Michelangelo Antonioni

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#251 Post by Mr Sausage » Thu Jul 18, 2013 4:58 pm

Saimo wrote:
As best I can tell, your argument can only be saying that Bunuel is objectively filming his own deep subjectivity
Exact.
Except that statement of mine is meaningless outside of its irony. It's a fundamental contradiction. If this is exactly what you mean, you mean nothing at all.

Objectivity means being external and independent of the mind. Not only that, it also means not being influenced by personal feelings or opinions. If you think any of these things true of Bunuel you do not understand his movies. He is the least disinterested of filmmakers.

rrenault
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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#252 Post by rrenault » Sat Jul 20, 2013 7:26 am

To clarify, I feel I was probably categorizing filmmakers based on a physical/metaphysical dichotomy. There are plenty of cinephiles who seem to have a bias against filmmakers whose work is more metaphysical in nature, as if it were improper for cinema as a medium to explore metaphysical issues. That would include filmmakers such as Kieslowski, Tarkovsky, Bergman, Mizoguchi, some of Antonioni, some of Resnais, some of Fellini, as well as others. Granted, Dreyer's work certainly has strong metaphysical elements and is often not the victim of said bias, but the aforementioned filmmakers also don't have a "Passion of Joan or Arc" they can rest on (i.e. a beyond reproach interwar period European cinematic benchmark). Godard may be "arty", but he still tends to get the physicality brigade's seal of approval, as his work does not in the least deal with the metaphysical/supernatural.

You may say Bunuel is metaphysical due to his surrealism, but his surrealist imagery is still highly materialist in its nature. The absurdities that permeate his work are integrated into the material world. There's never any suggestion of a higher force at work. Everything is attributed to the absurdities of humanity itself.

As for Antonioni, painting an entire bedroom pink in order to reflect the inner psychological turmoil of the film's main character is metaphysical.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#253 Post by Mr Sausage » Sat Jul 20, 2013 10:20 am

Yeah, Bresson and Dreyer are extremely metaphysical filmmakers. Again, the various likes and dislikes you're highlighting seem very random and unsystematic. If there were a notable amount of serious cinephiles who hated all of the supposedly transcendental filmmakers, you might be on to something, but that's rarely the case.
rrenault wrote:You may say Bunuel is metaphysical due to his surrealism, but his surrealist imagery is still highly materialist in its nature. The absurdities that permeate his work are integrated into the material world. There's never any suggestion of a higher force at work. Everything is attributed to the absurdities of humanity itself.
Bunuel's films aren't very metaphysical, no. Although Subida al cielo does rely heavily on religious symbolism, and not in an especially parodic manner, tho', so I'd be inclined to count it. Also, materialist imagery is present in many metaphisical artist's work, like Tarkovsky for instance. It depends on whether or not transcendence can be approached through the natural world
rrenault wrote:As for Antonioni, painting an entire bedroom pink in order to reflect the inner psychological turmoil of the film's main character is metaphysical.
That's merely symbolist.

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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#254 Post by rrenault » Sat Jul 20, 2013 10:33 am

Mr Sausage wrote: Also, materialist imagery is present in many metaphisical artist's work, like Tarkovsky for instance. It depends on whether or not transcendence can be approached through the natural world.
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/h0fkS6dbQO0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Oh yes, very materialist.

P.S. Okay, how do you post a clip on here?

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#255 Post by Mr Sausage » Sat Jul 20, 2013 10:38 am

You have to post the url, you can't embed videos.

Obviously I haven't seen the clip, but if you're hoping to prove Tarkovsky didn't have a firm grounding in the physical details of the world on the evidence of only a single clip, please don't bother.

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Mr Sheldrake
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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#256 Post by Mr Sheldrake » Sat Jul 20, 2013 2:01 pm

Mr Sausage wrote: As for Antonioni, he never caricatures, parodies, or inflates anything in his films (deliberately).
Doesn't Antonioni deliberately caricature male lechery? L'Avventura contains some examples- the young man on the train with his obvious come-on to the naive girl overheard by a bemused Sandro and Claudio; the painter's exaggerated desire for Guilio; the fierce gazes of the idle men directed at Claudio as she walks through Messina; the whole male population of Messina in near riot trying to get a glimpse of an aspiring actress/prostitute. When Claudio finds Sandro in dalliance with the actress she may be realizing that Sandro has been offering her only a more sophisticated version of these illustrations, and pities him.

