[Thor Joachim Haga]

PART III:

La notte

The first act of La notte (1961) is actually a kind of cross between Antonioni’s documentary gaze and his love for empty urban spaces. The title sequence gives the first clear signal: We follow an outdoor glass elevator down a skyscraper wall with the cityscape in the background. At first glance an impressive vista, but Giorgio Gaslini’s abstract electronic musical effects give the whole thing an alienating feel; a confrontation with the construction itself; with modernity.

We continue on the same line shortly thereafter as we follow Lidia (Jeanne Moreau) through the streets of Milan. She is unhappily married to the successful writer Giovanni (Marcello Mastroianni), and instead tries to find some form of meaning and self-awareness in the world around her. Antonioni continuously alternates between busy cityscapes – people, cars, traffic, sound and commerce. But in Lidia’s case, the emphasis is on strongly perspectived corridors and alleyways that position her against the surroundings. Sometimes the settings are skewed, other times she is enclosed by geometric lines. All put together, it says something about her stuck position. Lidia is restless, while Giovanni is unable to express his desire – the central nerve of the film.

This is further manifested when Lidia and Giovanni somewhat reluctantly go to a grand party in the architect’s villa of a wealthy couple outside the city. The legendary film party is itself a breathing, organic entity that, in Fellini-style, increases in intensity and madness throughout the evening, but it also uses subtle, spatial staging of the characters’ inner conflict, perhaps especially the use of windows, bars and mirror surfaces. At one point, Giovanni plays “floor shuffleboard” with the wealthy couple’s daughter Valentina (Monica Vitti). As Giovanni approaches the young woman, Antonioni uses both window reflections, moldings and the floor’s own checkerboard pattern as small obstacles against the possible ‘side jump’; again a kind of transfer of identity from Lidia to Valentina. Lidia, for her part, observes it all from a distance – up on the gallery, between heavy, black ceiling columns, in all her solitude.

A sudden downpour takes on extra significance. It becomes a golden opportunity to let go of inhibitions – some dance, others throw themselves into the pool – as if the fossilized, aristocratic values collapse completely. Lidia, on the other hand, remains standing in the doorway while the vertical downpour is reflected in the vertical lines of the house’s architecture – oppressive and clammy. As in Il grido, the rain reaches the protagonist at absolute zero in the story.

When Lidia and Giovanni leave the party in the early hours of the morning, however, it is on large, open grassy plains. The previous night has been an awakening for both of them; in an open landscape they must simply accept their strained relationship and an uncertain future.

L’eclisse

L’eclisse (1962) is Antonioni’s most experimental film. While L’avventura and La notte operate within a relatively traditional cinematic language, L’eclisse is – at least at times – abstract and essayistic.

Now, I don’t know if Sergio Leone looked to his fellow Italian director for inspiration when he designed the classic opening scene in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), but there’s definitely something ‘spaghetti western’ about the opening scene in L’eclisse – an unhappy married couple staged as a pending gun duel in a dusty alley.

Antonioni presents the couple Riccardo (Francisco Rabal) and Vittoria (Monica Vitti) in their own apartment, but stylizes almost all the settings. Sometimes he dwells on objects, like the ceiling fan; a constant moment of unrest, other times he painstakingly positions them in relation to each other – close and far from the camera, with the other over his shoulder. For a moment their gaze locks, Riccardo sitting in a corner of the room and Vittoria standing, for what seems like an eternity. It is a static relationship that manifests itself in visual and spatial disharmony. Who draws first?

This uneasy dynamic is cultivated throughout the film in a use of contrasts reminiscent of Lidia’s street walk in La notte: On the one hand, Antonioni presents a frenetic stock exchange environment full of loud shouting, jostling crowds and enervating activity. On the other hand, he dwells on deserted streets, often with bizarre, futuristic architecture: a line of razor-thin lamp posts, a strange, UFO-like tower and high walls that separate people from their outside world. Several times in distant extreme totals, as if to really emphasize the alienation not only from modern life, but in this case also from the intimate; that is, the difficulty of being dedicated and happy.

