Michelangelo Antonioni

[rrenault]

It just seems that Rossellini fans feel the need to make qualified statements about Antonioni every chance they get. And the latter has certainly experienced a fall from grace seeing as L'Avventura was once in the top 3 on the S&S poll. Also, just look at everything lubitsch has to say.

[repeat]

Also, I have no idea what you or rrenault mean by "humanism," or why humanism or (a lack of it) is a marker of greatness.

Don't look at me man, I just wanted to know where the Antonioni backlash is and how can I join it

The Godard/humanism thing was just a sidetrack prompted by curiosity - I thought I saw an inkling of an interesting discussion there, but I couldn't figure out what the dividing factor was between the two groups of directors that rrenault listed. I do believe a general sort of distinction could be made between "ironic/self-reflexive/formalist" and "sincere/character-driven/humanist" filmmaking and two kinds of film fans that would be more attracted/repelled by one or the other - but I wouldn't want to delineate those two modes too harshly, especially as many of my favorite filmmakers would seem to hover between the two. But anyway I guess it's not this distinction that rrenault was after, so I was on the wrong track there.

[Mr Sausage]

I see no reason to presume that the reasons people dislike Antonioni are same reasons they dislike Tarkovsky or Bergman or any other heterogeneous group of filmmakers. There's really nothing linking these various directors except a lot of them worked in the sixties.

I assume Antonioni has fallen a bit in critical estimation because his vision of isolation and disaffection doesn't speak to people as powerfully as it once did. This is not part of a wider division in film taste, it's pretty specific to him. His vision of modern life is no longer as affecting.

I say this as someone who's cool on Antonioni but loves pretty much all the filmmakers listed in this conversation, and for different reasons.

The Godard/humanism thing was just a sidetrack prompted by curiosity - I thought I saw an inkling of an interesting discussion there, but I couldn't figure out what the dividing factor was between the two groups of directors that rrenault listed. I do believe a general sort of distinction could be made between "ironic/self-reflexive/formalist" and "sincere/character-driven/humanist" filmmaking and two kinds of film fans that would be more attracted/repelled by one or the other - but I wouldn't want to delineate those two modes too harshly, especially as many of my favorite filmmakers would seem to hover between the two. But anyway I guess it's not this distinction that rrenault was after, so I was on the wrong track there.

Ok, people really need to start defining what humanist is, because every time someone makes a distinction between it and something else I get confused. Formalism and humanism are not antithetical. The very idea of what we now call humanism arose in one of the most elaborate and form-focussed eras in history, the Renaissance. Formalism has nothing to do with humanism, as I understand the terms. And when did humanist come to mean "character-driven"? Humanism is just a form of ethics and philosophy. You can make a film devoid of characters that still espouses a humanistic world-view.

Also, why is formalism ironic and humanism sincere?

[rrenault]

I assume Antonioni has fallen a bit in critical estimation because his vision of isolation and disaffection doesn't speak to people as powerfully as it once did. This is not part of a wider division in film taste, it's pretty specific to him. His vision of modern life is no longer as affecting.

Nice to see someone finally took the bait. And this is precisely my point. Your explanation for why Antonioni has fallen out of favor doesn't really say anything about the shortcomings of the work itself. It says more about a bias and complacency on the part of people in the Age of Irony. Questioning one's existence as well as the meaning of life on a micro level went out of style along with intellectual inquiry. At least when Rosenbaum questions Bergman's status he brings the actual artistic merits of the man's work or lack thereof directly into the equation. Whenever people discuss Antonioni's fall from grace it always relates to the "datedness" of his philosophical outlook, and that doesn't tell me much about whether or not his work actually has any concrete artistic shortcomings.

[repeat]

I'm only using the word "humanism" because rrenault used it, so as not to confuse matters - that's why I put those triplets in quotes... I don't have the right words, but it would seem that those two seemingly contradicting modes do exist, and that was the only logic I could extract from the original post. I thought that was what he meant, but apparently not.