I'm also thinking of a scene in Zabriskie Point, in which Antonioni seems to be parodying the Messina street scene, as a group of very young boys chase Daria through the desert whilst ogling her beautiful mini-skirted legs. All of which are componets of larger strands, the inability of Antonionis' (non) heroes to connect with much of anything in life except for sexual desire, and their own deep sense of futility.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#257 Post by Mr Sausage » Sat Jul 20, 2013 4:51 pm

Hmm. That could be true, that there's an exaggerated, satiric edge to those depictions. When I think of Antonioni I think of someone more sedate and cool (certainly when compared to Bunuel), so I could be overlooking those aspects you mentioned.

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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#258 Post by rrenault » Sat Jul 20, 2013 5:12 pm

Mr Sheldrake wrote:
Mr Sausage wrote: As for Antonioni, he never caricatures, parodies, or inflates anything in his films (deliberately).
Doesn't Antonioni deliberately caricature male lechery? L'Avventura contains some examples- the young man on the train with his obvious come-on to the naive girl overheard by a bemused Sandro and Claudio; the painter's exaggerated desire for Guilio; the fierce gazes of the idle men directed at Claudio as she walks through Messina; the whole male population of Messina in near riot trying to get a glimpse of an aspiring actress/prostitute. When Claudio finds Sandro in dalliance with the actress she may be realizing that Sandro has been offering her only a more sophisticated version of these illustrations, and pities him.

I'm also thinking of a scene in Zabriskie Point, in which Antonioni seems to be parodying the Messina street scene, as a group of very young boys chase Daria through the desert whilst ogling her beautiful mini-skirted legs. All of which are componets of larger strands, the inability of Antonionis' (non) heroes to connect with much of anything in life except for sexual desire, and their own deep sense of futility.
You see, this is the problem. People read way too much into Antonioni, at least in a certain sense. He's been painted with this ennui brush for half a century, and it's done more harm than good for his reputation. Maybe people would actually "get" and feel his films if they could just accept that Sandro is a middle-aged man with problems just like every other bourgeois European man his age. Antonioni's work isn't simplistic. Viewers are simply on the look out for allegories they could intellectualize in an effort to "explain" his work. There's no message. Antonioni never intended for there to be one. All he wanted to do was make an intuitive impressionistic film depicting bourgeois life in mid-century in Italy, and he succeeded at that. Sometimes you just need to see the forest for the trees. My point is I think it would help to examine and appreciate Antonioni the artist as opposed to Antonioni the philosopher or intellectual. He's an artist like Degas or Gorky, not friggin' Walter Benjamin.

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Sloper
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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#259 Post by Sloper » Sat Jul 20, 2013 5:37 pm

It's an interesting question - does Antonioni go in for parody and caricature? The most obvious examples would be the protagonists in Blowup and Zabriskie Point (see some of the recent discussion of the latter in the 70s thread), who I think are noticeably less 'authentic' than most of the characters in the earlier films. Hemmings seems to embody the world of fashion in '60s London; to see him as a sort of caricature helps to make sense of the final shot, in which the pressures placed upon him, his world and his identity finally reveal him to be non-existent. (One for Pseuds' Corner, that.) Something similar happens to Mark and Daria in ZP, and at times it seems pretty obvious that they are mindless, identity-less mouthpieces - stuttering mouthpieces, increasingly, like Hemmings' photographer - who represent youth, rebellion, counter-culture, etc; and again, pressures are placed upon them and they dissolve into some bathetic demise or a cliched sunset. In these two films, Antonioni seems less interested than ever in telling a character-driven story. As the people become more 'symbolic', so they also seem more like caricatures.

The Passenger represents the sort of nadir of this process (I don't like it very much), as it seems to resist both character development and clear symbolism. It would seem as misguided to try and pin down what Nicholson's or Schneider's characters 'represent' as it would to discuss their psychology. The banality of the dialogue in the previous two films pales in comparison to the stultifying claptrap we hear in The Passenger, although in this case I tend to see this as plain and simple bad writing (blame Mark Peploe, maybe?), rather than a conscious and thoughtful attempt at caricature or parody. Identification of a Woman seems to regress (in a really good way) and is far more like Antonioni's early '60s work in terms of its approach to character.

Red Desert might be seen as a sort of 'bridging' work in this respect, because most of the characters aside from Vitti come to embody the modern, industrial world from which she is alienated. As such, there are definitely times when her robotic husband and son come across as deliberate caricatures, and it's interesting to think about how Harris' character also comes to take on this quality as the film progresses.

