L'avventura (1960) Reviews

• Shallow Characters In A Very Deep Film

  Poison-River2005-03-22

  There's something strange going on in this film. The first time I watched it, it seemed to wash over me without affecting me in anyway. Later on(and I've read this in other people's comments here as well) I found images and dialogue from the movie creeping into my subconscious; entire dreams would take place upon the island where Anna goes missing(often in monochrome), or I'd start to compare real life events to those that occur during the film. Did Antonioni plant subliminal messages within the movie? Probably not. It's more likely the masterful pace he employs here, coupled with the busy, deep cinematography is the cause of this. Notice how the backgrounds NEVER go out of focus, no matter how much is going on within the frame. Check out the scene about an hour and ten minutes in, where Sandro and the old man are talking in the middle of an extremely busy street; nothing blurs or goes out of focus, even when a tram comes in and out of the shot, nothing loses it's perspective, and as the scene ends and they walk deep into the shot we can see way past them and far, far into the distance. This seems to be why the film has such a deep affect on the subconscious. The characters are deliberately shallow and are placed at the very foreground of every shot, yet the backgrounds are rich tableaux bustling with life. In the scenes on the island where Anna disappears, we see the main characters always in shot, yet in the background there is a feeling that something strange within nature itself is going on. The darkening of the clouds, the sudden mist upon the water, the rocks falling to the sea, even the sudden appearance of the old hermit character, all give a certain unease. There's also the haunting feeling of the film, as Anna's friends begin, almost immediately to forget about her. Soon, they don't seem to care a jot about her, and neither, in a sense, do we. It's this feeling of loose ends and guilt on our part(for joining her so called 'friends' in forgetting about her so quickly) that leaves the deepest impression. The characters in this film are so morally shallow(the ending bears this out) yet they are the reason this film leaves such a strong impression on those who watch it, and who become captivated by it. I cant recommend this film to everyone because I know that the Hollywood Blockbuster has reduced most modern cinema-goers attention spans to almost zero. But if you fancy a challenge, or merely wish to luxuriate in classic cinema.....begin here.

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• A brutal study of alienation.

  UnholyBlackMetal2007-08-01

  Having recently seen L'Avventura and Scenes from a Marriage back to back they seem as different as it is possible to be. Yet they do share a common ground, namely humanity's quest for love and understanding and the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that lie in the way. But whereas Bergman's film has moments of true warmth and happiness, Antonioni's L'Avventura is as brutally cold as a Scandinavian winter. Plot summary is not entirely important (and would spoil potential surprises), suffice to say that the movie is uniquely structured and may not proceed the way you expect it to. There is a mystery, and romance; but not in any traditional sense. The men and women of this film stumble through a loveless, desolate Italy, occasionally pausing for forced, wretched couplings. Alienation and the inability for humans to connect to one another have never been so painfully presented in film. While discussing the guilt felt in betraying a mutual friend a woman asks "How can it be that it takes so little to change, to forget?" to which the man responds, "It takes even less." Before one of the films many desperate scenes of impersonal copulation the woman cries out in a fit of existential despair, "I feel as though I don't know you!" to which the man responds, "Aren't you happy? You get to have a new fling." The film is so brutally cynical about friendship, love and human interaction that it feels unreal. Strange alien landscapes, magnificently filmed among the rocky islands around Italy serve to underline the insurmountably barren distances between the characters. And as they grope and fumble for some kind of connection in the darkness that surrounds them, the viewer is pulled into their mire as well. When they are not desperately searching for some kind of connection with each other, the characters struggle to come to terms with their own absurd existence. A man knocks over a bottle of ink, destroying an art student's in-progress drawing. A woman makes faces in a mirror at herself. Another woman pretends to see a shark in the ocean she is swimming in. None of these distractions are remotely successful. By the time the film has reached its unbelievably cynical ending (dependant on one of the most effective uses of a musical score in film history), it becomes clear. These people have lost their way. This overwhelming bleakness seems like it would create an unbearable viewing experience, but there is a truth to it all as well. Companionship is a basic human need, and it can often seem impossibly difficult to form any real connection. However, what is important is that it only seems that way, it is not impossible. Antonioni has shown us only one possible outcome. By watching a movie filled with people slouching towards oblivion, unable to form even the most basic human bond, the mind rebels. There must be another way…

