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pò .173

MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI’S NEO-HEALISMiA WOHLD VIEW

Robert J. Lyons

A DissertationSubmitted to the Graduate school of Bowling Green

State University in partial fulfillment ofthe requirements for the degree .of “

DOCTOH OP PHILOSOPHY

June 1973

Approved by Doctoral CommitteeA - Advisor

Department of English

Graduate School Representativef, Ja'O'Á'/l JÍSÍ _________

O-ij-k

BOWLING GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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ABSTRACT

In the mid-1950?s the Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni made a significant break from conventional neo-realism. He chose to call his experiment a •’development” of the neo-realist school.. .. What results in those films from Il Grido through Deserto Rosso is a personally redefined neo-realism characterized by emphases upon psychological reality. Blow-Up and Zabriskie point further develop the experiment by emphasizing cultural and technological realities. The study encompasses these last two periods of Antonioni’s career.

Dramatic, visual, and audio elements of style in the middle period from II Grido to Deserto Rosso are examined Inasmuch as they reveal an ideality-reality motif.Conclusions drawn from these examinations of motif corroborate statements made by the director in interviews and articles, and help formalize his personal theory of neo-realism,Blow-Up and Zabriskie point focus upon larger cultural realities. A more distant narrative point of view enables Antonioni to summarize in each of these films the vision of the world that is articulated meticulously during his second period but is there confined to the psychological reality of character.

The study asserts that the changed emphasis from the conventional sociological reality of early neo-realism reveals the director’s vision of life and death in the contemporary world. The vision sees mankind on the threshold of realizing a tremendous humanness, but in continual danger of being deceived and controlled by the reality he creates.

Antonioni’s personal definition of neo-realism can be understood only in terms of this world view. His cinematic style and unorthodox plots are used to convey this vision of man in constant confrontation with cultural realities, in fine, Antonioni defines neo-realism within the framework of his personal vision of life.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Michelangelo Antonioni *s Neo-Heallsm: A World View Is realized, through the interest and good will of many- persons. The initial problems inherent in this study were the obtaining of the films, the researching of unindexed . critical essays and the translating of numerous writings from foreign languages.

The courtesy and consideration of film distributors greatly facilitated my work. In particular, I wish to thank Contemporary-McGraw Hill, Grove press Film Division, Janus Films Inc., Audio-Brandon, the Skokie office of Films Incorporated and the Museum of Modern Art In New York. I am grateful to the Istituto italiano di Cultura In New York and the British Film Institute for their valuablecontributions to my research.

My special gratitude extends to the Heverend Anthony popetti, O.S.F.S. for his numerous translations of books and articles from the Italian, professors Hay Browne, Edgar Daniels and Ralph Wolfe read, corrected and made valuable suggestions for improving the manuscript. For tihelr professional dedication, I am deeply indebted. ,My warmest, personal thanks I extend to my wife Anne.

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TABLE 0? CONTENTSPage

INTRODUCTION............................................ vi-

IDEALITY AND REALITY AS DRAMATIC MOTIFSIN ANTONIONI’S MIDDLE PERIOD ..................... 1Ideality-Reality Motif: Emphasis upon the Real ... 2Ideality-Reality: Emphasis upon the Ideal.......... 17Ideality-Reality Juxtaposed. . . ............. .30

VISUAL LANGUAGE AND WORLD VIEW............ ..............50Circular Composition and World View........ .. . . .55Visual Restatement and World View. . . . . . . . . .70

pose ............ .70Symbol................................ 76

; * -Environmental Lines. .............. ......86

SOUND AND SILENCE: INTEGRAL ELEMENTS. . . . .............. 98

ANTONIONI’S NEO-REALISM: THREE ASPECTS OF REALITY . . . 112Inward Character Reality ■................ 114External Reality ..... ...................... 118Aesthetic Reality........................ 124

BLOW-UPs AN AESTHETICAL WORLD VIEW.............. .. 133Use of Black and White............................I36Role Reversals ........ .......... .... 145

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Communication Artifacts.................. .... 153Circular Structure...................... 172Visual Lines and Barrier Motif.......... 175Summary................ 177

WORLD VIEW AND APOCALYPSE. .................. 182

BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................... • • 193

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Introduction

This study of Michelangelo Antonioni’s films from II Grido to Zabriskie point proposes the thesis that Antonioni’s neo-realism reflects a unified world view. These films encompass the last two periods of Antonioni’s career, roughly from 1955 to 1970.

The scope of this study, surpassing both that of Pierre Leprohon’s Michelangelo Antonioni : An Introduction (1963), and Carlo Di Carlo’s Michelangelo Antonioni (1964-), provides an overview of Antonioni’s most significant films and unfolds a deeper understanding of Antonioni’s realism, a realism which is his vision for the contemporary world. Prior to this study no one has attempted such an overview; criticism,has focused on a single film or a particular aspect of a film. Carlo Di-Carlo's Michelangelo Antonioni, one of the two major studies of Antonioni before this time, is but a book of Italian critical essays which range topically from, Antonioni’? technique to his metaphysics. Leprohon’s Michelangelo Antonioni; An Introduction, while a valuable study of Antonioni’s films before I960, follows a chronological framework which never attempts to arrive at an overview. A significant part of his study, furthermore, is a compilation of unrelated quotes from critical reviews. Existing criticism on Antonioni supplies

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some help in this study but fails to see Antonioni’s neo-realism in toto. The single significant focus of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Neo-Realism: A World View is the identification of Antonioni’s perceptions of reality as they are portrayed through cinematic language.

For the purpose of-organization in this study, Antonioni’s cinematic articulation of his perceptions of reality is divided into three periods. His earlydocumentaries and fictional films reflect the socialconcerns of the Italian neo-realists and follow thestylistic patterns of that movement; his middle period, from II Grldo to Peserto Rosso, reflects Antonioni’s psychological concentration upon the Inward man; Blow-Up and Zabrlskle point, his two popular films, are more direct statements about reality and dhCoinpdss d cultural reality muchlarger than that reflected in the films of the earlier periods. These last two periods are of special importance In uncovering Antonioni’s unified world view.

Without specifically dividing Antonioni’s films into periods, Leprohon cites II Grido as the film which opened a new development for Antonioni’s neo-realism. In this study,I accept Leprohon*s distinction and add a further category for Blow-Up and Zabrlskle Point.

The first three chapters will identify the reality that Antonioni perceives and articulates in the dramatic,

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visual, and audio motifs of his. second period in the films from II Grido to Deserto Rosso. These chapters establish the importance of reality as a central motivating idea of Antonioni’s cinema. I turn in the fourth chapter to the director’s personal observations about the relationship of cinema and reality. In the following chapter Blow-Up is examined inasmuch as it is a synthesis of Antonioni’s entire second period. A concluding chapter discusses Blow-Up and Zabriskie Point as overt expressions of Antonioni’s life-long vision of reality.

Antonioni sought new horizons for neo-realism with Il Grido, L’Awentura, L’Ecllsse, La Notte and Deserto Rosso. By his own admission those horizons were intended to capture a reality hitherto untouched—the inward reality of man inasmuch aa he - is. affected by larger cultural -realities.After Deserto Rosso Antonioni stated in an Interview that his next film would do something new. Indeed, Blow-Up was something new. It focused upon external reality and man’s inability to control It. This new view of reality included much more than his former sociological and psychological concerns. It was a condition of future shock, of man existing in and controlled by his reality. Antonioni’s third development shows a world that man created, atechnological utopia that Is not only self-sufficient but is controller of its creator. Zabriskie point goes a step

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beyond. Blow-Up by depicting reality as dangerous, destructive, and holocaustai»

The most inclusive and consistent theme in Antonioni’s films, expressive of his vision of life, is the broad theme "ideality versus reality." The basic tension of every film is occasioned by a varied application of the conflict existing between the real and the unreal. Antonioni’s vision of life is intimately bound to his vision of truth. Hence, while in no sense a skeptic, he is a devout epistemologist. Knowledge and truth are for Antonioni something to be found in the natural order and experience of things. He rejects any notion of absolute immutable truths. Truth exists for Antonioni when it is verified by experience. Thematically, therefore, Antonioni denounces as unreal so-called speculative, ontological truth. Human discovery and assimilation of reality is the common adventure in each of Antonioni’s films.

