My Top 10 Michelangelo Antonioni Movies
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- Опубликовано: 28 июл 2024
- My thoughts on one of the greatest film directors of all time.
(I would have loved to say more about Monica Vitti's incredible qualities as an actress, and the beautiful airfield sequence in L'eclisse, but I didn't want the video to be three hours long!)
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I’m 65 a huge film fan and like with music, I’m ever learning, ever expanding. I finally watched La Notte the other night and was mesmerized by it. I love it. So, I watched the other two films in the trilogy and I plan on watching Red Desert tonight or tomorrow. I enjoyed this presentation. You have a great voice… And I really relate to your love and respect for great films. I’m new to Antonioni and I watched him receiving an honorary Oscar on RUclips last night and I was brought immediately to tears. He is a beautiful discovery, even though I saw Blowup decades ago… I’m going to have to rewatch that one as well, thank you.
@@charlesheck6812 Thanks, Charles. Such a lovely comment, really appreciated. And I’ve probably learned more from Antonioni than any other director. L’Avventurra and L’Eclisse are incredible.
@@michaelbartlettfilm Thank you Michael for that nice reply. I didn’t want my comment to go too long so I didn’t comment on L’Avventura and L’Eclesse’. Antonioni is an interesting filmmaker… He respects the intelligence of his audience, which is something I greatly appreciate. L’Avventura I greatly enjoyed and I have my own theory why Claudia was so reluctant to reach out and put a hand on Sandro. As for L’Eclesse’, after watching it three times, I agree with you that it is a masterpiece. These are beautiful films and although there’s very little conventional plot, they take you on a ride that you just have to be willing to take. They are truly remarkable and man, oh man am I glad I finally got to see them. They take you into a world that you want to revisit, a world that definitely sticks with you, haunts you. ❤
My favourite director by a long way. I first saw Zabriskie Point as a young teenager, and it blew me away. Then Blow Up, then The Passenger (back in the days when interesting films tended to be on late-night TV!). It took me a bit longer to find his earlier films but yes I just love them all. Thanks for sharing your views, it has inspired me to watch his films again! (Also incidentally, I find the background story of Zabriskie Point absolutely fascinating too - of how Antonioni found the "actors" he used, Daria Halprin and Mark Frechette - and of course Frechette's sad demise.)
Glad you enjoyed, Martin. It does me good to read some Antonioni love! Zabriskie Point grows as a film for me, year by year.
I remember REALLY liking Eclipse when I saw it....That stock market scene is great.
Isn't it? Every sequence of that movie is etched in my memory.
Pedant's corner on my own video: The final shot in The Passenger is of course a travelling shot, not a pan. I just feel the 360 part of it "feels" like a pan. Pedantry over.
Very good thanx for posting.
Thanks, Ashley!
Antonioni movies are too beautiful to be true
And that’s so true!
Just finished watching 'L'Avventura', really enjoyed it, though I will admit I'd forgotten your review so was a bit disgruntled towards the end as I slowly realised we weren't going to find out what happened to Anna! But I see the importance of the film now, and it was fascinating watching these characters who seemed permanently bored and unable to form normal relationships with each other. Looking forward to watching 'La Notte' next.
They seem even more bored in La Notte!
My favorite director! (And I can't stand either La Notte or Blow-Up, both of which really suffer from too little or no Monica Vitti, respectively.)
Your number 1 selection is mine too -- great minds think alike ;)
Can't beat a bit of Monica! (But I thought you didn't care about actors...?😉)
@@michaelbartlettfilm Indeed I don't care about actors in terms of acting. I like Monica Vitti as part of the mise-en-scène.
A terrific channel for anyone that appreciates the syntax of film vs today's digital masquerading as film - a different technology and effect! So pleased to have found you, thanks to algorithmic gods. Rediscovering Antonioni is a current joy, having restarted anew with La Notte. You're right about Jeanne Moreau, although i started to enjoy her performance as one alienated from itself. The movie's resonance is thrilling - we continually risk dismissing the characters as 'passive' when they are, in fact, continually digging their own graves in the same cemetery, no less. Could there be greater agency?
Thanks so much for your comment and kind words! I hear you on La Notte, a film as complex as L'Avventurra and L'Eclisse, just more brittle, it seems to me. But Antonioni's exploration of character and psychology is superb.