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• Innovative study on alienation

  Alexandar2006-03-01

  L'Avventura (1960)**** Young woman (Lea Massari) suddenly disappears during a boating trip on an inhabited island. Shortly afterward, her boyfriend (Gabriele Ferzetti) and her best friend (Monica Vitti) became attracted to each other. However, don't expect the mystery. This is a study of emotional isolation, moral decay, lack of the communication and emptiness of rich people in contemporary (then) society. You can easily be bored by the slow pace and the lack of dramatics of this movie unless you capture its true purpose. This is "state of mind" or experience film rather than conventional plot film. Antonioni practically discovered the new movie language in L'Avventura. By using formal instruments he is expressing emotions of the characters (loneliness, boredom, emptiness and emotional detachment) and the viewer is forced rather to feel this same emotions himself than to be involved in the story and its events. These formal instruments are: slow rhythm, real-time events, long takes, visual metaphors like inhabited island(s), fog, extreme long shots (small characters in panorama) and putting protagonists on inhabited streets or large buildings and landscapes. Great cinematography. Forms trilogy with La Notte (1961) and L'Eclisse (1962).

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• 10/10

  zetes2001-02-12

  I first saw this film about three years ago. It had come up in my reading, and it sounded interesting. So I rented it. I found it good, if a little boring. However, later I discovered that it was one of those films that may not be entirely entertaining when it is watched initially, but that comes back full force in the memory at a later time. This is true both for this film, and the only other Antonioni film I have seen, Blowup. Still, tonight was the first time in three years that I have actually sat down to watch L'Avventura (and I actually plan to re-rent Blowup in the next couple of days and any other Antonioni films I might be able to find). As I have said, L'Avventura has been built up by my mind ever since I saw it. Was it as good as I made myself think for the past three years? Yes. I have confirmed my suspicion: L'Aventurra is one of the best films ever made. In subject, this film is a lot like La Dolce Vita. Its main theme is the decadent lifestyle of the wealthy. The decadent wealthy in L'Avventura are a lot worse off, though, than those in La Dolce Vita. At least those who were living Fellini's version of the sweet life were having fun. Sure, it was soulless fun, but, while watching the film, this thought, no matter how much I wanted to suppress it, was pounding in my mind: "Jeeze, I wish I could party with these people." Their lifestyle seems just plain fun. They may have to pay for their hedonism in some way, but at least they're having fun in the meantime! L'Avventura's sweet life is the definition of "l'ennui." Life to them is an unfortunate event. The script to this film, as well as anything else about it, is absolutely ingenious. To simplify things, let us say that the first plot point in the film is Anna's disappearance. This is the initial problem that the characters have to deal with. In a film made under the classical guidelines, this would have been the goal that would have to be solved by the end of the film. But as L'Avventura advances, the script allows us, or maybe even makes us, forget about Anna. This process is very gradual (and she never completely disappears from our minds, especially since Claudia mentions her so explicitly near the end), but it begins very quickly after she disappears, with the infamous kiss between Sandro and Claudia. There are miles of interpretation and discussion left to go, but it is unneccessary to continue here. This is just a beginning. The title to this film is, of course, ironic. There is no literal adventure. One could make the argument that the adventure is one of the mind, but I do not believe this. The adventure, I believe, is an adventure in reinventing the cinema.

