Movie Description
L'AVVENTURA, one of Michelangelo Antonioni's most gripping works, features expert photography and an electric cast that, together, seem to try to fool the audience. As a result, viewers are engrossed as they watch the majestic film unroll, waiting for Antonioni to reveal a piece of plot or offer up any cinematic clue to help them solve the film's mystery. In a style that would later be known as Hitchcockian, that moment never comes. One summery Saturday afternoon a group of friends living in Rome departs on a yachting trip out to a local island. Two of the group, Anna (Lea Massari) and Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), young lovers considering marriage, have a dispute; that afternoon, Sandro announces that Anna is missing. A thorough search of the island is made on Anna's behalf, but she is never found, and Sandro, who remains relatively unconcerned, is never questioned. In fact, before the yachting group even returns to the mainland, Sandro tries to pick up Anna's best friend, Claudia (Monica Vitti). Still, he is not even considered suspicious, but viewers can smell a rat. Claudia and Sandro galavant through the Italian countryside, supposedly investigating Claudia's disappearance, but their true motives are never clear, even in the last--entirely enigmatic--scene of the movie.
| Credits | | Cast: | Dominique Blanchar, Lea Massari, Monica Vitti |
Notes
The film won the Special Jury prize at Cannes in 1960.
Michelangelo Antonioni, who is known for paying enormous attention to the detail and architecture of the buildings and landscapes he shoots, does a terrific job of it in L'AVVENTURA. The movie features fabulous houses and hotels, in which his camera follows characters in and out of doors, showing the exterior of the building as the character walks towards the door; then films the interior as the character enters, revealing the details of the long hallways, lavishly decorated rooms, and big open windows.
Antonioni also uses steep camera angles and frames full of ocean, water, and coastline to increase the viewer's suspense as the group travels to the island. From the island itself, he uses shots that look straight up the cliffs of rock from the water, and straight down into the water from the top of the island--with strikingly dramatic results.
Editorial Reviews
"...L'AVVENTURA is the most modern of masterpieces..."
Los Angeles Times - Kevin Thomas (09/03/1998)
"...L'AVVENTURA becomes a place in our imagination -- a melancholy moral desert..."
Chicago Sun-Times - Roger Ebert (01/19/1997)
"...The director's exquisite widescreen compositions have never felt so subtly pregnant with meaning..."
Entertainment Weekly - Michael Sauter
4 stars out of 5 -- "[T]he filmmaking -- the long tracking shots, the minimalist acting style, the creative use of empty spaces -- is hypnotic, extraordinary and extremely influential."
Empire - Ian Freer (07/01/2008)
Awards
1960CannesJury Prize
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