The difficulty here, I suppose, is that defining something as a caricature, parody or exaggeration involves distinguishing it from what is natural, authentic and sincere - an attempt to portray an event or character in an 'objective' or 'subjective' manner - and such distinctions will always depend a great deal on your point of view. For instance, Mr Sheldrake just brought up some interesting examples, but for the most part I wouldn't see them as 'caricature' exactly - other examples would include the killer in the English segment of I Vinti, Mastroianni's sexual encounter in the hospital in La Notte, or the stock exchange sequence in L'Eclisse. All these elements seem somewhat 'heightened', but I think we're supposed to feel that real life is sometimes like this: sometimes you just find yourself being watched in a vaguely threatening way by every man on the street; that scene in L'Avventura is, for me, not quite Kafka-esque enough to seem inauthentic or unnatural. Sometimes real life is 'heightened'. But like I say, I think this gets taken to another level in the later films. The orgy in the desert in ZP, for example, or the explosions at the end - these are heightened and inflated beyond reality or authenticity.

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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#260 Post by rrenault » Sat Jul 20, 2013 5:47 pm

Sandro is certainly not a caricature. I actually find him to be one of Antonioni's more complex characters. He has flaws, but I find him very human, and I think that's part of the point. Would Alain Delon's character in L'Eclisse tear up after being caught cheating on her? I have my doubts. That's not meant as a criticism of the film, but having that specific character be merely a caricature serves the overall artistic goals of the film, whereas such a stand-in would be out of place in a film like L'Avventura which is far more indebted to neo-realism.

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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#261 Post by Mathew2468 » Sat Jul 20, 2013 6:02 pm

Godard may be "arty", but he still tends to get the physicality brigade's seal of approval, as his work does not in the least deal with the metaphysical/supernatural.
Whut?

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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#262 Post by rrenault » Sun Jul 21, 2013 5:28 am

Your point are well taken Sausage, but you can't deny that many of the mid-century European filmmakers, Antonioni and Bergman especially, have suffered a backlash of sorts in the years since. There was a time where many, Tarkovsky among them, viewed "Euro-art" cinema of the fifties, sixties, and seventies as virtually synonymous with "film as art" at the expense of neglecting all other aspects of the medium, including pretty much all of Classic Hollywood. While I certainly don't agree with this viewpoint, I do sympathize with and understand the impulse. John Ford is just as significant a figure as Antonioni, but I can understand the urge to view the development of "European arthouse" cinema as the culmination and apotheosis of cinema as a legitimate form of art. It's this indeed faulty attitude that has probably fallen out of favor in the interim, causing figures like Antonioni, Bergman, and Resnais to go along with it. "Euro-art cinema" has been put in its place so to speak whether wrongfully or rightfully.

People will say, "Oh, Bergman didn't contribute to cinematic form" or "his themes have grown stale with time and have already been explored far more successfully by Ibsen", or whatever other excuse they want to use for dismissing Bergman, but he's essentially just that big elephant in the room postmodern film critics hate having to contend with. Regardless of what one may think of him, he practically invented "serious cinema" as one conceives of it today. People take for granted that the entire "arthouse" tradition started with him. However, that very fact has probably worked against him in many ways. Rosenbaum excepted, it seems critics these days hate having to contend with "high modernism". Why, I don't really know? Maybe they feel condescended to by it. Or perhaps being unabashedly "highbrow" in every facet of one's intellectual life has become politically incorrect. Maybe Bergman's films have been seen by too many Upper East Siders and residents of Westchester County.

Yes, Rosenbaum has put Bergman "in his place", but he's one of the few critics of his generation who hasn't disowned modernism in general.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#263 Post by Mr Sausage » Sun Jul 21, 2013 6:32 am

rrenault wrote:Your point are well taken Sausage, but you can't deny that many of the mid-century European filmmakers, Antonioni and Bergman especially, have suffered a backlash of sorts in the years since.
Aside from one or two prominent critics who'd always disliked Bergman using the occasion of his death to criticize his career, Bergman hasn't suffered any backlash I've ever seen.

You'll have to point me towards the Antonioni backlash. As best I can tell, people've mostly just become (not inappropriately) indifferent.
rrenault wrote:"Euro-art cinema" has been put in its place so to speak whether wrongfully or rightfully.
Which, again, does not explain the continued popularity of Bresson and Dreyer.