Antonioni Is not a moralist. He Is a humanist. He is not articulating the obvious. He is exploring the subtle dimensions and implications of reality. As a cultural philosopher, Antonioni is attempting to articulateartistically a prophetic vision of reality. Time may prove or disprove the verity of his vision. Whatever his personal aesthetic, Antonioni’s films are significant if for no other reason than for the articulation of an

artist’s vision of man and. man’s cultural creations, criticf of popular culture must consider this vision.

The

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Chapter I

Ideality and Reality as Dramatic Motifs in Antonioni’s Middle period

The deceptiveness of reality is a central and fundamental element in the films of Michelangelo Antonioni. This chapter will formulate the director’s view of life, concentrating upon those dramatic situations which develop a motif of ideality-reality. It will limit consideration, furthermore, to those films of his second period in which Antonioni focuses his attention upon the Inward man. These films Include II Grido, Deserto Rosso, and his trilogy L* Awentura, La Notte, and L’Ecllsse. References to other films occur only for purposes of contrast.

Antonioni views reality as consistently deceptive, for numerous layers of meaning exist in any given perception. Ideality develops as a contrast with reality. The Ideal or real cannot be defined in any absolute moral terms of good or bad. They do receive, however, an ethical meaning from the situations In which the ideality-reality motifs are found. In order to formulate Antonioni’s view of life, anexamination of this motif is essential. While the motif is an aesthetic expression, the Implied view of life is

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is basically an ethical statement.This consistent motif in the films of Antonioni is

formed by the tension provoked in the contrasts of reality and Ideality. This is true of II Grldo and L’Avventura, to mention but a few. Frequently the contrast of reality with¿Adeality^As, subjt^,e,„ .someiim^s shading pnly. a . dimesnsion pf character or situation. Inasmuch as the motif emerges in various ways in the cinema of Antonioni, this chapter will examine ideality-reality as it occurs only in dramatic situations which emphasize the brutally real, the fantasized ideal, and the real and the ideal injuxtaposition.

1. The Ideality-Reality Motif: Emphasis upon the Real Emphasis on the real--if not brutally real—is

generally accepted as a major characteristic of the ItalianNeo-realistlo school of film-makers. With Antonioni there isan important difference in that the real with which heconcerns himself is an attitude, a state of consciousnessor psychological aberration, as opposed to the earlierheo-reallstic concern for historical or sociologicalreality. In short, Antonioni develops the reality of

ithe inward man, not the outward man. Leprohon cites

^Hollis Alpert, "Talk with Antonioni," Saturday Review, 27 October 1962, p. 65»

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Il Grido as the turning point in neo-reallstlc emphasis,2from outward to inward reality. The opening scenes of

Il Grido characterize the protagonist Aldo as an angry man. Upon hearing his wife’s plan to leave him for another man, Aldo" reacts to the humiliation and disillusionment by beating her in a public place before the eyes of the townsfolk. Aldo’s violent eruption proves the last straw for Irma. Subsequently Aldo begins a long pilgrimage with their small child RQ3lna to search for some viable pieces of his past. Each new encounter, each new relationship, however, only accentuates his emptiness. Life becomes increasingly miserable, spiraling to acute depths of Isolation and loneliness. Aldo’s social, economic, and personal regressions are synonymous with his entire life pilgrimage. Two scenes involving the child emphasize the brutal reality of his inward condition.

Early In the film as Aldo and the young girl are walking along a road, Roslna chases a ball for a group of school children. In so doing, the child runs into the path of a moving automobile. The near-accident upsets Aldo who angrily slaps the child before the eyes of her peers. In addition to characterizing Aldo, this scene restates the earlier scene In the town square. The child, on her part,

2pierre Leprohon, Michelangelo Antonioni: An Introduction, trans. Scott Sullivan (New Yorks Simon and Schuster, 1963)» p. 4-8.

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reacts similarly to her mother. She runs away from Aldo to a group of men standing on the roadside by a large, recently furrowed field. Buildings of a town can be seen on the horizon beyond the field.

The child’s sensitivity to the small society of men is immediately apparent. None of them talk; all look in different directions, their faces and demeanors are expressionless. Becoming frightened, the child cries. Arriving on the scene, Aldo reassures her: "No more crying, they’re all gentle."

Antonioni’s Implication becomes clear. The men are Inmates of a mental hospital. The child’s sensitivity, shown again later when Virginia and Aldo commit Virginia’s father to an Institution for the aged, Is a result of her natural freedom which is unaffected by the dictates of social norms and technological ethics. Roslna, "the little rose," is natural innocence. Aldo, on the other hand, is subtly identified with the Insane brutality of life. Aldo while aware of insanity is not afraid of it, nor does he outwardly associate with it anywhere in the film.

A second scene involving the child which develops an important recognition in Aldo follows the commitment of Virginia’s father to the old-age home. The child, strongly identified with the naturalness, rustic simplicity and Innocent charm of the old man, upset by the strange

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isolation she has sensed in the institution for the aged, discovers her father and Virginia lying In a ditch. This seduction scene, itself characteristic of Antonioni’s films, is more suggestive than erotic. The child’s discovery and subsequent reaction to the two in the ditch emphasizes the brutality of reality in the growth experience. Rosina runs from the ditch; her father follows. The love relationship she trusted and the pilgrimage she shared, with her father, now take on new, hitherto unsuspected dimensions for the child. Despite Aldo’s genuine love for Roslna, his gentleness with her, and his regret of infrequent outbursts of anger, he recognizes that an unselfish love demands that he send Rosina back to Irma. Hence, stripping himself of one more vestige of dignity and purpose, Aldo continues his Journey alone. Thus he regresses further into self andisolation.

In the course of the film Aldo is shown unable tocommunicate in four relationships with women. This is emblematic of Aldo’s inability to perceive reality and deal with it. The last of these encounters is significant inasmuch as Antonioni exaggerates the social and material aspects of the relationship. Andrelna lives in a small wooden shack. She sees Aldo as an opportunity to Improve her condition. Ironically, she later finds Aldo himself living in a similar shanty mending his shoes. The camera

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catches the pair in a desolate environment. At times, half the picture frame is sand. Aldo speaks only of the past and of his previous securities.

When the couple is next photographed they are living in a hut. Chilled and rain-drenched, Andrelna is weary of listening to Aldo’s complaints. She says: "Always something missing—now a hut but no food." When she leaves him, their final breakup is shot through a maze of doorways.

In the Andreina-Aldo relationship, Antonioni has brought Aldo to his lowest depth psychologically, spiritually and socially. Much like the island shots in L’Awentura—the long span shots of water, rock and sand— these scenes in II Grido are visual corollaries of Aldo’sinward isolation.

The stock market scene "iff T7 Soils se: providesanother excellent example of Antonioni’s accentuation of the brutally real, brutally real in terms of his characters and plot.

The film opens with Vittoria breaking an unfulfilling relationship with Rlccardo. When this is accomplished, the scene changes to a stock exchange where Piero, the broker of Vittoria’s mother, is singled out and followed by the camera.

^Penelope Houston, "L*Awentura," Sight and Sound,30 (Winter, 1961), 12.

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Vittoria enters the stock exchange, formerly a Roman temple where pillars dot the floor. Brokers are running about, people are screaming, a few stoic individuals sit in a center ring; five microphones extend from the ring in different directions; transactions are recorded on an enormous board which overhangs and dwarfs the entire building. When the scene, set, and mood of the moment are established, a bell rings. All movement and conversation cease immediately. An announcement is made that a colleague has died. Silence is requested in his remembrance. The camera backs off and above to take a pan scene of the entire set. Piero sights Vittoria and moves toward her. Significantly, at this initial meeting a pillar separates them; Piero leans behind it and a cryptic conversation ensues. He says: "Yes, I knew him but a minute here is worth millions."