I assume Antonioni has fallen a bit in critical estimation because his vision of isolation and disaffection doesn't speak to people as powerfully as it once did.

I believe this is correct, and I think it's a consequence of his essential non-"humanism" (for lack of a better term): it's his "vision" that used to affect people, not his characters, "who" are just ciphers for his ideas about isolation or breakdown of communication or whatever. Whereas the films of a (still, for lack of a better term) "humanist" director like say Pialat, who is primarily interested in story and characters, wouldn't suffer from similar shifts in intellectual/philosophical fashions.

[Saimo]

There is a lot about that quote that's stupid and I don't see a reason to believe it's anything more than singular, let alone try to make a coherent system out of it
[...]
And who else besides you and maybe the author of that piece makes these divisions?

You may find these divisions stupid and little helpful, but I know many cinephiles who would subscribe such a pantheon. I suppose this is striclty connected with what the author here calls "simplicity of expression that belies inspiration", i.e. the "transparency" as advocated by "Movie" and "Présence du Cinéma" in the '60s.

[rrenault]

I'm only using the word "humanism" because rrenault used it, so as not to confuse matters - that's why I put those triplets in quotes... I don't have the right words, but it would seem that those two seemingly contradicting modes do exist, and that was the only logic I could extract from the original post. I thought that was what he meant, but apparently not.

I assume Antonioni has fallen a bit in critical estimation because his vision of isolation and disaffection doesn't speak to people as powerfully as it once did.

I believe this is correct, and I think it's a consequence of his essential non-"humanism" (for lack of a better term): it's his "vision" that used to affect people, not his characters, "who" are just ciphers for his ideas about isolation or breakdown of communication or whatever. Whereas the films of a (still, for lack of a better term) "humanist" director like say Pialat, who is primarily interested in story and characters, wouldn't suffer from similar shifts in intellectual/philosophical fashions.

I wouldn't say it has anything to do with Pialat being more concerned with "stories and characters" but rather that his films don't lend themselves to being associated with any specific philosophical school of thought. He's a far more "objective" filmmaker than Antonioni. He just films things "as they are". I would say the same for Ozu and Akerman, despite the "strict formalism" of these latter two.

Rossellini, Renoir, Vigo, Pialat, Fassbinder, Akerman, and even Bunuel are all highly objective filmmakers who film the outside world just as it exists without engaging in much philosophical/intellectual inquiry. Antonioni's films fall more within the category of "filmed philosophical treatises".

[Mr Sausage]

I assume Antonioni has fallen a bit in critical estimation because his vision of isolation and disaffection doesn't speak to people as powerfully as it once did. This is not part of a wider division in film taste, it's pretty specific to him. His vision of modern life is no longer as affecting.

Nice to see someone finally took the bait. And this is precisely my point. Your explanation for why Antonioni has fallen out of favor doesn't really say anything about the shortcomings of the work itself. It says more about a bias and complacency on the part of people in the Age of Irony. Questioning one's existence as well as the meaning of life on a micro level went out of style along with intellectual inquiry. At least when Rosenbaum questions Bergman's status he brings the actual artistic merits of the man's work or lack thereof directly into the equation. Whenever people discuss Antonioni's fall from grace it always relates to the "datedness" of his philosophical outlook, and that doesn't tell me much about whether or not his work actually has any concrete artistic shortcomings.

If this was your point you did a good job of hiding it.

Seems like you were waiting for exactly what you wanted to hear, sort of got it (but not really), then proceeded to offer your straw man. I don't know who is making these criticisms or where, but it hardly matters. Your point just involves invalidating negative criticisms either by holding potential critics to a pile of cliches (age of irony, really? This would be the same age that adores Ozu and Bresson, right?), condescending to critics by implying critics are anti-intellectual, or making baffling declarations about the datedness of Antonioni's philosophy being unrelated to "concrete artistic shortcomings," which is bizarre and begs way too many questions.

