Film director, born in Ferrara, NE Italy. After studying political economy at Bologna University, he began as a film critic before becoming an assistant director in 1942. He made several documentaries (194550) before turning to feature films, often scripted by himself, and notable for their preoccupation with character study rather than plot. He gained an international reputation with L'avventura (1959), followed by other outstanding works, such as La notte (1961, The Night), Blow-up (1966), Zabriskie Point (1969), Professione: Reporter (1975, The Passenger), and Il mistero di Oberwald (1979, The Oberwald Mystery). He lost the power of speech after a stroke in 1985, but managed to make a further film, Beyond the Clouds (1995). He received an Academy lifetime achievement award in 1995.
Michelangelo Antonioni (born September 29, 1912) is an Italian modernist film director whose films are widely considered as some of the most influential in film aesthetics.
Work
Antonioni's first major success was L'Avventura (1960), which was followed by La Notte (1961) and L'eclisse (1962). His first color film, Il deserto rosso (1964), deals with similar themes, and is sometimes considered the fourth film of the "trilogy". The park scenes from the film were set in Maryon Park, Charlton, London. The second film, Zabriskie Point (1970), his first film set in America, was much less successful, even though its soundtrack incorporated such popular artists as Pink Floyd (who wrote new music specifically for the film), the Grateful Dead, and the Rolling Stones.
Il Mistero di Oberwald (The Mystery of Oberwald) (1980) was an experiment of electronic treatment of color, recorded in video and then translated to film.
Identificazione di una donna (Identification of a Woman) (1982), filmed in Italy, deals one more time with the recursive subjects of Italian trilogy.
In 1985, he suffered a stroke, but has been able to continue making films, albeit in a limited capacity (he cannot talk).
Wim Wenders filmed interludes for his Beyond the Clouds (1995), but they were mostly rejected by Antonioni at the editing stage.
Eros (2004) - segment "Il filo pericoloso delle cose" ("The Dangerous Thread of Things")- was filmed when Antonioni was at his 90s. The short film's episodes are framed by dreamy paintings and the song "Michelangelo Antonioni", composed and sung by Caetano Veloso. The U.S. DVD release of the film includes another short film by Antonioni: In Lo sguardo di Michelangelo (The Gaze of Michelangelo) (2004) - we can see Michelangelo Antonioni as an actor for the first time.
Trivia
He was referenced in an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, when Eric Idle, playing Inspector Baboon of Scotland Yard's Special Fraud Film Director Squad, Jungle Division, arrests someone accused of impersonating "Signor" Michelangelo Antonioni. He continues an academic discourse of Antonioni's film career as the credits begin to roll. In contrast with his contemporaries, including the neorealists and also Federico Fellini, Ermanno Olmi and Pier Paolo Pasolini, whose stories generally dealt with the lives of the working class and the misfits and outcasts of society, Antonioni's most notable films revolved around the elite and the urban bourgeois. However, contrary to what these critics say, his films depict his wealthy characters as empty and aimless, rather than romanticizing them. Antonioni's films also tend to be sensitive to the beauty of landscapes--such as the California desert in Zabriskie Point, or the rocky islands in L'Avventura--which adds not only to the visual quality of his work, but also to his depiction of the rich as arrogant lost souls vainly attempting to impose their finite will upon an unyielding and sublime nature. Thus, despite his critics, Antonioni's films dissect the rich with a disapproving Marxist sensibility, even as his camerawork displays a fascination for the ornate settings of the wealthy class.
Style
Ingmar Bergman once remarked that he admired some of Antonioni's films for their detached and sometimes dreamlike quality. His films tend to have spare plots and dialogue, and much of the screen time is spent lingering on certain settings--such as the ten-minute continuous take in The Passenger, or the many scenes in La Notte which show the female character simply wandering the city silently observing other people. His films are full of visual beauty, and are perfectly calculated to capture the alienation of the characters, often accomplished in a spare, slow-moving style.
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