Truly a powerful scene, It is Impressive but overwhelmingly dehumanizing. Values are distorted. There is no joy at the exchange, even when one wins. Despite the screams and involvement of the people, no humancommunication occurs, no appreciation for another human being exists. Antonioni cleverly Interrupts the activities of life at the exchange with something closely related to life—a reverence for death. Reacting like Pavlovian dogs, all are silent. The emotion of the scene and the words of

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Piero make it doubtful that anyone prays to a transcendent being or thinks reverently of his deceased colleague. The apparent respect for death becomes a sham, a mock worship In a modern pagan temple. A reverence for life is lost.In fact, a counter-reverence, a counter-appreciation for life is depicted. Not only are Piero the broker and Vittoria’s mother the buyer characterized, buttechnological society Itself falls within the scrutiny ofAntonioni.

An analogous scene occurs later in the same film after a drunken man steals Piero’s automobile. The scene opens with a curious crowd of onlookers watching a diver emerge from water as a crane pulls an automobile from a river. Piero meets Vittoria at the riverbank with the news that a man has died. The crane continues to pull the dripping automobile toward the bank when one onlooker, losing his balance, falls into the water. The crowd laughs at this mishap. Everyone talks simultaneously. Calliope music begins. The camera at once focuses upon the broken windshield and the outstretched arm of a lifeless manwhile the sound track records the carnival atmosphere ofthe crowd.

The same reversal of values, the same depreciation of human life and reverence for death conveyed in the stock exchange scene are restated in this incident at the river.

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Society at large becomes suspect. The inward reality of man’s consciousness, disrespect for other men and life itself brutally reappear.

Reality in Deserto Rosso is both Ironic and, ambiguous, it is ironic inasmuch as the technological world of men is dehumanized and Inverted. It is ambiguous inasmuch as it is viewed primarily through Giuliana’s eyes. Giuliana, the neurotic heroine, lives in utter fear of social mores, human relationships and technological controls. She has the humanness to react to brutality and the Imagination to hallucinate Ideality. Antonioni implies that she is far less neurotic than the society of characters around her who have neither the humanness to react, nor the courage to withstand the social and technological controls which reduce them to humanoid robots.

Perhaps this Is exactly what is implied when Giuliana goes to the apartment of Corrado, her husband’s business associate, to seduce or be seduced. On the story level she fulfills her neurotic roles she is confused at the desk, unable to remember his name; everything pains her-— hair, throat and mouth; she hallucinates during the seduction; she runs away at the conclusion of the scene.On the level of visual and audio imagery, her seduction hallucination is conveyed in collages of color with predominant reds and pinks while the sound track spurts

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an unpleasant discordant message like static interference. * Unquestionably Giuliana is characterized as ill inasmuch as she Is unable to handle her reality.

The question of her reality, it seems, should not be taken for granted. Antonioni has another motif running through the film that is as-predominant as Giuliana’s neurosis. The apartment episode conveys this motif graphically—reality itself is sick.2* The question of

birds flying through or around poisonous smoke from the factory at the end of the film summarizes this second motif of an Insane reality. Critics who identify all distortions of reality as Giuliana’s hallucinations seem to have missed Antonioni’s fuller meaning.

When Giuliana enters the apartment building, the distortions could, be -attributed to her sickness. On the other hand, they could signify the Insanity of reality.

The apartment episode is shown in total, glaring whiteness. As Giuliana walks along the corridor toward Corrodo’s room, the ceiling, floor and doors are ghost white. While the apartment itself is well ordered, colors are distorted by a white glare.

The seduction scene portrays acceptance and rejection as Giuliana at one and the same time seduces

. . /*Jean-Luc Godard, "Godard-Antonioni Interview," Cahlers du Cinema, English, No. 1 (January 1966), p. 23.

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Corrado and writhes under his advances, she says: "Why do I always need people, I must be stupid. ... X would like all the people here who ever loved me, around me like a wall." When he sits on the bed and she on. a chair in front of him, the camera comes in upon his back, completely blocking her from view. The shot could suggest the very thing Giuliana fears most, annihilation by insensitive, inhuman reality. Her comments about a human wall in this context are, indeed, appropriate.

Corrado’s overall characterization is unwholesomely but intentionally mechanical.^ As a representative of

advanced technology in search of mechanical experts to hire, he is without those qualities usually considered human: compassion, sensitivity, imagination, humor and creativity. His apartment could well-suggest , a mental hospital or some kind of inhuman institution. A bowl of thorns placed in his bedroom may suggest a human reversal In his character. Flowers, though more appropriate, symbolize life and growth. The character of Corrado is not identified in such terms.

In the episode which follows the apartment scene, Giuliana worries about her infidelity. Corrado’s advice Is in character: "Don’t think about it." She responds: "Sure,

5Andrew Sarris, Confessions of a Cultlst; On the Cinema 1955-1969 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 19?0), p. 192.

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just don’t think, fine solution. . . . There’s something terrible about reality and X don’t know what. Nobody tells me." surely her reality is inhuman and her reactions to It are neurotic Inasmuch as the insanity of technological society is presumed normal. Antonioni., is, Indeed, questioning thia presumption.6

The juxtaposition of the orgy and death ship scenes portrays the inhuman brutality of life. A technologically oriented group, Including Corrado and Giuliana’s husband Ugo, gather in a wooden shack built on a pier. Giuliana is present as an outsider in this so-called ’’normal" world.She hears a scream that is interpreted by the others as another of her hallucinations. The three couples communicate by talking about occult potions used throughout history to Increase sexual potency. A, highly suggestive stylized orgy follows the discussion. Before the death ship arrives, Corrodo breaks down the red inner walls of the shack forfirewood.

When the ship docks next to the shack in a foggy dampness and raises its yellow flag to indicate disease, Giuliana reacts with fear.

Reality is in no sense normal here, Antonioni’s neurotic creation, Giuliana, has every right to be

^Godard, p. 23

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different. Not only has he said in the breaking and burning of the red walls that man’s passionate sensuality is destructive? but, more significantly, the juxtaposition

implies sickness. In showing the seriousness of life by contrasting the orgy with the realization of death,Antonioni once again has accentuated man’s refusal to

confront reality. Reality for the society of Peserto Rosso is something which cannot transcend the ephemeral.

Several elements of this scene—the conversation, the orgy, the destruction of walls for firewood, the appearance of a death ship—taken together describe an Inhuman cultural phenomenon: society has adjusted to reality by becoming its slave. Giuliana, neither able to accept slavery nor to redeem her reality within a human synthesis, Is reduced to a helpless, pathetic dreamer.

In some sequences of L’Awentura the Ideality- reality motif can be identified as having an emphasis on the brutally real aspects of life. Antonioni goes to great lengths to characterize an elitist society which is unable to relate to its past or future, or to communicate within Itself. Relationships are alienations. A vase from an ancient civilization and a jawbone from antiquity attract only momentary attention. No one can articulate a plan to

?Sarrls, p. 35.

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find. Anna. Sandro and Claudia’s desire to find her amounts to no more than an Internalized half-wish. The meeting on the sloping rocks of the island to decide on a plan depicts a group of Individuals looking in different directions, deciding little. The rocky unprolific volcanic island itself is emblematic of the isolation of the individuals walking on it.®

A scene at the princess* villa restates the cold detachment and personal isolation of the group. Ettore comments: "40,000 persons a year vanish in Italy. 40,000— enough to fill a stadium.” The princess asks if Sandro himself could have gotten rid of Anna. Claudia is disturbed by the conversation. Her disillusionment with such attitudes helps her decide to search for Anna with Sandro.

The Gloria Perkins scene immediately precedes the villa scene. In this episode the camera follows an emotionally distraught crowd of men. The object of the masculine frenzy is an attractive, erotic-looking prostitute who professes to be a writer who takes dictation from the spirit world. If Antonioni is commenting in any way on aristocratic values in this film, he does it not without commenting on the social priorities and values of the other elements of society. Indeed, selfishness appears to

Q°Houston, p. 12.