I get the sense you have no idea why people don't like Antonioni, and in its absence feel you can make up the reasons yourself and then attribute the reasons you invented to everyone else.

I believe this is correct, and I think it's a consequence of his essential non-"humanism" (for lack of a better term): it's his "vision" that used to affect people, not his characters, "who" are just ciphers for his ideas about isolation or breakdown of communication or whatever. Whereas the films of a (still, for lack of a better term) "humanist" director like say Pialat, who is primarily interested in story and characters, wouldn't suffer from similar shifts in intellectual/philosophical fashions.

Except if either the Guardian writer or rrenault is to be believed, Fellini and Kurosawa aren't considered in the front rank any more, either. It also doesn't much account for Kubrick or Godard's continued popularity, or indeed The Man with the Movie Camera and Battleship Potemkin.

[Mr Sausage]

...even Bunuel are all highly objective filmmakers who film the outside world just as it exists without engaging in much philosophical/intellectual inquiry.

Wow, you could not be more mistaken. Bunuel is a parodist and a surrealist. Nothing in his films is objective; they are mediated by a highly distorting, playful subjectivity. Dream and fantasy are as important to the narrative as reality, and even reality is always distorted by obsession, fetish, eroticism, and other subjective and symbolic qualities.

[lubitsch]

As far as I can see the author of the Guardian article used the opportunity of Bergman's death to voice some grandiose evaluation of world cinema which isn't supported by any facts. The only decline in recognition is one of simple natural causes, because the critics who wrote in the 60s and 70s are being replaced by younger ones for whom 60s modernism isn't a personally experienced watershed, but simply another decade of film history.
Otherwise pretending that there are any great shifts in the pantheon directors is no less silly than the random name dropping of the author in both categories. EVERY director has its strong and weak points (or films) and if you happen to be unresponsive to certain aspects or are valuing others more, it's perfectly possible to consider great films bad.
Antonioni's weaknesses are clear and obvious: His characters are uninvolving cyphers, merely illustrating a master thesis. His shots, however well done individually, not necessarily add up to a picture or serve the "story". The stories finally often merely are an excuse to let either a character wander aimlessly or group characters together in a room where they fail to connect and bore each other. And for a director who supposedly has to offer an analysis of contemporary society, his films rarely move beyond the boredom of upper class people and fail badly when engaging more tangible developments like Mao's China or the 60s USA. To sum it up, it is a blunt cinema of messages not very far from Stanley Kramer.
I think it's a pity how Antonioni developed in the 60 because I rather liked his 50s films which amusingly are the ones using lots of very long takes and La signora senza camelie has an ASL of 56s which very few of his contemporaries like Hasse Ekman matched. But as the cutting got faster his interest in people vanished and pretty still shots took over.

[FerdinandGriffon]

[Pialat] just films things "as they are". I would say the same for Ozu and Akerman, despite the "strict formalism" of these latter two.

If these filmmakers just film things "as they are", then how do you account for their vastly different visual and narrative styles? How does one film a rendezvous with Satan "as it is", and why is a straightforward scene of a family's morning preparations so spatially perverse in Ozu's Late Spring? Is Bunuel's foot fetish a good example of an "objective" eye, and are Rossellini's History Films really just history lectures?

Objectivity doesn't exist in cinema except as an illusion. This is a paradox at the heart of Classical Hollywood and an Achille's heel for certain directors who would like to maintain otherwise (Haneke), but I think as tried, tested and true as anything that can be said about the art form.

[rrenault]

...even Bunuel are all highly objective filmmakers who film the outside world just as it exists without engaging in much philosophical/intellectual inquiry.

Wow, you could not be more mistaken. Bunuel is a parodist and a surrealist. Nothing in his films is objective; they are mediated by a highly distorting, playful subjectivity. Dream and fantasy are as important to the narrative as reality, and even reality is always distorted by obsession, fetish, eroticism, and other subjective and symbolic qualities.

