Let’s talk Antonioni films and scores….or lack thereof
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Alright. Again, the English translation comes from an A.I., so don’t blame me for wonky phrasings. But I think it looks reasonably well. I’ll do this in installments.
PART I:
MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI’S SIGNIFICANT SURFACES
In Michelangelo Antonioni’s films, characters and places speak to each other. When someone enters a room, the room in turn not only reflects their state of mind, but also injects new content into our experience of them. The director’s fascination with alienation and identity crisis is always deeply cemented in the nature and architecture that surrounds them.
July 30, 2007 remains one of the strangest dates in film history – within hours of each other, both Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni passed away. Whether they were particularly close is unknown, but Bergman was often lukewarm in his description of the Italian master director. “He is an ‘aesthetician’,” Bergman once said, “who spends a lot of time on a single shot but doesn’t understand that film is a fluid flow of images /…/ Of course, there are some brilliant parts in his films, but I don’t understand why Antonioni is so highly regarded .” Antonioni, for his part, spoke less frequently about his colleague, who was five years younger, but reportedly told The Telegraph that “Bergman was only concerned with questions of God. I myself am not interested in unraveling spiritual mysteries . ”
Now, let’s not overdramatize either – it wasn’t really so much a rivalry as a misunderstood evaluation; an incompatible worldview that separated them. Moreover, there are more similarities between them than they might themselves have admitted; I see Antonioni in Smultronstället (1957) and Bergman in La notte (1961), for example. But what Bergman didn’t understand was Antonioni’s fascination with place, space, geography and landscape – markers of an inner soul life or an existential crisis. Where Bergman was from the inside out, Antonioni was often from the outside in – especially from Il grido (1957) onwards. Ultimately, it’s about significant surfaces .
Narratologist and critic Seymour Chatman highlights precisely this aspect in the book Antonioni, or, the Surface of the World (1985) – still considered the foremost literary work on Antonioni’s filmography (alongside Roland Barthes’ sweet “love letter” to the director):
“The central and distinguishing characteristic of Antonioni’s mature films /…/ is narration by a kind of visual minimalism, by an intense concentration on the sheer appearance of things – the surface of the world as he sees it – and a minimization of explanatory dialogue. The rendered surface is eloquent once one has learned to read it, and, even more, to accept its aesthetic and narrative self-sufficiency” (Chatman 1985: 2)
Through this prism, several of Antonioni’s auteur traits emerge: the alienation from the modern and modernity itself (monochromatic, cold surfaces and stringent, encapsulating lines), fateful paths into the unknown (strongly perspectived streets and landscapes) and, not least, complicated identity structures, where characters occupy a space for a time; becoming a kind of organic extension of it, only to abandon it completely, or in favor of something else.
Antonioni’s characters are on a perpetual search for something they cannot quite articulate or achieve. This is also the consistent ‘sideways’ element in his films: either one searches for something within oneself, or one searches through another partner, but it usually ends in unhappy, fleeting acquaintances that rather lead to more insecurity. This process is also mirrored in the surroundings – long, observant camera runs or extreme close-ups of small people in unintelligible landscapes, sometimes crushed down by oppressive fog.
It is important to point out, however, that these thematic and stylistic trends were not perfect from the beginning, and also varied in their presence throughout his career. Place as a significant surface, with both evocative intrinsic value and meaningful symbolism, is something he comes to gradually in his film aesthetic exploration.
The documentary gaze
After a few years as an assistant to other directors, Antonioni finally received his own directorial assignments in the mid-1940s, in a series of short documentaries about everyday life and phenomena. Both quality and ambition vary considerably between them, and several have a more curious or pragmatic quality – Superstizione (1949) about rural superstition, Sette canne, un vestito (1948) about a textile factory or L’amorosa menzogna (1949) about a colorful picture magazine. La villa dei mostri (1950) tends towards something more place-oriented, with its observations of the statues in the Bomarzo garden – and thus an interesting parallel to Antonioni’s very last film Lo sguardo di Michelangelo (2004), a kind of connection between the first and the last of his life and career – but it is not so much poetic as it is more newsreel-like in its presentation.