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be the predominant reality of the human condition.Antonioni characterizes a sterile artist in the

architect Sandro. He is an unprolific artist who dreams ofcreating great and enduring edifices but is employed tomake estimates for a contractor. His lack of creativitycounterpoints his personal emptiness. In subtle waysthroughout the film the director reminds his audience ofSandro’s artistic sterility. Antonioni places a miniaturemodel building at the foot of the bed in which Sandro andAnna are lost in passion. In another scene Sandro spillsa bottle of ink on the design of a young architect’sdrawing. When Claudia joins Sandro to search for Anna,they happen upon an empty town In which every buildingapproximates the same grey color. Not a door,, window, orshutter is open. The church at the end of a narrow streetis without windows. The impressive bell tower contains nobells. The dialogue of the couple corroborates the visualimpression: "These buildings are madness; . . . it’s not atown, it’s a graveyard." inasmuch as Antonioni employsenvironment as a reflection of character, the naked, empty,characterless buildings might well be taken as a metaphoricvisualization of the Inward reality of Sandro himself. Asa visual metaphor of Isolation and uncreative purpose, the

ascene captures an unhappy, desolate inward reality.

9penelope Houston, "Keening up with the Antonioni’s, Sight and sound, 33 (spring, 1963)» 166.

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Much more could be said about brutal reality within the ideality-reality motif. Zabrlskle point, for example, accentuates literally explosive scenes, which reflect the cruelty and violence of the realities of technological society. La Motte and Blow-Up, in their turn, focus upon subtle inward realities that are figuratively explosive comments about contemporary culture..

Brutal reality is only one aspect of Antonioni’s artistry. To conclude that he is a pessimistic fatalist would, however, be premature. On the contrary, reality with Antonioni represents a life challenge. He is Iconoclastic inasmuch as he seeks to reveal the mythological lies of culture and faith,He is prophetic in his attempt to foresee the hidden slaveries involved In accepting technological utopias. Above all, he is a concerned director whose dream for man is humanistic.H When

realities appear brutal in Antonioni’s films, they are so because in his judgment reality is distorting human aspirations and values and threatens to dehumanize. Were it not for his implicit hope in man, he would certainly not address himself to these realities.

-J-Ojacque ponlol-Valcroze,. "The...R-H Factor and the New Cinema,” Cahlers du Cinema, English, No. 2 (1966), p. 78.

^Michele Manceaux, "In the Red Desert," Sight and Sound, 33 (winter, 1963)» H9.

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ii. Ideality-Reality: Emphasis upon the IdealAn ideality motif in a film of Antonioni reveals a

stabilizing Influence. The Influence itself could be good or bad in terms of broad cosmic Interpretations; but In terms of the individual character it is always good, sometimes therapeutic. A character will focus on an ideal star to stabilize his real situation. This choice of an ideal, however, may or may not coincide with Antonioni’s own view of life.

Ideality, then, is a point of reference that springs from the real. It could be a visualization of a conceptual existence as in the stylized orgy scene of Zabriskie point where the conceptual reality correlates to an existential reality, perhaps communal love is suggested conceptually as contrasted to communal war. It could be a visualization of something completely imaginary having little or no correlation to reality. The frolicking tennis game of Blow-Up, for example, could very well Illustrate visually the distance between appearance and reality, in both Instances Antonioni signifies visually a conceptual reality: one corresponding to reality, and one with only Imaginary correspondence. In this way he develops an Ideality motif.

Special thematic references, therefore, with or without an imprimatur from Antonioni, will appear as escapes

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from reality, distortions of reality, internalized fantasies, and Golden Age states of perfection. Ideality-reality motifs, with emphasis on ideality, always signify a stabilizing force. It is this notion of ideality, however, more than the above distinctions, which is significant when one examines Antonioni as an artist1 concerned with the ramifications of popular culture on human experience.

Anna’s father In L’Avventura represents the notion •' of ideality when Claudia brings him the two books left behind by his daughter. He Ignores one book yet grabs the Bible and comments that anyone who reads the Bible could never commit suicide. The book he ignores is Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night. The world for this man is black or white. His inability to recognize complexities in his daughter hints at a personal dogmatism. Slgnificantly, he leaves the search with an assertion of his trust in providence. His faith need not have a foundation In reality.

The young man with light hair, light shirt and trousers who walks along thè street toward the end of L’Eclisse when Piero and Vittoria last meet at the building site is no more than an ideality prop. At a time when the relationship of Piero and Vittoria appears hopeful, Vittoria steps aside to follow the young man with her eyes. Turning to pierò she says, "He’s got a beautiful face.” Vittoria reveals

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the dissatisfaction she finds in depth relationships with men. With this admission of her dream of a perfect man, the scene serves as a subtle foreshadowing.

In I1 Grido Virginia gives directions to a passing motorist and questions the marks indicating mountains on his map. After asking what these mean, she confesses that she has never seen a mountain. Shortly after this she tellsAldo that she would like to travel because she has neverseen mountains. A few scenes later a passing artist sells her a painting of a butterfly. Antonioni In but a few introductory scenes has described the inward Idealized reality of Virginia. The mountains signify her desire for freedom. The butterfly points out the contradictions involved in her Ideality. Unable to appreciate her father’s agrarian sensitivities for his farm which she has sold in order to open a gas station and where now trees are being razed by the new owner, she ironically longs for some communion with the natural. Surrounded by the beauties of nature, she Idealizes distant mountains and a framed artifact, the picture of a butterfly.

In Deserto Rosso, upon finding her otherwise healthy son paralized, Giuliana encourages the child to move in order to see the ship passing outside. He is apparently unable to move. Then Giuliana, at the boy’s prompting, relates a little fantasy of a small girl who

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lives alone on an idyllic island where everything is beautiful-—the sea is transparent and the sky Is pink. The girl is a child of nature enjoying the ocean, the sun and the clean air. As Giuliana tells her story, the audience sees it. One day ”an old-fashioned sailing ship that braves the seas and storms of the world" appears on the horizon, moving toward the island. After coming close, the seemingly empty ship goes away. As she watches the ship depart, the child hears singing. At first the voices are near, then distant, then near. Fear leaves the girl; she grows peaceful for she is alone. Giuliana’s son asks, "Who was singing?" "Everybody, everything," is his mother’s reply.As If somehow able to interpret the parable, her son is cured. The story is therapeutic. Giuliana’s ideality is , that bit of fantasized peace within herself which protects her from the frantic insanity of reality.

The director relates Giuliana’s narrative to the opening scene of the film: the singing voice identified by Giuliana as everybody and everything was initially heard then, blending with the whistles of the factory. The voice becomes a distinct, plaintive wail which eventually displaces the sound of whistles. Two points can be concluded about Antonioni’s use of sound here: the sound of Industry is given personality and the voice of the story is universalized to be the voice of life Itself. Thus

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life Is identified with technological society—the reality that Giuliana neurotically fears.

Those few scenes which include the boy show him as a technological man in miniature, a prototype of his father and Corrado. His toys include a robot, a spinning top which contains a gyroscope and:a little microscope with glass slides. His father compares the gyroscope to those used for steadying ships. Interestingly enough,it operates on the principle of containing a force within itself.

Giuliana’s husband is the successful technological man in charge of a factory. Ugo’s character is largely drawn against the background of powerful machines, electronic controls, multicolored metal pipes and gushing geysers of steam. Corrado’s character is drawn along similar lines, but his mission is to search for expert technicians for an industry in south America.

The two experts most pursued by Corrado had been inmates with Giuliana In a mental institution. Antonioni appears to make a serious indictment of the dehumanizing effects of technology. The choices open to such technological geniuses are commitment to asylums or personal surrender to technology. In such a context the asylum may be the more human choice because it Implies rejection of inward control. The other alternative reduces

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people to human robots.In L’Eollsse a series of Ideality episodes occurs

which functions both to define the character of Vittoria and to develop the motif of reality-ideality. Vittoria* s attraction to ideality manifests an inability to cope with reality. Although the breakup,of Vittoria and Rlccardo may appear to indicate Vittoria’s recognition and acceptance of reality, In light of later scenes it would seem more plausible to say that she is bewildered by the ruthlessness of reality and not able to see herself within it on realistic terms. Hence she searches for a viable reality within the framework of a subjective ideality.

The series of episodes which encompasses Vittoria’s pilgrimage through Ideality begins after the first stock exchange scene. Explaining her breakup with Riccardo to a girlfriend, Vittoria says: “There are days when a table, or chair, or book, or a man are all the same.“ Her equation of man and things reveals her distorted vision of reality.The scene also relates to the opening frames of the film in which Riccardo*s arms appear disjointed from his body, amidst a pile of books. Man and objects in visual

12confusion is used by the director to characterize Rlccardo. The Importance of this brief scene resides in its

12Ted perry,. "A Contextual Study of M. Antonioni’s Film L’Bclisse,» Speech Monograph, 37 (1970)» 81.