I disagree. All he did was highlight the most absurd aspects of reality, drawing attention to things we otherwise would have overlooked or clarifying the inanity of aspects of life most people would have otherwise taken for granted. Bunuel makes the ordinary extraordinary while Antonioni makes the extraordinary ordinary. That's not to say Antonioni is a dishonest filmmaker, but he films people and events through a prism of his own making. Bunuel, like I said, simply draws our attention to the absurdity of things people take for granted.

[rrenault]

Would Antonioni's intentions really seem that obvious and heavy-handed though if one were to watch his films without any knowledge or awareness of the reputation and critical baggage with which they come?

[FerdinandGriffon]

Antonioni's weaknesses are clear and obvious: His characters are uninvolving cyphers, merely illustrating a master thesis. His shots, however well done individually, not necessarily add up to a picture or serve the "story". The stories finally often merely are an excuse to let either a character wander aimlessly or group characters together in a room where they fail to connect and bore each other. And for a director who supposedly has to offer an analysis of contemporary society, his films rarely move beyond the boredom of upper class people and fail badly when engaging more tangible developments like Mao's China or the 60s USA. To sum it up, it is a blunt cinema of messages not very far from Stanley Kramer.

Talk about the pitfalls of supposed objectivity. I think you're making a lot of assumptions about the uses and abuses of cinema and narrative art in general, lubitsch. Characters and story are only two possible desirable ends amongst many. Antonioni is concerned with both (as is clear in the way he shifts focus amongst individuals and abruptly dead ends the main narrative in L'avventura, for example) but neither have any primacy or priority over the other elements of his art. As I understand his films, he is most concerned with depicting subjects or subjectivities (different from characters) attempting to mediate time and space between themselves and other subjects. There are many, many other aspects to his work and others would have different opinions. But you're barking up the wrong tree if you come to him expecting undivided attention to the twin pillars of classicism, story and character.

[Mr Sausage]

...even Bunuel are all highly objective filmmakers who film the outside world just as it exists without engaging in much philosophical/intellectual inquiry.

Wow, you could not be more mistaken. Bunuel is a parodist and a surrealist. Nothing in his films is objective; they are mediated by a highly distorting, playful subjectivity. Dream and fantasy are as important to the narrative as reality, and even reality is always distorted by obsession, fetish, eroticism, and other subjective and symbolic qualities.

I disagree. All he did was highlight the most absurd aspects of reality, drawing attention to things we otherwise would have overlooked or clarifying the inanity of aspects of life most people would have otherwise taken for granted. Bunuel makes the ordinary extraordinary while Antonioni makes the extraordinary ordinary. That's not to say Antonioni is a dishonest filmmaker, but he films people and events through a prism of his own making. Bunuel, like I said, simply draws our attention to the absurdity of things people take for granted.

Luis Bunuel doesn't film things through his own personal prism? That's all he does. There isn't a single thing you've said here that makes him an objective filmmaker (whatever that is). Luis Bunuel was a surrealist. Anyone who could call a filmmaker so concerned with the unconscious and so willing to fill his movies with his own personal fetishes an objective recorder of reality doesn't understand what he's talking about.

[FerdinandGriffon]

Bunuel, like I said, simply draws our attention to the absurdity of things people take for granted.

You're confusing the mission of absurdism and its methods. Yes, like any artist not working entirely for the sake of entertainment or fantasy, Bunuel is trying to show something that is of the world and "real". But he does this by making very grand or subtle gestures that either rip or fray the fabric of reality, that irritate our sense of how the world is and should be.

Unless you have actually been to a dinner party where a force field and bears kept you at table for days. Which you might have, I don't know.

[rrenault]

But he does this by making very grand or subtle gestures that either rip or fray the fabric of reality, that irritate our sense of how the world is and should be.