There are really only two of these short documentaries that stand out from our perspective. One is his very first film, Gente del Po (1947), which was begun as early as 1943. The 11-minute film is a depiction of the people who live and work on the banks of the Po, more like a film essay, and with minimal narration. It is as if Antonioni follows the flow of the river in his imagery as well; slow, calm panning – often in a flat, melancholic light – that captures both chugging boats, disheveled workers and poor settlements along the way; often from a good distance. The film flows like the river.
The second is NU (1948), an abbreviation for ‘Netteza Urbana’, the Italian sanitation service. It is, if possible, even more sober in its approach than Gente del Po, with less narration and a greater emphasis on sociological observation. It basically covers a day in Rome, from sunrise to sunset, with an emphasis on street sweepers, janitors and garbage collectors. But the scope is actually broader than that – in several parts of the film Antonioni shifts focus from the sanitation workers to ordinary people in their daily activities, all shrouded in poverty and post-war depression. Perspective-driven streetscapes, tall buildings, claustrophobic alleys and monuments from Roman times – all organically connected to the city and the landmarks they surround themselves with, but at the same time alienated from them; a whiff of former grandeur.
In these two films, in particular, we sense the germ of what would eventually become one of Antonioni’s hallmarks: the documentary, searching gaze. Initially, there is no political commentary here, but by constantly alternating between near and far, and by picking up small details in people’s immediate surroundings, places are also given a meaning that is greater than themselves; an extension of something spiritual. Thus, they actually have more in common with the director’s ‘golden age’ from 1960-1975 than the following feature films of the 1950s.
…to be continued.
PART II:
Genre, middle film and gradual exploration
Antonioni’s first five feature films are situated in a very different landscape – literally – than his later works. There is little focus on location and complicated subtext; instead, they lie safely within melodramatic genre expressions. The films are carpeted with dialogue, delivered at machine-gun speed, and don’t find much time to dwell on either surroundings or significant surfaces. It’s almost as if we can sense Antonioni’s future preference when a screenwriter and producer discuss how to resolve a love scene at the beginning of La signora senza camelie (1953):
“It’s easy. No dialogue. Then no one will be bored”
“We don’t need dialogue. Lovers only need to do one thing. The less they talk, the better.”On the one hand, these films revolve around bourgeois, well-off environments (which was also Antonioni’s own background) – the star actors in La signora senza camelie, the industrial magnate and his unhappy wife in his debut film Cronaca di un amore (1950) or the class-climbing women in Le amiche (1955). Combined with their melodramatic expression, they sometimes move dangerously close to the “Telefoni Bianchi” films of the 30s, even if the comedy factor is low and the social awareness is higher.
On the other hand, Antonioni also draws on neorealist movements, such as the amateurs he uses in his part of the anthology film L’amore in città (1953), the misfit youths in I vinti (1953) and not least the loafer and his daughter in Il grido, which is almost a variation on Vittorio de Sica’s iconic Ladri di biclette (1948).
Despite this, Antonioni’s spatial fascination appears in small flashes here too. In the French part of the anthology film I vinti , a young man kills his friend over a few francs; the climax is set in the ruins of a castle in the countryside. Antonioni, as usual, lies at a suitable distance and observes the youths running across damp grass fields, in an eerie sunset light, and then leaves the dying man among bare columns, at the bottom left of the frame, while the murderer runs into the horizon. The contrast signals disillusioned youth and broken values.
In a sequence from Le amiche, the main character Clelia (Eleonora Rossi Drago) visits a poor neighborhood in Turin where she grew up. The areas are deserted, with scratched brick walls, empty, black windows, bars and dusty gravel surfaces. On the most obvious level, it is of course intended to signal her class journey, but by being so wide in the shot – and with Clelia firmly centered in the middle – it also becomes an identification marker. She is not like the other rich girls in the group of friends.
Yet it is Il grido that stands out not only with a clearer spatial profile, but as the first Antonioni work in which several of his auteur traits are in place. After a brutal (and, some would say, unsympathetic) breakup with his girlfriend Irma (Alida Valli) at the beginning of the film, Aldo (Steve Cochran) and his daughter wander from place to place, in an eternal search for work and some form of peace. Along the way, he tries to replace his ideal woman Irma with fleeting female acquaintances; a kind of identity takeover, but he does not succeed.