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• Appearances, in a transparent reality

  chaos-rampant2011-04-04

  At some point in the film Monica Vitti turns to her love partner and passionately proclaims "I want to see clearly!". They're standing atop a convent, and saying this, accidentally she tugs on a rope. Bells go off around them. A moment later, from a church in the distance bells ring back an answer. Wow. And so finally I arrive at the end of my Antonioni quest going backwards in time from The Passenger, back at the start. This will not be the last of his films that I see, but I feel I've reached a point that enables closure. I'm where it all began, in the craving mind, where all the formations of life and cinema are born. I will rest from my travel here, with the magnitude of this film. But L'Avventura is famously a mystery of disappearance, so why do I speak in the title of this review of 'appearances'? Perhaps because, in the aftermath of that disappearance, Antonioni sketches for us the first appearance of desire. Romance in his later films was already stale or not allowed to blossom (it appears again in Zabriskie Point, under a different context), but here feelings are pursued, in an effort to reflect if love can be our saving grace. That appearance, born in a barren rock in the middle of the sea, rests on a twofold interpretation. On one level, perhaps in understanding by Anna's inexplicable disappearance the precarious balance in which hangs our fleeting existence, the randomly cruel laws that govern it, the two partners turn to each other for solace. And perhaps more, seeing deep down in their own selves how quick life can be forgotten, how everything we hold to matter ultimately matters little and how this speck of life we value is merely transient and will come to pass, they turn to each other to desperately defy it, to prove to each other and the world that love cannot simply vanish. Antonioni frames first this realization of transience against the elements of nature, the imperishable, secondly he frames, traps, blocks within the desperate relationship, mostly faces in silhouette, against old medieval buildings, man's folly to mimic the imperishable. This is Antonioni's spatial stroke of genius, the visual vocabulary which he consistently executed for the rest of his career. But whereas in the subsequent films I was fascinated with the abstraction of human struggle, here I'm also fascinated with the struggle itself of human beings fumbling in the dark. The woman cautious of love at first, then allowing herself to be swept in it, believing if something can make her "see clearly" that it should be love. The man pushing obsessively for that love then, having consummated the need, conquered his prey, losing interest, aimlessly wandering the streets. The sated beast now becomes casually destructive, as we're shown in the scene where for no reason he spills ink over a young man's drawing. Antonioni fills this with portents and divinations, like the woman's premonition that Anna has returned. More subtle sketch of the madness of desire is the surreal scene where a mob in the grip of sexual paroxysm gathers in the street to ogle at a beautiful woman. Monica Vitti's character later experiences the same oppressiveness of the "male gaze", yet doesn't feel threatened by it, until her man emerges from a building, at which point she runs and hides. The finale in this sense is a poignant enigma like few in cinema, the smile of a Mona Lisa. The two lovers, now bitterly broken by how their desire has failed them, stand in a plaza with the view of a mountain in the horizon. The woman lays a hand on the man's head, but is the gesture forgiveness or reproach and is she telling him to stay or absolving him to go? Rushing back through his career, a chronicle emerges. Here the appearance of desire in the hope that it will liberate, later the failure of that desire to liberate, the willingness to not pursue it at all in L'Eclisse. Later yet, the liberation from desire, the realization in Deserto Rosso that we need to make ourselves whole from within, the chimera of the mind in Blowup and the liberation from it, the chimera of ideas in Zabriskie Point and the liberation from it, until the eventual, stunning to behold emergence of nirvana in The Passenger. A state of awareness where all bonds to clinging and desire are severed, the illusions of ego and identity dissolved, the characters now embracing their transience. This is why Antonioni matters to me. Not because Kubricks, Polanskis, and Peter Weirs all took from him, planting seeds in the fertile ground of his cinema, and not because he did more for cinema as we know it than all of them together, but because his enduring legacy, mastery of medium, conceptual exploration of ideas, all of this cannot fully account for the experience of the spiritual journey they enable. Which is to say that something elusive exists embedded in the frame, a true perception, that makes his films mysteriously extend into the soul. Antonioni saw further perhaps than any other director, before or after.

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