Except this is essentially what I'm trying to say, so we're just arguing over semantics here. You say he "irritates our sense of how the world is and should be". Well I'm also saying he does just that. We simply disagree on whether this is an objective or subjective end on his part. Isn't "irritating our sense of how the world is and should be" essentially the same thing as drawing our attention to the absurdity and inanity of things we would otherwise take for granted?

[Mr Sausage]

Isn't "irritating our sense of how the world is and should be" essentially the same thing as drawing our attention to the absurdity and inanity of things we would otherwise take for granted?

In what sense is this objective? For something to be objective it has to be working independently of the perceptions of an individual consciousness.

It seems like you think any movie that deals with reality in some way is objective. All of Bunuel's observations are modified by his own subjective views and perceptions; all of the distortions have their origin in Luis Bunuel's mind, not reality. Can you deny that? Can you deny that the distortions in his films are all a product of his individual perceptions and not what would be seen by any objective observer not named Luis Bunuel? If you can't deny that (and I don't see how you can, this is the definition of subjectivity), then you have to admit his films are not objective.

No film highly characteristic of a particular mind and its perceptions is objective.

[lubitsch]

Antonioni's weaknesses are clear and obvious: His characters are uninvolving cyphers, merely illustrating a master thesis. His shots, however well done individually, not necessarily add up to a picture or serve the "story". The stories finally often merely are an excuse to let either a character wander aimlessly or group characters together in a room where they fail to connect and bore each other. And for a director who supposedly has to offer an analysis of contemporary society, his films rarely move beyond the boredom of upper class people and fail badly when engaging more tangible developments like Mao's China or the 60s USA. To sum it up, it is a blunt cinema of messages not very far from Stanley Kramer.

Talk about the pitfalls of supposed objectivity. I think you're making a lot of assumptions about the uses and abuses of cinema and narrative art in general, lubitsch. Characters and story are only two possible desirable ends amongst many. Antonioni is concerned with both (as is clear in the way he shifts focus amongst individuals and abruptly dead ends the main narrative in L'avventura, for example) but neither have any primacy or priority over the other elements of his art. As I understand his films, he is most concerned with depicting subjects or subjectivities (different from characters) attempting to mediate time and space between themselves and other subjects. There are many, many other aspects to his work and others would have different opinions. But you're barking up the wrong tree if you come to him expecting undivided attention to the twin pillars of classicism, story and character.

I'm fully aware that these are only two aspects of filmmaking. But over the last hundred years of filmmaking they have proved to be quite durable and they play a big role in most films including Antonioni's. What he does is still narrative cinema and in that case there's no way out, you have to deal with characters and story. You may decide to deliberately weaken that part of your film to foreground other aspects, but I think you're paying dearly for it.
It is generally accepted that it's problematic when characters are just mouthpieces for certain opinion's a writer has, Stanley Kramer somehow became the embodiment of that, but Antonioni is really no better even though his mouthpieces are mostly silent. Especially the men are resolutely shallow in these films. To put it simple, Antonioni's 60s films strike me as terribly unsubtle. They make very early on their point and then beat you with a club over your head for the next two hours repeating it.
What also bothers me is how unspecific the alienation is which the characters suffer from. He occasionally is more precise like in the scene with the stock exchange, but often one has the impression that something is wrong with the airheads in his films not the society and life in general which supposedly alienates them. The absolute nadir is Deserto Rosso where he tries to aestheticize industry and pollution and crudely sees people who can't adapt as deficient. I have the strong suspicion that he reflects here fascistic and futuristic impressions from his youth. I found the incredibly pointless ramblings in the interviews on the Criterion quite illuminating because they confirmed to me that he essentially has nothing to say, but certainly tries to say it with great seriousness.

[rrenault]

lubitsch:

My presumption would be you must not be a huge fan of Ozu, Bresson, or Godard either...

[Saimo]

No film highly characteristic of a particular mind and its perceptions is objective.

