness A Must-see Retrospective Celebrates the Works of a Modernist Master. village Voice online, 30 May 2006. purchasable from http//www.villagevoice.com/film/seeing-and-nothingness-6418576Accessed 30 October 2016.Holden, S., 2006. Antonionis Nothingness and beauty. The New York Times online, 04 June 2006, Available from http//www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/movies/04hold.htmlAccessed 28 October 2016.Il deserto rosso, 1964. film, DVD. Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Italy, France Film Duemila.Koehler, R., 2015. Great wide open LAvventura. Sight and Sound online, 20 April 2015,Available from http//www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/greatest-films-all-time/great-wide-open-l-avventuraAccessed 3 November 2016.Lavventura, 1959. film, DVD.Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Italy, France Cino del Duca.Lefebvre, M., 2006. Landscape and Film. London Routledge.Lucantonio, G., 2011. Lavventura Michelangelo Antonioni. Rapporto Confidenziale online, 07 January 2011, Available f rom http//www.rapportoconfidenziale.org/?p=11578Accessed 5 November 2016.Manceaux, M., 1960. An Interview with Antonioni. Sight and Sound 30 (1) 5-8.Melzer, Z., 2010. Michelangelo Antonioni and the Reality of the Modern. Offscreen. online, 14 (4).Moravia, A., 1960. Boredom. Milan Valentino Bompiani Co, 5.N.U -Nettezza urbana, 1948. film, DVD. Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Italy Artisti Associati ICET.Nowell-Smith, G., 1995. Antonioni Before and After. Sight and Sound, 12 (December 1995) 16-21.OLesser, S., 1964. Lavventura a closer look.Yale review,54 (1964) 45.Orwell, G., 1937. The Road to Wigan Pier. Ed. 2011. London Penguin Books.Pasolini, P. P., 1976. The Cinema of Poetry. In Nichols, B., ed. 1976. Movie and Methods.Vol.1. Berkeley University of California Press, 542-558.Pomerance, M., 2011. Michelangelo Red Antonioni Blue octad Reflections on Cinema. London University of California Press.Reyner, J., 2013. Film Landscapes Cinema, Environment and Visual Culture. New Cast le Upon Tyne Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Salinari, C., 1980. Miti E Coscienza del Decadentismo Italiano. Milan Feltrinelli.Sartre, J. P., 1989. macrocosm and Nothingness an essay on phenomenological ontology. London Routledge.Slattery, M., 2003. Key ideas in Sociology. Cheltenham Nelson Thornes Ltd.Tassone, A., 2002. I film di Michelangelo Antonioni un poeta della visione. Ed. 2007. Rome Gremese Editore.Tinazzi, G., 1994. Michelangelo Antonioni. translation 2002. Milan Il Castoro.Tomasulo, F., 2008. Life is inconclusive a conversation with Michelangelo Antonioni. In Cardullo, B., ed. 2008. Michelangelo Antonioni Interviews. Jackson university Press of Mississippi, 162-168.