@@michaelbartlettfilm The making of L’Avventura is astounding, Old Testament in its trials. The formal control MA needed to create in those circumstances cements admiration. Coming to Antonioni in our age (all meanings) feels doubly enriching. The single-minded virtuosity, the visually rendered psychological states - difficult to discern in the works of today’s best ‘directors’.
Any interest in the films of Peter Greenaway?
@@orton_re8360 Yes. Kind of despite myself - ha, ha! I recoil a bit from his leering use of nudity and grotesquerie - all the meat in The Cook The Thief! - his revelling in the "basics", the intellectual gamesplaying. But there's a handful of his films I go back to with fascination - Belly of an Architect, Drowning By Numbers, Zed and Two Noughts. At least he was a total original, and I find them strangely moving somehow despite their surface coldness.
I watched Blow Up for the first time earlier this month and I hated it. But for some reason I keep going back to it and I've since watched watched it three more times. 🤔 I have to say it gets more enjoyable each time and it has become my film of 2024 so far.
Looking forward to the 1000-subscriber video. ...a hot tub live stream maybe?!? 😆
You know, you get to 1k subscribers...then some sod unsubscribes!! So the livestream orgy will have to wait. David Hemmings never had this problem.
this film is everything breathless wished it was, the major difference between breathless and l'avventura is whereas breathless was pretentious just for the sake of perceived depth, l'avventura actually has a meaningful message, it's cryptic and enigmatic leaving room for a plethora of interpretations but it actually has something there, the shots are gorgeous, the characters are somewhat shallow but still expressive in a subtle way and the film has a remarkably drear and nihilistic atmosphere, to me the film is about alienation, loneliness and the difficulty of finding and maintaining love in an age of decadence, nihilism and sorrow
L'Avventura and L'Eclisse are dead cert top ten films of all time for me. They're so rich, I never get tired of them.
@@michaelbartlettfilm I haven't seen L'Eclisse yet but I'm certain it'll be impeccable!
Really good overview of this great artist, whose importance to film history cannot be overstressed. Antonioni was one among several major figures of the Fifties shifting to the Sixties, when a heightened maturity in the treatment of human psychology and relationships was growing in world cinema, combined with a search for a fresh formal idiom appropriate to these more bracing and truthful representations of human experience. Antonioni's cinema was central to this achievement.
'L'Eclisse' is also my favorite work by Antonioni, enduring as the quintessence of his art and sensibility. It's one of those films that truly becomes a part of one's life, a touchstone I return to recurrently in my mind as a source of acceptance and consolation. A masterwork among masterworks.
'Zabriskie Point' is such an interesting phenomenon, a film too flawed to be called a masterpiece, yet still a major work of art, essential within the canon. One of its distinctions (and I think it's one of the most haunting time capsules we have of American Sixties counterculture) is that it has what I regard as the greatest use of rock music in a film, powerful and unforgettable in conjunction with the literally explosive visuals at the end.
These are the two Antonioni features I value most among those I have experienced, but I did want to note that the extraordinary mobile shot at the conclusion of 'The Passenger' is strikingly congruent with some of the technical gestures being articulated around that time by Michael Snow in his avant-garde experiments, Antonioni's sequence being illustrative of how these obscure explorations by fringe and underground artists in time penetrated the wider cultural consciousness.
Thanks, Barry, I really appreciate your comments. And I agree, the use of Pink Floyd AND the Roy Orbison song at the end of Zabriskie Point is inspired. One interesting side note, in the recent Sight and Sound, Skolimowski hails Il Grido as Antonioni's best film...
@@michaelbartlettfilm I still hope to examine the individual poll responses from that recent exercise, the individual lists proving more interesting and valuable to me, in that they convey personal tastes and often lead me to new discoveries, whereas the collective ranking tends to reflect consensus opinion. I have a lot of respect for Skolimowski as an artist, so his opinions definitely matter to me.
@@barrymoore4470 How the hell did The Searchers fall to #72 in the directors' poll? Those directors should see optometrists ASAP.
@@willieluncheonette5843 I'm not a big fan of 'The Searchers' myself, so I don't take any particular issue with its decline in the rankings. Among Ford's Westerns that I have seen, I prefer 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance', from 1962, perhaps the director's last masterpiece and one of the great films of the Sixties.
@@barrymoore4470 We all have our own taste, no doubt. I agree 100% with your opinion of Liberty Valence.