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transitional function. After having shown the realistic episodes of the breakup and the stock exchange, the director focuses upon the heroine’s reactions to reality. She is fearful, confused and lonely. With her reactionestablished, Antonioni pursues her escapes into ideality.

Antonioni’s documentary skills are revealed in the next scene when Vittoria visits her neighbor, a white girl from Kenya. An African mood is created with quickly cut shots of still pictures, paintings and African artifacts which are shown to the background rhythm of a native drum. Tension between advanced civilization and primitive society becomes Immediately apparent with the opening shot—a life-size picture of an African native.

As Vittoria plays a record of African drums, the camera moves from one still of Kenya to another. Detached from the conversation, she roams about the apartment captivated by the Ideality. At one point she touches an elephant hoof, functioning In the civilized world as a base for a coffee table. With, Vittoria*s ideality established, Antonioni cuts abruptly to re-create her primitive illusion: Vittoria and a third girl, both garbed In African costumes, dance to rhythmic drums in a darkened room among the pictures and artifacts. Her hair wrapped high in a ring and her skin darkened, Vittoria wears a metal arm band and rings in her ears. The Ideality is interrupted when the Kenyan

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girl turns on the light and asks them to stop. Vittoria and her friend are standing at that moment with their backs against a wall In much the same way as the original shot of the African native opened the sequence. Illusion and reality melt together in the stylized episode.

The conversation which-follows further defines the . white Kenyan girl’s paradoxes*> Expressing a desire to return to Kenya, she Indicates a loveof the primitive but rejects Its inconveniences. The entire episode Is emblematic of the confusion between the real and Ideal. While developing an unmistakable ideality, Antonioni contrasts it with a civilized reality.

Another Ideality is developed in the next scene. The black poodle of the Kenyan girl has escaped and is running the dark streets with a pack of vagrant dogs. The conversation between Vittoria and the girl during their chase for the poodle is significant. Vittoria observes reflectively that the people in Kenya "think less of happiness and are satisfied with getting along. Here everything is so complicated—even love." This observation affirms Vittoria’s awareness of the complexities andcontradictions of civilization.

When the girls reach the dogs, visual emphasis is placed entirely upon Vittoria. Seeing the black poodle playing with a white poodle, she asks If they have problems.

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The black poodle walks on its back paws around Vittoria and out of the frame. Thematically the scene continues to develop Vittoria’s ideality while working within another theme, that of man’s universal equality. The black-white motif, man’s alienation from man, brought out in the Kenyan dance Is further developed in the community of animals. Color Is no barrier for the poodles. Their closeness to nature, like that of the Kenyan natives, and their satisfaction with getting along, contrast with the complications of living in the reality of a technological society. In this respect, both scenes relating to the beauty of the primitive are manifestations of Vittoria’s attempt to articulate an ideality.

Flag poles, used for national flags at the Rome Olympics, provide Antonioni with a vehicle for defining Vittoria’s Inward turmoil In the following scene. Camera angle from above, the seemingly endless row of poles, a downward shot of Vittoria through the legs of a stone statue and a lone tree propped up by three wooden supports combine to make the scene highly descriptive visually. The small tree not only suggests the dependence of natural things upon the artificial in a technological culture, but stands as an emblem for Vittoria herself. The poles, perhaps suggesting alienation or barrier, along with Vittoria standing beneath the statue and shot through its

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stone legs at night, create a visual explanation of Vittoria’s reality—imprisonment, fear, depersonalization.

After a brief transitional scene, Antonioni proceeds with the ideality sequences. Two successive episodes follow within the ideality framework: the airplane trip to Verona and Vittoria’s tour of the small airport, inside the small plane Vittoria is seen with a group of people who are travelling to Verona on business. As the conversation centers upon flying and cloud formations, shots of the ground and facial expressions convey the Idea of freedom.The plane Itself may well be an emblem of freedom. Vittoria is pictured smiling and happy. As in the Kenyan dance, her countenance manifests an uninhibited freedom. Vittoria asks the pilot to fly through a cloud. Her friend’s face at once reflects discomfort and fear as the plane passes through the cloud. Vittoria, however, Is in her own element, she is in control of herself because the momentary reality is her ideality. Her friend’s reaction, on the other hand, suggests fear and insecurity.

The airport at Verona is in Vittoria’s vision a veritable utopia. As if mesmerized by the place she wanders off by herself toward the terminal. Two white men are seen talking on a porch; above them a stream of smoke trails four jet airplanes. On the sound track music is heard; it comes from the terminal cafe where an all-American type man sits

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at the bar drinking beer served by a woman bartender. Vittoria walks toward the terminal door where two black men sit leisurely, one in a white shirt, the other in a dark shirt. Without entering she nods a greeting to the American who says, "Hello!" she turns her attention toward two other white men who are drinking beer under a white and black . ’ umbrella; one wears a dark shirt, the other a white one. a

cut Is made to the Inside of the cafe where Vittoria is seen over the shoulder of the woman bartender through a large plate glass window. Another cut focuses again on the two black men sitting on the porch where Vittoria’s friends appear. She comments, "I love this place." With this remark the scene shifts to the second stock market episode.

Antonioni Is halfway into L’Bclisse when he begins the story of Vittoria and Piero. What he has dwelt upon In the first half of the film is Vittoria’s Inward self, her confusion with real life and her attempt to discover herself in an ideality. The airport scene is climactic in this development, she discovers there in her mind’s eye a technological utopia. The black-white motif is integral inasmuch as racial color is no barrier. Externals in no way hinder human relationships. The utopia Vittoria ha3 discovered is an upside-down version of reality—even toa woman bartender.

Antonioni reminds his audience of Vittoria’s ideality

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when the camera shows her through the cafe window. Windows and doorframes are often used by Antonioni to dictate separation or alienation.Such is the case with Rosina in the early scenes of II C-rido and of Claudia in the early scenes of L’Awentura. Here in L’Eclisse it appears to be no more than a reminder by Antonioni. Vittoria’s ideality, the window suggests, Is still distinct from reality. The American at home in a foreign setting, the black men at home in a white setting, the emulsion of black and white in the shirts and umbrella are morality types and symbols. The airport people are simple but civilized. They represent a cultural phenomenon for Antonioni: happy people in a technological environment. Vittoria loves the place because it is the fruition of her ideality search in Kenya and her conversation with the black poodle. Masculine relationships need not be feared in the ideality because no masculine dominance exists. Vittoria’s ideality has been defined within the larger context of a transitory, unfulfilling, selfish, and dehumanizing reality. It would seem then, should this evaluation be accurate, that Antonioni is not a cultural primltlvist; that he is not afraid of a humanized technological society; that, in fact, he sees technology as an aid to human communication, as long as

13Ibld.

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mankind understands and directs Its Influence.While the ideality motif may suggest a different

thematic statement in each film, depending upon its specific relationship to the plot, the consistent appearance of an ideality motif in so many films suggests a prior concern of the director that borders on the nature of truth itself.:: Antonioni’s understanding of man, his view of contemporary . life, and his vision for the future hinges upon his self perception, egotistical though it is, that he possesses the ability to pierce the ambiguities of reality. Antonioni’s realism In films, disguised In the notion of anepistemological search for truth, is certainly not as complex as the characters he develops. Antonioni believes in his personal world view. It has, as a matter of fact, changed little since the mid-fifties. The Ideality escapes that his characters manifest, whether they be blind rejections of the real, neurotic distortions, romantic fantasies or hoped-for goals are escapes that the director himself sees either as hindrances or as steppingstones to an understanding of reality and a-personal assimilation of it. The world revealed in Antonioni’s films Is Antonioni’s world. Its heroes or horoines are those individuals who are simply able to react to the inhuman aspects of their environment, who suffer through their idealities until they see the world as Antonioni sees it. Antonioni sees in his

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reality-ideality adventures a world that is chauvinistic, technologically dehumanizing, religiously hypocritical, humanly insensitive, systems-oriented and culturally racist.

ill. Ideality-Reality JuxtaposedJuxtaposition of the real and the ideal occurs In

most of Antonioni’s films.Even the previous analyses where reality and ideality are considered separately could be placed in a larger framework of reality-ideality juxtaposed. La Notte begins at the bedside ofa dying friend and works through the dark night of Ideality and disillusionment. It is resolved in the reality of a dawn.L* Awentura concludes on the reality of a relationship’s potential. These, however, are only broadly juxtaposedmotifs.