Most striking, however, are the last seven minutes of the film, also from a purely spatial perspective. Vittoria eventually finds her affair in the young stockbroker Piero (Alain Delon); this time the ‘transfer of identity’ is reserved for a man – from Riccardo to Piero. At one point in the film they meet at a dusty crossroads, right in front of a rickety house made of straw – perhaps a picture of the personal relationships in the film. By a fence stands a wooden bucket of water, and on the water a leaf floats delicately on the surface.

This is one of several key images in the film’s final, poetic ‘collage’. Vittoria and Piero disappear almost unnoticed from the story. Instead, Antonioni rests on a series of objects and places that have been significant in various ways – the lamp posts, a sprinkler, the futuristic tower, trees and ants. The water in the bucket leaks into the sand, and with it the solitary leaf – the vulnerable closeness the characters so eagerly seek is ephemeral; it is difficult to stay afloat. In the same way, the spaces are reclaimed by the outside world – a woman with a pram and a cyclist pass the crossroads Vittoria and Piero have left; everything that was so meaningful, all the places that carried so much context, is now any place. This occupation/reconquest duality is a theme that Antonioni uses with crystal-clear intention throughout his golden age.

Il deserto rosso

When Antonioni made his first colour film with Il deserto rosso (1964), he used colour for what it was worth; as an actual, commentarial aspect by physically painting parts of the environment – especially in red and green. As he himself said in an interview before the film’s premiere:

“The female character in the film is neurotic, almost a psychopath. In moments of crisis, she sees colours differently than we do. Colour represents reality in a naturalistic way, it is ‘truer’ than black and white. If I want to use a landscape or an interior to reflect the psychology of the story, I have to put in extra colours to express a certain state of mind. Therefore, I had a need to break down this reality.”

Il deserto rosso is a dystopian work that borders on science fiction. The alienation of modernity has probably never been staged more concretely and clearly by Antonioni than in this case. As the film begins, we encounter a lonely walk through the swamps of melancholy; a barren and rotten industrial landscape around the city of Ravenna, with rusty factory columns, enveloping smoke and acidic waste products that leave their mark in dried-up lakes and sticky, coal-black mud.

In the middle of this landscape we find the factory owner’s wife Guiliana (Monica Vitti) and her young son, often minimized in extreme totals or standing in front of endless, diagonal lines into the horizon – the monstrous, all-consuming industrial progress against the tiny human destinies caught in the drag.

It doesn’t get much better when we travel into the center of Ravenna, which is yet another variation on the “Noto town” from L’avventura – deserted, with claustrophobic brick houses and large, monochromatic wall surfaces. It is here, in a small den that will hopefully become her retail business, that she begins her potential fling with businessman Corrado (Richard Harris).

In such an environment, humans are reduced to primitive animals. At one point, Guiliana and Corrado end up in a dilapidated fishing shed by the harbor – shrouded in Antonioni’s customary fog, and eventually with an ominous, ghostly cargo ship docked outside. With them is a group of business associates, both women and men. They huddle together in the back of the shed, in a makeshift, blood-red bedroom; gradually the tone becomes more sexual, reaching a kind of orgy-like intensity – perhaps a nod to similar sequences in Antonioni’s Blowup and Zabriskie Point; or like the revelers in La notte; a kind of desperate attempt to seek connections in a completely inhospitable landscape.

Towards the end of the film, Antonioni inserts a longer, nature-poetic sequence to really hammer home the contrast – a visualization of Guiliana’s bedtime story to her son, a Blue Lagoon-like parable with its own complex subtext. In this side story, a little girl lives in harmony with her surroundings – turquoise water, orange cliffs, lush vegetation and fine-grained sandy beaches. A strange boat arrives, but turns back. A mysterious female voice sings a haunting melody, but – like the ‘phantom boat’ in L’avventura – cannot be located. Again, the desire for a bygone paradise is visualized, a primitive, nostalgic era before the alienating industrialization.

It all may seem obvious. Giuliana even expresses it quite explicitly when Corrado asks her what she is so afraid of: “Streets, factories, colours, people…everything!”, she replies at her breaking point. But in a way, that is exactly what makes Il deserto rosso so unique – perhaps the most consistent fictional universe in Antonioni’s filmography; a completely immersive experience of place.

…to be continued