Finally, Antonioni tones down the amount and pace of dialogue. It is slow, quiet, observant and realistic. On several occasions, the characters are placed in extreme totals, as if to really emphasize the alienation, both from existence and modernity. Aldo stumbles into construction and demolition projects and large, open spaces that are not yet developed. This is Italy in the post-war period, a devastated country that is trying to get back on its feet, but which, on the contrary, is driving the population into the gutter or into exile. These are the observations of Gente del Po and NU set in a fictional universe.
The most poetic scenes, however, are along the country road. Antonioni constantly uses strongly perspectived settings, with streets and landscapes that disappear in diagonal lines into the horizon. Sometimes the picture, or the horizon, is also filled with the director’s typical fog and haze – a signal of the unknown future far away. Other times there are more vertical lines, like the many tree trunks (with the treetops cut off by the picture frame) that stand like enclosing bars around Aldo and his daughter – the impossible detachment. In one of the film’s most memorable scenes, Aldo has sought refuge in a shed of a house on the muddy riverbank. The rain is pouring down and dripping from every crack in the tin roof, almost like unstoppable tears, while Aldo is at his lowest point in life.
Il grido is in many ways Antonioni’s most beautiful and emotional film; a fragile and intimate tale that combines neorealist tragedy with progressive ideas about how things, places and settings should comment on the psychological subtext. But it is told in a relatively traditional way, and a far cry from the daring masterpiece that was on the doorstep.
L’avventura
Film historians categorize Antonioni’s “golden age” in different ways. Many speak only of the alienation trilogy L’avventura, La notte and L’eclisse. Some include Il deserto rosso in that group as a kind of tetralogy, others do not. For my part, however, I choose to extend the definition all the way from L’avventura in 1960 to Professione: Reporter in 1975, a period in which his imprint is strongest.
Today, L’avventura is considered a cornerstone of film history, but its notorious premiere at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival was something else, with laughter and boos in the audience – especially during the slow stretches without any significant plot development. Fortunately, a petition by prominent filmmakers (according to them, L’avventura was the “best film ever shown at Cannes”) led to it eventually receiving the Jury Prize.
With today’s eyes, it is difficult to understand this reaction, but it says something about how new and different this film language was in 1960. Finally, Antonioni could use the locations for all they were worth without caring so much about a classic narrative structure; locations that were indirectly and sometimes directly kneaded into manifestations of loneliness, alienation and lack of communication.
Already at the beginning of the film, Claudia (Monica Vitti) – Antonioni’s muse throughout several films – is staged with simple visual gestures. As the only single in the group of couples, she is at one point enclosed by fluttering curtains, seen from inside the room where Sandro (Gabriele Ferzeti) and Anna (Lea Massari) are caressing each other, or alone on a landing under the window. This naturally emphasizes her loneliness, but it also anticipates her later role in the story, when she almost takes over Anna’s identity through Sandro’s attempt to recapture his missing “ideal woman.”
Most potent, however, is the boat trip to the archipelago in Sicily. The islands lie bare and lonely in the open sea, like several of the characters in the film, and when they finally step ashore, they are met by a rocky and rugged landscape. There is almost no vegetation, but all the more dangerous cracks and cavities in the topography. In some places there are ruins of previous settlements. The longer we spend on the barren islet, the more it takes on its own mysterious identity, especially after Anna disappears without a trace. On a couple of occasions the sound of a ‘phantom boat’ is heard nearby, but no one can see it – we recall the imagined murder in Blowup (1966) a few years later, and Antonioni’s fascination with faulty perception.
Through repetition and static settings, the island’s geography gradually becomes more familiar to us: the steep and shady slope down to the boat launch, the barren stone plateau with the small, windswept brick house, the dramatic plunge into the mountain crevice with the roaring, ravenous waves far below. It is as beautiful and poetic of nature as it is foreign and cold.
A later example is Sandro and Celia’s stopover in the village of Noto up in the Sicilian mountains – completely deserted, with large, open spaces, cold, monochromatic walls and neat horizontal and vertical lines. This is a type of city and architecture that Antonioni uses frequently in his later films. The ghostly “city of Noto” becomes in many ways a distillation of the characters’ apathy, frustration and labyrinthine emotional lives.
The film’s ending also echoes these traits, when, after a late party, Claudia slowly wanders through perspective corridors, abandoned rooms, deserted streets and weathered brick walls before finding Sandro crying on a bench. The emptiness of the places signals not so much a reconciliation, but a shared acceptance of their failed attempt to cultivate an ideal that was never attainable – a theme that in many ways makes a direct connection to Antonioni’s next film.