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repeat
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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#264 Post by repeat » Sun Jul 21, 2013 7:11 am

Just out of interest, who would some of these postmodern critics be - do you mean people in their late twenties, thirties? Because I'm wondering if this phenomenon you're observing could be just a generational backlash; a natural lack of interest in these directors that the 1960's generation has been idolizing for five decades now. That would seem to me much more understandable than any theories about the contents of their films as such.

Personally, I've never seen anyone over 50 who is not a filmmaker say a bad word against either Bergman or Antonioni; and on the other hand I haven't seen much attention paid to them (or Fellini, or Kurosawa) by younger folks. It might be more useful to ask why Godard continues to be relevant and interesting to younger critics while these four others maybe less so.

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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#265 Post by ellipsis7 » Sun Jul 21, 2013 7:11 am

To an extent Antonioni is perceived as being slightly out of fashion, although the major centenary exhibition in Ferrara now transferred to the Bozar Expo in Brussels tells a rather different story...

In a sense that the more conservative (while artistically radical) Dreyer & Bresson are not, figures such as Godard, Resnais, Antonioni, Pasolini, Bergman etc. were seen as modernist giants of European Art Cinema, and like all such clunky icons, were liable to be toppled with regime change. However this then moves to the side a whole set of fashion dependant preconceptions, which in fact have somewhat obscured the depth and dimension of the work itself, now ripe for reappraisal and appreciation...

I was in Cinecitta on Thursday, a remarkable experience where you could almost feel the ghosts of the great Italian masters about the soundstages & backlots, Visconti's BELLISSIMA & Antonioni's LA SIGNORA SENZA CAMELIE coming especially to mind...

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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#266 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Jul 21, 2013 10:18 am

Lubitsch wrote: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.
One of the beautiful things about L'Eclisse in particular is the way that every single scene of the film strikes me as being the central, key one (the stock exchange, the airplane ride, the drunk stealing the car, the opening dissolution of a relationship, Marta and her African flat, the final sequence etc) around which all of the other scenes are revolving and informing.

In a way I agree with you Lubitsch that the idea is presented fully formed at the beginning and the rest of the film is a kind of series of variations on that idea of ennui, but in L'Eclisse at least I think the entire film is perfectly judged so that there is a slightly different take on that idea presented from scene to scene, any of which could have been the focus of an entire film. In a way that is what makes L'Eclisse so endlessly repeatable, as it could just be on a never-ending loop of failed relationship-beginning relationship entropy against a background of never-ending societal breakdown, exploitation and corruption. It is a general, almost tending into abstract, view rather than a specific one, but that general view is still a fascinating one.

I do not think that I've seen another film (not even L'Avventura, which is more of a straight narrative, despite the narrative investigative thread becoming more and more arbitrary as it goes) do that as successfully - Zabriske Point comes close but eventually is a less successful attempt to do the same thing - and I wonder if that is down to the need/pressure to put in certain less universal aspects of ennui into the film in order to make a kind of grand definitive statement on exploitation, politics, or even the zeitgeist of the times, which prevents that kind of non-centred universality from being attained in that film. Or to put it another way, Zabriske Point builds to fabulous set pieces such as all of the couples making love in the desert or the final explosive sequence, but the fact that they can be considered and celebrated almost as effectively outside of the structure of the entire film is kind of damning too.

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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#267 Post by rrenault » Sun Jul 21, 2013 11:05 am

I think many people tend to channel the Andrew Sarris school of thought and find the "strained seriousness/highbrowness" of an Antonioni or a Pasolini offensive as if it were begging to be taken seriously in an effort film can be a legitimate art form. The notion of course being film shouldn't have to have something to prove, and the work of a John Ford or even of a Jean Renoir lends credence to this. I think some people may find the uber "artiness" of Antonioni, nevermind that of someone like Imamura or Oshima, insulting to the "simplicity of expression that belies inspiration" which one finds in Ford, Renoir, or Hawks (i.e. "You don't have to try so hard to remind people you're an ARTIST. It's enough to just effortlessly the camera where you want it and begin turning"). This is, of course, inane since just about any work that's truly radical, and yes much of John Ford was radical in its own way, as well, is going to scream ART to those who first see it.

Now I certainly wonder, why aren't the peers of such filmmakers in other mediums like Faulkner, Stravinsky, or Monk treated as "clunky icons"?

Certainly, the other reason so many people view Antonioni as pretentious is this, or at least it certainly doesn't help:

Mee-kel-ahn-gel-oh Ahn-toh-ny-ohhh-nii.