I am afraid you are misunderstanding what we refer to as Bunuel's objective camera. We are not saying he doesn't have a highly characteristic point-of-view, but he tries to express his own mind through a certain "simplicity of expression". We are talking about style, not content.

Example:
An "objective" shot from Viridiana (1961). He doesn't stylize reality, he "films the outside world just as it exists".


...and a not-so-objective shot from Red Desert (1964), "engaging philosophical/intellectual inquiry".

[Tommaso]

What also bothers me is how unspecific the alienation is which the characters suffer from. He occasionally is more precise like in the scene with the stock exchange, but often one has the impression that something is wrong with the airheads in his films not the society and life in general which supposedly alienates them.

That's precisely the point, and that's why I find the stock exchange sequence a bit clumsy, as it seems to give a rational, 'social' explanation for this feeling of 'uselessness' and depression, as if he were trying to be a leftist filmmaker from the 20s for once. It isn't more precise, but only reductive. Not that I find the vagueness of other explanations for the characters' frame-of-mind in other films necessarily more convincing (if he even intends any explanation, which I doubt), but as a portrayal of inner hopelessness/emptyness in an increasingly incomprehensible world these character studies are quite convincing, and in a way, even 'objective'.

You've got a point about the aestheticising of the industry in "Deserto Rosso" hearkening back to futurism perhaps, but given the optimistic belief in modernism/industrial development in the 60s/70s these moments also seem to me a snapshot of a specific frame of mind which might not necessarily be fully endorsed by the filmmaker, but might have nevertheless been seen as an undeniable fact of the 'evolution' of Western civilization. Adapt or die; this may sound cynical but as experience proves, it is often all too true. So in spite of his very clearly discernable personal style, Antonioni's films also truthfully portray a certain 'zeitgeist' in a very much to-the-point manner, just as Kraftwerk's "Radioaktivität" would do a decade later. What may be irritating is the absence of any clear 'opposition' to it, but at least Antonioni doesn't hit you over the head with any messages. A bit more work for the viewer here than in Rossellini, for sure.

[Mr Sausage]

I am afraid you are misunderstanding what we refer to as Bunuel's objective camera. We are not saying he doesn't have a highly characteristic point-of-view, but he tries to express his own mind through a certain "simplicity of expression". We are talking about style, not content.

Sorry, "we"? I don't remember arguing with more than one person about this.

As best I can tell, you're conflating stylization with subjectivity. As in Bunuel doesn't have a baroque visual style, therefore he's an objective recorder. I'm very sorry, but this is daft. It's a false dichotomy and it also shows a fairly unsophisticated understanding of the ideas of subjective/objective. As best I can tell, your argument can only be saying that Bunuel is objectively filming his own deep subjectivity, which makes any attempt to place it on one side or the other incoherent. Plainly you have to admit that Bunuel grossly distorts social conventions and religious ideas in order to make them look ridiculous, absurd, and grotesque--to make the audience see reality as he, personally, sees it. In which case you may as well be claiming that political caricatures are objective drawings. The simplicity of the style (which I myself don't see) is neither here nor there--as tho' filming one's own dreams and fantasies in a simple way were enough to get you called an objective filmmaker, if such a thing even exists. Bunuel is a parodist. Parodists do not make objective films.

As for Antonioni, he never caricatures, parodies, or inflates anything in his films (deliberately). A composition like that one above isn't subjective in any obvious way. Indeed it meets your own criteria for objectivity as, however strikingly framed, it is just a collection of real objects assembled in a normal way.

[Saimo]

Sorry, I must assume we have very different positions about the centrality of film style.

As best I can tell, your argument can only be saying that Bunuel is objectively filming his own deep subjectivity

Exact.

[Robin Davies]

Antonioni makes the extraordinary ordinary.

I'd say he does the exact opposite.
Like J. G. Ballard he's transformed and enchanted the way I look at the world.