Antonioni’s first experiences in film-making were with the documentary film. Quick cutting, selective editing and juxtaposition of contrasting elements are some outstanding traits of this style which were carried into his feature films. Contrasting shots of this style are often ordered so as to make statements of their own. Sometimes

14Robert Hughes, ed., ”A Talk with M. Antonioni on His Work,” L’Awentura {trans, from Blanco e Nero, 1961)(New Yorks Grove Press, Inc., 1969)» p. 213.

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a statement corroborates a broader theme. Sometimes it addsanother subtle dimension to a theme.

perfecting this technique In the features so as to say something stylistically, as smoothly and subtly as possible, requires a lengthening of shots juxtaposed in unjarring contrasts, in the subtle contrasts of his features, understatement becomes evident. The length of feature films affords Antonioni an opportunity to be more literary.

The following sections will dwell upon integral juxtapositions of the ideal and real: scenes that are intended to be obvious contrasts, scenes revealing the tension existing between the human reality and the human ideality. As early as I Vintl (1952) this stylistic attribute Is strongly In evidence. Each of the three episodes of this film Is about youth; each reflects Antonioni’s documentary heritage; each ends in death; each reflects the postwar social phenomena of unrest and disillusionment; finally, each pivots upon the Ideality- reality of different generations. It is this last element that Is of special Interest inasmuch as it reflects part of Antonioni’s vision of life.

Antonioni carries this contrast technique into his middle period, those films from II Grido to Peserto Rosso which deal with the psychological realities of man. The

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technique is especially apparent in that part of II Grido which dwells upon Aldo’s relationship with Virginia. Aldo’s search for a new life results in Ironically new insights— insights which lead him deeper into the wasteland of self, Insights which decide Rosina*s return to her mother.Visually, Antonioni establishes the tension between ideality-reality in the opening scene of the sequence. Aldo and Rosina are riding on an oil truck toward a gas station. Set in the vastness of farmland, the station stands out immediately as an anomaly: not only Is it the sole building on this entire pastoral set, but it is also representative of technology. Aldo checks the possibility of staying at the station overnight. The station window serves as a barrier device between his daughter and him.15 The tension

between ideality-reality is demonstrated here in that Aldo is contained inside the set, while Rosina stands on the outside of it. Aldo’s environment defines his inward potential. His daughter meanwhile is neither confined nor limited, but she is separated.

With the visual contrasts established, Antonioni then develops the episode through editing along two parallel lines. The first of these is the story of Aldo and Virginia, the other the story of Virginia’s father and Roslna. The

■^Richard Roud, "Films," Sight and Sound," 30 (Winter, I960), 11.

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natural simplicity of an old rustic and a child are contrasted against the technological complexity of Virginia and Aldo. Ideality identifies with simple naturalness; reality identifies with a complicated divorce from naturalness.

Some six cuts establish the Ideality-reality motif in the Aldo-Virginia episode.- As the initial conversation between Virginia and Aldo takes place, a cut Is made to the initial conversation between Virginia’s father and the child. Roslna. polarization of forces, so to speak, occurs immediately in Roslna’s identification with the old man.Two cuts are quickly made between the Virginia-Aldoconversation and the old man-Rosina conversation. One of the last shots In this establishing sequence views Aldo from across the breasts of Virginia, perhaps a foreshadowing of the sensually limited scope of their relationship.

The following morning Aldo is mistaken by a customer as the station attendant. After the mistaken identity occurs, a cut is made to the old man-child conversation.The day passes in but a few seconds of film. The child and old man are seen joking and laughing with each other. After this scene a cross editing shows Aldo putting his daughter to bed and Virginia putting her father to bed. The couple then goes to bed together. The contrast of the child-old man’s relating with Vlrginia-Aldo’s attempted relating is

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a significant part of the ideality-reality development.The distance between the real and the ideal further

widens in the three remaining contrasts of the episode.While Aldo and Virginia spend their morning in bed, the child and Virginia’s father protest the cutting down of trees on the property that Virginia sold in exchange for the . station. As Virginia ironically buys the painting of a butterfly, the child and the old man are at the same time taking delight in an overturned farm wagon. Finally,Virginia commits her father to a home as the child, In perplexed bewilderment, views him among the aged and confined. The child’s subsequent dis@overy of Aldo and Virginia as they make love in a ditch only accentuates her bewilderment and widens the gap between a ruthless selfish reality and an innocent compassionate ideality. The one pole of the contrast is beautifully natural and uncontrlved, the other is extremely artificial and manipulated.

In terms of the ideality-reality motif, Antonioni has created in his documentary style a clear but subtle statement about reality. Virginia, perhaps out of necessity to survive, shifts from an agrarian to a technological life style. She is unable on the one hand to appreciate the benefits of naturalness, while on the other she allows herself to dream of distant mountains, she accepts a new

35

mechanical identity while buying pictures of butterflies.She desperately attempts to discover a fulfilling relationship, while remaining unwilling to accept responsibility for her father or Rosina. Virginia believes that life Is to be manipulated in order to satisfy selfish personal needs. -

Antonioni’s thematic statement becomes clear in thecharacter development of Aldo.- As man withdraws from anatural into a technical environment, he risks losing partof his humanness as well. Early in the film Aldo is calleda super mechanic; he is mistaken later as a station attendant.Aldo has reached his technological perfection before the filmopens; this fact is symbolized In the Initial shot of him atthe top of the refinery tower. His search throughout thefilm only confirms an Inhuman reality within him, a realitythat possesses him completely—inhibiting, controlling anddictating his social and personal regression. In Antonioni’smind, however, Aldo’s self-discovery and death are not so

i Aimportant as his search for freedom.The contrasting ideality motif of the child-old man

relationship suggests a power Inherent in natural innocence. Aldo’s return to the tower and his death at the end of the film is chronologically interrupted by his discovery that the

^Nadine Liber, "Antonioni Talks About His Work,"Life, 27 January 1967» p. 66.

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old. man has returned to his home despite Virginia’s machinations. The notion implied In this discovery Is that natural man cannot be controlled by the unnatural.

Antonioni’s documentary style strongly influences the development of the ideality-reality motif In Peserto Rosso as well. While the motif is developed through

compositional editing in only the Virginia-Aldo episodes, of I1 Grido, documentary style is employed throughout Peserto Rosso to develop the ideality-reality motif. Juxtaposed shots of ships recur as continual emblems of Giuliana’s ideality and contrast sharply with the technological reality of her environment. The ships signify her dream of escape or stability, her hoped-for salvation amidst an evil but unknown reality.

Seven significant juxtaposed cuts to ships are made in the progression of the film; these create a framework for an ideality-reality motif. Each ship is different: one is overpowering in its suggestion of strength, one is a plague ship, another a wooden ship, and one a rusty cargo ship at dock in oily water. In terms of Giuliana’s confrontation with reality the many faceted ships appear to parallel her growth. Before reaching an assimilation of reality with ideality, which occurs in the final factory scene, she Is seen contemplating escape on a rusty cargo ship at night.

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After the characters and. technological setting are established in Deserto Rosso, Antonioni brings his audience back to the initial factory setting. In a brief dialogue between Ugo, Giuliana’s husband and Corrado, another factory manager, one of the two observes that man can believe only in himself. From their rather philosophical interchange about man, a cut is made to a ship. It appears at first to be set in the ground but as the camera comes closer, a canal is visible. The intrusion of this massive ship upon the conversation of two spokesmen for the technological world suggests a dimension of reality far beyond the scope of theirvision. -

The next cut is to a wooden shack on a pier where an orgy scene occurs, in some respects, the long scene is like a miniature morality play about man’s inherent decadence.At the conclusion of the scene a ship docks opposite the shack and raises a yellow flag. When a doctor arrives, those In the shack talk of a scream Giuliana heard earlier. Giuliana panics and runs hysterically to her car. Close-up shots establish her alienation from the group. As a ship whistle sounds, she drives the car to the end of the pier as if to attempt an escape somehow from the empty reality around her. The ominous arrival of a plague ship in fog at the conclusion of the orgy again conveys a dimension of reality that these men and women, apart from Giuliana, are

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unwilling to acknowledge in their lives. Of all those present only Giuliana is sensitive to the tremendous irreverence for life depicted by the orgy. Only she reacts to the arrival of the death ship, which serves as a foreboding reminder of the seriousness of life.

