Thu 19 at 7:00 E. State

L'Avventura (The Adventure)

Italy, 1959, 145 mins, laserdiscs
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Cast: Monica Vitti, Lea Massari, Gabrielle Ferzetti


Although greeted with miaowing and loud yawning during the 1960 Cannes film festival, with L'Avventura Antonioni established himself in the world of cinema and in the following years the movie became frequently rated as one of the most influential movies ever made. The film started friendly competition between Fellini and Antonioni, both Italians, as it was Fellini's La Dolce Vita and not Antonioni's L'Avventura which won the Palme d'or at the Festival. Nevertheless, Fellini appreciated Antonioni as a film director who developed a very specific style. Antonioni addressed the Cannes audience with the following short speech "Why do you think eroticism is so prevalent today in our literature, our theatrical shows, and elsewhere? It is a symptom of the emotional sickness of our time. But this preoccupation with the erotic world would not become so obsessive if Eros were healthy. But the Eros is sick, man is uneasy, something is bothering him. And whenever something bothers him, man reacts, but he reacts badly, only on erotic impulse, and he is unhappy."

As if to emphasise the words, L'Avventura is based in Sicily, with its stereotyped macho sexuality shown in the crowd of unemployed Sicilian workers leering, ogling and devouring Claudia. But perhaps the most apparent symptom of the emotional disease in L'Avventura is Sandro's compulsive serial eroticism, which is also acknowledge in the title - the adventure. For Sandro, "A woman is just another name for distraction from meaningful work." He is an erotic nomad. He works as an architect but he cannot plan the cities because he does not believe in life. The diseased Eros puts all its emphasis on the body and Antonioni shows us close-ups of faces, hair and hands touching. The main protagonists of L'Avventura and many other Antonioni's films are women. Antonioni explains "I love women. They are more instinctive, more sincere. They are a filter which allows us to see more clearly and to distinguish things."

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