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Mr Sheldrake
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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#268 Post by Mr Sheldrake » Sun Jul 21, 2013 1:05 pm

rrenault wrote:I think many people tend to channel the Andrew Sarris school of thought and find the "strained seriousness/highbrowness" of an Antonioni or a Pasolini offensive as if it were begging to be taken seriously in an effort film can be a legitimate art form.
Your Sarris reference struck me as incorrect as I don't recall Sarris dismissing Antonioni as strained serious, pretentious. I checked back on his ten best lists and found L'Avventura #3 of it's year (right behind Two Rode Together) Red Desert #5 of 1965, Blow-up #1 of 1966 (two ahead of Seven Women), The Passenger #2 of 1975. He did question the increasing thinness of the narratives, especially in Zabriskie Point, and also the corresponding tendency towards what he termed "cinema as art object".

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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#269 Post by MichaelB » Sun Jul 21, 2013 3:34 pm

repeat wrote:Just out of interest, who would some of these postmodern critics be - do you mean people in their late twenties, thirties? Because I'm wondering if this phenomenon you're observing could be just a generational backlash; a natural lack of interest in these directors that the 1960's generation has been idolizing for five decades now.
Or it could be something as straightforward as simple lack of availability.

I can't speak for other countries, but in my native Britain pretty much every Antonioni aside from Blow-Up and Zabriskie Point wasn't in commercial distribution in any medium for most of the 1980s and 90s - I first watched Italian Antonionis courtesy of unsubtitled Italian VHS tapes in the late 80s, which was less than ideal.

Conversely, Bergman, Bresson, Fellini, Kurosawa, Tarkovsky and 60s Godard played regularly in rep throughout this period - so anyone getting into art cinema during this period during those crucial late-teens/early-twenties formative years would naturally have gravitated towards them.

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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#270 Post by hearthesilence » Sun Jul 21, 2013 3:42 pm

FWIW, Jonathan Rosenbaum's site has posted a string of articles on Antonioni this past week or two, including an excellent feature written in 1993.

Antonioni is someone I've grown to appreciate immensely in the past 4 years. For a long time, I was only familiar with Blow-Up and vaguely L'Avventura, both first seen in high school when I was more accustomed to popcorn films than anything else. Having revisited those films and seen the rest of his work as a full-grown adult, they carry a lot more weight for me nowadays. What he does formally (often times, I feel like everything you'd normally get out of character development has been accomplished with the landscape) still astounds me, and until I see more Rossellini films, I'd have to agree with Rosenbaum's assessment: for me Antonioni is hands down the greatest of all Italian filmmakers.

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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#271 Post by ellipsis7 » Sun Jul 21, 2013 3:43 pm

Even the received wisdom about the later films is flawed... I have revelatory copy of the original shooting script of ZP from Mgt Herrick Lib/AMPAS plus previous treatment and endings... See then this current Senses of Cinama piece about CHUNG KUO CINA & drawing on MA's reaction to the negative reception of ZP, thence concentrating on the Chinese reaction from their POV... He certainly annoyed & perplexed all parties stateside & orientally ...

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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#272 Post by bdlover » Fri Jul 26, 2013 3:07 am

rrenault, not much to say except that the Guardian article you quote is quite idiotic (who wrote it and when, do you have a link?).

Antonioni's trilogy was a current sensation in 1962, hence L'Avventura's massive placing in that particular poll. This doesn't mean that Antonioni has fallen from grace: that many of his films still had good showings in the latest poll, fifty years later, demonstrates his staying power more than anything. Antonioni, Bergman and Tarkovsky all placed significantly higher than Rossellini and Pialat, btw.

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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#273 Post by rrenault » Fri Jul 26, 2013 4:15 am

I wouldn't expect Pialat to feature prominently in a poll of that nature. I'm a Pialat fan, but my main point was he's the sort of figure that would appeal to someone who worships Rossellini but is rather ambivalent towards Antonioni (Cough Truffaut cough).

But still, I wonder why Citizen Kane and Rules of the Game have so much more staying power than L'Avventura. They've continuously been in the top 5-10 while L'Avventura dropped from 3 to like 21! It seems like the "Euro art" filmmakers will always play second fiddle to the Interwar period titans like Renoir, Murnau, Dreyer, Eisenstein, etc. Perhaps the latter four are just more easily assimilated at this point and have outlived their divisiveness. Godard, Antonion, and Pasolini have not.