Another cut brings the. audience into the bedroom of Giuliana’s child. From among his toys, all of which are highly suggestive of a technological world, the boy chooses to play with a top. Ugo explains to his son that It operates on the principle of a gyroscope, “like those that steady a ship.” The film Is cut to a deck where Giuliana accompanies Corrado who is searching to hire expert technicians. Surrounded by water the deck creates the illusion of a ship, when it is really a part of a large ocean drilling rig, a Texas tower. The original ship Illusion seems to have been deliberate. Antonioni meshes together the Ideality of Giuliana and the technological reality of Corrado. such a deck provides no escape whatsoever for Giuliana. Visually, however, it momentarily unites-for the viewer the two opposing world views represented by the two characters. It is, indeed, a clever bit of visual composition.

A brief cut is made to Corrado who is explaining the benefits of working in South America to a group of prospective workers. As he speaks a cut is made to a yard full of blue bottles; at first the bottles are out of focus

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and indistinguishable; a man responds to corrado’s technological pep talk by asking if women in South America go bare-breasted. Nothing is asked about the technological aspects of the employment. Visually, perhaps, Antonioni suggests bare breasts with the blue bottles and the subsequent question from the worker. From the realities of this industrialized world, a cut is made to a ship passing outside the bedroom window of Giuliana’s child who is temporarily paralized. If there is a relationship between the workers* Interest in bare breasts and the cut to the ship viewed through the window of a paralized child’s room, it would fall in the same general area as the previous cuts. The ship juxtaposed with the workers is a reminder that reality not only extends beyond their ability to comprehend but that their perceptions are Indeed paralized.

In the following scene Giuliana beckons her paralized child to look at the ship but this attempt at motivation fails. Upon the child’s urging Giuliana tells a romantic story of a small girl living on an island, who sees a sailing ship come and go, then hears extraordinary voices of "everybody and everything." The story heals the child’s paralysis. A cut is immediately made to a ship outside the room. This ship contrasts greatly with the wooden sailing ship of the story. A weird sounding whistle is heard by

40

Giuliana and an hallucination begins. It is significant that while healing the child, the fantasy ship Ignites Giuliana’s hallucination. The fantasy that is therapeutic for the child is simultaneously detrimental to Giuliana. Fantasy is her means of escaping the problems and responsibilities of an adult reality and can only be viewed as bizarre, neurotic behavior, so then, while the ship functions as an integral part of the ideality framework, Antonioni by no means suggests a complete surrender from the real. He does, however, suggest that it is a necessary imaginative dimension of reality. Its absence in Ugo and Corrado, and perhaps in the technological world at large, makes the perceiving of reality without an ideality an incomplete and sterile perception.

After two scenes in which Giuliana hallucinates severely, there is a cut to an evening view of a foreboding, rusty ship beneath which she stands dwarfed, framed in the silhouette of a piece of heavy machinery. Starting up the gangplank she Is stopped by a sailor on watch. Her conversation Is incoherent. "At times," she says, "I feel separated." She tells the sailor that she has been sick but tries not to think about it, and yet must think that "all that happens to me is my life."

Giuliana’s ideality in the scene almost becomes her reality for although she seriously contemplates running away,

4-1

she has no idea of where to go because she has no idea what it is that she fears. The rusty ship in oily water signifies a means of escape from reality and contrasts sharply with the wooden ship of her fantasy which sails on tranquil water.That she attempts no escapes on such a ship prepares the audience for her final compromise with the threatening elements of reality.

The next cut Is to the final scene of the film where Giuliana walks with her son outside the factory. Steam shoots forth from a pipe, poisonous yellow smoke streams from a stack. The child asks her why the smoke does not kill the birds. She answers by explaining that now the little birds know and "don’t fly through it anymore." On the sound track a factory noise is heard. On the screen distorted colors, appear, which resolve into shapes of steel- drums. The film ends. These last two sequences may indeed offer hope for Giuliana’s living in the inhuman reality she recognizes around her. Her response to the child that the birds have learned to avoid the oppressive, killing reality, and the final shot going from distortion to clarity of shapes, appear to be optimistic signs. If such an interpretation is accurate, Antonioni gives a pessimistic view of technological reality. Its dehumanizing influences are especially noticeable in a sensitively human, suffering person like Giuliana. The unquestioning person becomes a cog in the great technological wheel—a human robot.

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Antonioni uses the ships in the ideality-reality motif to bring his heroine to a view of reality that approximates his own. The realist must assimilate his environment. Thisassimilation demands that he cope with his environment without being controlled by It. In peserto Rosso Antonioni defines reality in terms of the technological world. He does not see, however, that the technological man’s belief in himself alone, nor his insensitivity to life and death, are any more valid perceptions of the world than is self-imposed isolation on a fantasy island. The fact that individual ships or allusions to ships possess different personalities, so to speak, indicates Antonioni’s own perceptions of reality. The ships serve to level distortions of the real from both extremes.

L’Awentura’s'expression of the ideality-reality, motif is complete and subtle. Done through juxtaposition of scenes and juxtaposition of character, it is not so strongly documentary in style as are II Grido and Peserto Rosso.

Early in L’Awentura when Antonioni is establishing the Anna-Sandro-claudia trio, he juxtaposes a scene which shows Claudia’s alienation from Sandro-Anna as well as identifying her with an ideality motif. Claudia and Anna are chauffeured from the villa of Anna’s father into a town square where Sandro has an apartment. While Claudia waits in the square, Anna goes into the apartment where almost

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immediately she begins undressing. Although Sandro is at first concerned about her waiting friend, Anna easily seduces him. His kiss at once becomes passsionate. The camera captures the kiss and Claudia standing in the square below, framed in the bedroom window. Sandro closes the drapes, removing Claudia from view.

The next shot is of Sandro and Anna in bed. Although they remain partially clothed, Antonioni clearly establishes that sensuality is basic to their relationship. A cut is made to Claudia who walks Into an art gallery below. The camera follows her to the sound of various comments of the art connoisseurs. When she leaves the gallery she looks up at Sandro’s bedroom window. There is a cut to the bed and another out to Claudia. In a shot taken from the top of the stairs, Claudia is framed In the open doorway which she shuts from the outside. The corridor and stairs are left In complete darkness.

The three cuts are essential in character description,Jespecially of Anna and Sandro who are shown as selfish victims

of their passions. The thought of someone awaiting their return detained Sandro only momentarily. Once his passion was aroused, all else was blocked out. Claudia’s waiting, her walk through the art gallery and her cutting off the daylight all contribute to her identification with the non-passionate and restrained aspects of life. Claudia’s

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part in the episode introduces the ideality motif, while the Sandro-Anna Involvement Introduces a contrasting reality motif.

Throughout the film Antonioni almost stereotypes certain characters within the ideality-reality framework to corroborate his point that the people in L’Awentura’s reality have no appreciation for an ideality. They live in an ephemeral, mutable and unnatural reality. This is not to say that he advocates a withdrawal from reality.Claudia’s adventure In the film is actually to work through the protective shields that the ideal provides her. She must learn to live and accept the fallibility of existing in the real. One character, Raimondo, finds a jawbone of some prehistoric life on the island and tosses it aside as worthless. A vase of an ancient civilization, thought by one to be a good gift, is passed around the Island group during the search for Anna. When the vase is dropped and broken, someone comments that it was worthless anyway. The police station is a visual anachronism set in an old ornate palace with complete disregard for tradition or heritage.The young prince paints only pictures of naked women because nothing in nature is of comparable beauty.Attempting to justify his architectural impotence, Sandro comments on contemporary architectures "In the past men

^5built for centuries, now only for twenty years.” Late In the film, after treating Claudia as a prostitute, Sandro finds the doors of a museum closed to his entrance; this scene contrasts with the earlier scene of Claudia walking through the art gallery. Antonioni does not allow Sandro such an escape from his sensuality. In short, the entire film reflects any number of examples wherein reality is associated with passion, and ideality is associated with art, respect for a civilized heritage, and a love ofnature.