…to be continued
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
Haven’t read it yet but you really should publish* something like that as proper article(s) on the “main site” instead of “burying” it in the forum. Even if it seems to be film than score reviews.
*after fixing AI translation issue 😉
Haven’t read it yet but you really should publish* something like that as proper article(s) on the “main site” instead of “burying” it in the forum. Even if it seems to be film than score reviews.
I know, but as I said earlier, I can’t. The article belongs to the Z film magazine. I technically shouldn’t post it in the forum either, but it’s okay when it’s “buried” here, I think.
The article belongs to the Z film magazine.
To bad, you really did sell full exclusive rights and including translations? Then you probably have to write new articles focussing on the scores 😉
To bad, you really did sell full exclusive rights and including translations?
Yes, it’s theirs now. But I know them very well, and I know they won’t mind that I put a translated version of it into an obscure, barely alive forum. I’ve always wanted to have an English version of it anyway, and when the AI translation turned out as well as it did (surprising to me!), with only a few minor fixes needed, it’s all good.
I DO hope, however, that discussions of the Antonioni films and scores will continue here, beyond the multiple-part article!
I’m here, but not in the mood for Antonioni. I’m doing a walk-through of my John Williams collection and cannot think of doing anything else. Next up is THE LOST WORLD.
Byeeeeee!!!
PART IV:
Blow-up
When Antonioni begins a collaboration with producer Carlo Ponti, the doors open for English-language productions, but the films are not streamlined for that reason. He still retains his uniqueness and his fascination with places and their staging.
Blow-up (1966) is perhaps Antonioni’s most famous film, and one of the most accessible, but it is also crammed with significant surfaces. This is particularly evident in three aspects:
The first is London itself, which, like La notte and L’eclisse, oscillates between noise and silence. On the one hand, “the swingin’ sixties” are depicted with enthusiastic curiosity – rock concerts, demonstrations, hashish parties and liberated sexuality, reckless and noisy like the carnival-clad jugglers at the beginning and end of the film. Here Antonioni adopts his more documentary perspective. On the other hand, we experience the city more quietly through the photographer Thomas (David Hemmings) and his excursions into the local area. He is surrounded by gray brick buildings, pierced by only by a few bright surfaces in red, blue and green – as in Il deserto rosso a painted/manipulated tool that “stretches” reality and our perception of it, the thematic core of the film.
The second aspect is the photo studio itself, which is a mini-universe in itself. This is Thomas’s realm, where he reigns as a sole ruler, completely dominating both his employees and the models he photographs. This is supported by the many intersecting horizontal and vertical lines; as if it were a cage. Or in the consistent use of black and white surfaces, almost like a negative. When Jane (Vanessa Redgrave) visits the studio, she passes a black, transparent glass plate, and is thus “caught” in Thomas’ figurative lens.
The third aspect is perhaps also the most exciting: the park scenes. Here Antonioni tones down the color contrasts and makes it more naturalistic, more “real”. During all three visits to the park (and perhaps especially the last one), he slowly observes with calm pans; a suggestive environment where the viewer – like Thomas – is asked to orient himself in the surroundings: The green trees, bushes and lawns, the various geometric lines of the park’s path system, all shrouded in a grayish morning mist. We hear the sound of birds chirping and a gentle wind in the leaves; there is no rhetorical music. We even search the picture frame for traces of the murder that Thomas allegedly saw in his ‘blowups’ of the photographs, both from Thomas’s point of view and in the overall settings. It is as if Antonioni has now transcribed his entire idea of whimsical perception into an entire place; into an entire existence.
Philosopher Susanne Langer has highlighted this need to read emotions, opinions, and reality into artistic expression (and vice versa); an idea that aligns well with Antonioni’s general philosophy about place:
«Every good work of art has, I think, something that may be said to come from the world, and that bespeaks the artist’s own feeling about life. This accords with the intellectual and, indeed, the biological importance of art: we are driven to the symbolization and articulation of feeling when we must understand it to keep ourselves oriented in society and nature /…/ So reality quite normally furnishes the images; but they are no longer anything in reality, they are forms to be used by an excited imagination» (Langer 1953: 253)
This cognitive coherence is something Antonioni explores further in his next film, although it now takes a more political turn.