But you have to wonder. Why will the "greatest film of all time" always be a Citizen Kane or a Rules of the Game or a Tokyo Story, but never a Red Desert or a Contempt or a Persona or even a Celine and Julie Go Boating?

That's something that's interesting to ponder. Why would the "greatest film of all time" always be an Old Hollywood film or a European work from the Interwar period as opposed to a postwar "European art film". It's gotten to the point where it's almost construed as philistinism to suggest the "Euro art" filmmakers surpassed people like Hitchcock and Ford in philosophical or thematic depth. The notion is if you prefer Antonioni to Ford you're just some shallow pretentious dweeb who has to have ART thrown in his face. And if it's clearly the case that Ford, Hitchcock, Welles, and Murnau were superior to Antonioni, Godard, Bergman, and Pasolini then the "Euro art house" movement was clearly for naught. N'est-ce pas?

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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#274 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Jul 26, 2013 6:33 am

rrenault wrote:It's gotten to the point where it's almost construed as philistinism to suggest the "Euro art" filmmakers surpassed people like Hitchcock and Ford in philosophical or thematic depth. The notion is if you prefer Antonioni to Ford you're just some shallow pretentious dweeb who has to have ART thrown in his face. And if it's clearly the case that Ford, Hitchcock, Welles, and Murnau were superior to Antonioni, Godard, Bergman, and Pasolini then the "Euro art house" movement was clearly for naught. N'est-ce pas?
No one says this. Half of your posts here argue against claims no one makes.

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Re: Michelangelo Antonioni

#275 Post by Sloper » Fri Jul 26, 2013 9:16 am

bdlover wrote:rrenault, not much to say except that the Guardian article you quote is quite idiotic (who wrote it and when, do you have a link?).
It's Brian Baxter's obituary for Ingmar Bergman in 2007. The whole article's a bit of a mess, really. Here's another paragraph on Bergman's work, which might help to illuminate the point he's making:
Brian Baxter wrote:The results, although immaculate, remain somewhat heartless and one might easily - in the lesser films - confuse technical skill with mechanical bravado. He seemed unable to forget that he was examining a theme or topic, rather than creating a film where the medium itself can unwittingly reveal - in the hands of a great artist - an inner truth. The result is an occasional lack of spontaneity, compounded by the increasing skill of the performances. On occasion the actors so busily suggested improvisation and naturalness that, unlike the greatest screen actors Spencer Tracy or Trevor Howard, say, they achieved the opposite.
That earlier phrase, 'the simplicity of expression that belies inspiration' might suggest that Baxter does not understand what 'belie' means, but I guess his point is that Bergman (and Antonioni) are trying too hard, thinking too much, and so revealing a lack of 'inspiration'. Bergman and Antonioni are perhaps rather cerebral film-makers, better at making us think than at making us feel; at least that's how I respond to them, and is perhaps why I tend to get impatient with Bergman's films when they become emotive or sentimental.

However, a work of art that seems to operate primarily on a cerebral, intellectual level can ultimately elicit a very profound emotional response. I always feel weirdly moved by the scenes in the park in Blowup, for instance: the compositions, the placement of the human figures among the grass and the trees, induce a whole series of reflections on isolation, loneliness, the longing for a connection, and the final effect of this process is devastating. The same goes for the climactic sci-fi fantasy in Identification of a Woman. It may not look or sound like the ending of Ordet, but it's still deeply poignant.
rrenault wrote:But you have to wonder. Why will the "greatest film of all time" always be a Citizen Kane or a Rules of the Game or a Tokyo Story, but never a Red Desert or a Contempt or a Persona or even a Celine and Julie Go Boating?
The obvious (glib) answer might be that the last four films you mentioned are all deliberately alienating and, for all their intensity, rather cold, whereas the first three, for all their bleakness, are deeply and overtly empathetic. That said, if you really want to read that much into 'greatest film of all time' polls, you might want to consider the recent triumph of Vertigo in the S&S poll.
ellipsis7 wrote:See then this current Senses of Cinama piece about CHUNG KUO CINA & drawing on MA's reaction to the negative reception of ZP, thence concentrating on the Chinese reaction from their POV... He certainly annoyed & perplexed all parties stateside & orientally ...
Great article on Chung Kuo - thanks for the link. I'm not totally 'in tune' with some of the more theoretical stuff in that piece, but it's all beautifully deployed in the service of a really persuasive argument. A great (and nicely balanced) account of the film's qualities, contexts and limitations. Can't wait to watch it again now.

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