Zabriskie Point
Antonioni’s schizophrenic encounter with “America” in Zabriskie Point (1970) has a surprisingly relevant resonance today – a US torn between left and right, between capitalism and socialism, between construction and demolition. It is also a considerably more dishelved film from the director than what we are used to, with handheld cameras and long close-ups of faces, especially at the beginning of the film during the meeting with revolutionary students. But it is first and foremost a satirical description of American society, divided into two very clear parts with clearly staged shots.
The first deals with the United States as a country of progress – industry, commercialization, self-aggrandizement. It is also a kick against Bergman’s statements, because here there are not many lingering shots – on the contrary, there is an aggressive ‘flow of floating images’: Antonioni pumps out short bursts of advertising posters, infrastructure, skyscrapers and waving flags while trying to capture the energy of the American industrial landscape through his imagery. It is still about the alienation of modernity, but formulated as a political slant rather than an existential crisis.
In (typically) stark contrast is the film’s second part, set in the barren desert landscape of Death Valley – the valley of death – around the lookout point Zabriskie Point, where the young couple Mark (Mark Frechette) and Daria (Daria Halprin) explore each other and themselves. This is a rusty landscape bathed in wreckage and ruins – a country in disintegration – but it is also the real-life deserto rosso, a lunar landscape where forces are “pushing up from below and eroding away the earth”, as Mark says at one point; a clear reference to the student uprising that is supposed to replace the traditional narrow-mindedness.
Antonioni keeps the camera at a proper distance as he watches the two young people in the swaying, layered desert dunes, but leans closer as they become intimate with each other. Suddenly, we also see a host of other ‘imagined’ couples in a heated embrace around them, in the film’s well-known “orgy scene”. Dozens of young bodies in the sand give “life” to the dead and peaceful valley. Eventually, they will sprout from the barren earth, like the giant, taut, almost phallic cacti around Daria when she learns that Mark has been killed.
The confrontation between the old and the new reaches its climax in the finale. The architect’s mountainside residence, which is carved organically out of the mineral; the established, is blown to shreds while the products we have become so familiar with in the advertising posters early in the film sail gracefully through the air to the ethereal tones of Pink Floyd. Like a redemptive pop-bonbon, the two opposing forces have finally collapsed into each other. The revolution is a fact.
Chung Kuo – Cina
In 1972, Antonioni was one of the first Western filmmakers to enter Maoist China – initially invited by the Chinese government but later condemned by the same authorities. The result was the ambitious television documentary Chung Kuo – Cina, divided into three hour-long parts. The film is difficult to obtain today, as it has neither been restored nor released in a satisfactory manner, but in my opinion deserves its place in the director’s golden age, and within his place-oriented gaze.
Just as cinematographers Vilmos Zsigmond and László Kovács filmed the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 by hiding their cameras in shopping bags, Antonioni also chooses to secretly film parts of his journey through the country – always with a careful guard from the authorities. As Antonioni puts it (via narrator Giuseppe Rinaldi) – “the aim is not to understand China and the Chinese people, but to showcase it”; that is, safely within the director’s documentary, searching gaze.
The first and last parts deal with the big cities of Beijing and Shanghai. We constantly see large, open city spaces with Chinese people dressed in sober, semi-uniform dress codes – often on bicycles (the working class takeover of society). Sometimes we visit special environments, such as a municipal workers’ town or a lively food market (filmed with a hidden camera) in part one or a local teahouse in part three. These sections have much in common with his early documentaries – a panning search in the frame, before picking up something (often faces) and then following it closely throughout an entire scene, without much narration.
Yet part two, about the Chinese countryside, is the most substantial. The provinces are characterized on the one hand by picturesque nature – always shot from a long distance – but at the same time by pervasive poverty. Sometimes the picturesque also has a pragmatic function, like the winding canal through a steep village. Despite the misery, everything is well organized in communist small communities.
The film’s most striking scene is right here – a visit to a deserted mountain village, in many ways a new variation on Antonioni’s “Noto town”: The film crew arrives at seemingly deserted streets, with clean, bare brick walls and black window holes. But gradually the astonished locals peek out from behind corners and doorways. As the narrator says, “here we are the strangers.” When the lens catches their faces, they turn away or retreat. It borders on uncomfortable ‘exoticism’, but it’s really more about Antonioni’s curiosity about places and people; a form of cultural alienation seen from both sides.
…to be continued
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