This last, a love of nature, Is exemplified by the juxtaposition of characters in the yacht and island scenes.Of all who participate In the yachting party, Claudia is unique in her rapport with nature. While she is close to nature, Claudia remains aloof from human relationships. The others in the group are in pseudo-relationships: Anna-Sandro, Giulla-Corrado, patrizla-Haimondo. Each of theserelationships manifests impediments of incompatibility that make Claudia’s position appear desirable. All the establishing shots of Claudia on the boat show her as carefree and happy, but always alone. Her Identification with Anna is more superficial than real. Claudia’s non-involvement with people at times is framed to imply godliness. Much like the shot of her through Sandro’s window as he and Anna embraced, she Is seen on the yacht in a triangle of faces,

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watching from above as Raimondo seduces Patrizla. Later when Claudia is on the train with Sandro, she runs from his compartment to find renewed strength in watching the flirtations of two young people in another compartment.

Once the polarities of ideality-reality are established, Antonioni molds the remaining portions of the film in terms of this adventured The most significant episodes in the development of this motif are first the journey to Noto and then the couple’s arrival there.

The first of the two scenes shows Claudia and Sandro lying in romantic embrace in a field; they are fully clothed. As In the earlier love scene with Anna, a spark of physical contact ignites Sandro’s passion. As the camera comes in upon the back of Sandro’s head, Claudia’s hands are visible. He kisses ,her breast. ;The audience may think at first that they are viewing a re-enactment of the Sandro- Anna embrace. When Claudia comes to life, however, that part of her inward self, hidden in Ideality thus far, is depicted as a passionate sensuality. She takes a superior position on top of Sandro. The camera comes in upon the back of her head, Sandro’s attempts to move her are unsuccessful. A steam engine train shown in the distance suggests, perhaps, sexual fulfillment. As the train passes the Idyllic love setting, the couple appears exhausted.

The reversal in Claudia’s character, even to the

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sexual reversal, unfolds perhaps the personal quality that Claudia fears most: her own strong sensual drives. The guilt she experiences is projected into the scene whichfollows at Noto. When Sandro enters a hotel in search ofAnna, Claudia waits in the square. At first a single man stares silently at Claudia, then others gather until she Is completely surrounded by gaping men. Antonioni frames a scene of a town prostitute, which may be a stylized presentation of Claudia’s guilt; but more consistent with the style of L’ Awentura, it is a visual description of Claudia herself: a woman who avoids relationships through fear of her selfish inclinations. The ideality originally identified with Claudia is explained in terms of escape.The limiting sensual reality of Sandro is explained and resolved in the last scene when he recognizes his need for Claudia’s love. The final synthesis of the two extremes offers hope for a wholesome, enduring relationship.

Ideality-reality can be seen clearly but subtly in every one of Antonioni’s features from II Grido to Zabriskie Point. The motif is integrally woven into his trilogy. Zabriskie point states the motif in its bluntest terms. In broad terms II Grido has a base of reality, a suffocating, dehumanizing reality, in which Aldo increasingly discovers his own reality—that of a technological slave. L’Awentura

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actually begins in an unreality and resolves itself by working toward a reality. L’Eolisse opens on a real note, works through the unreal which includes a love affair, and ends on the reality of a separation. La Notte too opens in the real, works through a dark night of unreality to conclude in the truth of reality so Mnakedly exposed—that love no longer exists between them."I?- In his screenplay Antonioni

draws attention to the dawning of reality in his set directions.Deserto Rosso, much like II Grido, uses reality as a basis: a sensitive woman who is afraid of reality’s dehumanizing influence attempts to escape into unreality; the film has its resolution in her apparent, cautious acceptance of reality. Blow-Up states the questions immediately. What is real? What is ideal? The film presumes the real in the character of the photographer but is ‘ resolved in Ideality. It has been noted that Blow-Up contains “Antonioni’s entire repertoire of themes.*’^? The film

develops the whole epistemological question that the motif of Ideality-reality has provoked.

17 ..... .... .... - ..... . - -/Michelangelo Antonioni, Antonioni: Four Screenplays, (New York: The Orion press, 1963), p. 37^»

18Ibid., p. 373.

A?Max Kosloff, “The Blow-Up,** 20 (Spring, 1967),Film Quarterly, 23.

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in summation, the ideality-reality motifs in Antonioni’s middle period are more than dramatic formulae.They reflect the director’s own observations about life. Ruthless realities and naive idealities comment upon the present state of things in the world. Reviewers and critics consistently discuss isolated motifs, themes, characters, style, etc., but rarely pass beyond the Indididual significance of a given film. A composite picture of Antonioni’s world view is reflected clearly In his presentation of a deceptive reality. Antonioni’s perception of truth is more often than not at variance with the valuesand ideals of the cultural realities of western civilization. He is especially fearful of accepting dogmatic cultural systems. While technological society is a primary object of Antonioni’s scrutiny, religious dogmatism, the violability . of relationships and racial prejudice find a signifleant place in his repertoire of themes. These, however, only mirror the director’s view of reality, a reality that demands conformity, suppresses individual potential and dehumanizes. Worse than this, Antonioni concludes that western cultural reality is founded upon myth.

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Chapter II

Visual Language and World View

The first chapter demonstrates that Antonioni’s dramatic screenplays reveal an epistemological interest in the nature of truth. The truths for which characters search on the dramatic level, however, are truths already known by Antonioni. The director’s overriding confidence in his personal perceptions of reality is clearly illustrated by his visual composition. Characters search for what Antonioni has already learned. The visual dimension of Antonioni’s films demonstrates the remarkably godlike world view of the director. This visual composition is one reliable criterion the audience has for evaluating the choices, confrontations, and destinies of Antonioni’s characters, it is unmistakably one of the most Important aspects of his style.*

The thesis of this second chapter attributes importance to Antonioni’s visual style because it clearly reveals the arrangement and manipulation indicative of the director’s perception of reality. Two predominant characteristics of this style which have a special

l-Anne Paolucci, ’’Italian Film: Antonioni, Fellini, Bolognini,” Massachusetts Review, 7 (summer, 1966), 562.

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relationship to Antonioni’s world, view will be considered, in detail here. The first of these is a circular movement of composition. The second is visual restatement through metaphoric use of line, pose and objects.

Circular composition exists in a significant number of Antonioni’s films. In the last chapter some attention was given to his circular movement of plot. This samecharacteristic of tying together the beginning and ending of his films is an element of style that appears also on the visual level. The circular pattern is a stylistic carry-over from Antonioni’s documentary experiments.However, this chapter will illustrate how the technique is used in II Grido, L’Eclisse, peserto Hosso and Blow-Up for purposes beyond technique alone. In these films Antonioni is clearly making stylistic statements about life which reflect his personal world view.

Antonioni achieves visual restatement in all of his films by employing lines, poses and objects to strengthen what Is being said on the dramatic and thematic levels of plot. Through scrupulous selective camera movement, he creates a metaphoric dimension which reveals his personal view of the world. The lines of doors, windows, buildings and other elements of the setting function to convey such limitations as alienation, confinement or Impotence.

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Character positioning, angle of take and emphasis upon an inanimate object or part of a human body suggests such diverse notions as limitation and liberty, impotence and power, or insensitivity and perceptiveness.

Circular movement and restatement are IllustratedIn the documentaries N. U. and I Vinti. The director achieves circular composition by beginning and ending N. U. and the Italian episode of I Vinti with the same scene.

In N. U. a train entering a city in early morning, moving from left to right on the screen, introduces the street cleaner. After a point by point commentary on the street cleaner’s life, the train leaves at dusk moving now from right to left, while a lone cleaner walks from the viewer deep into a mall where pillars and buildings bankeach side.

The Italian episode of I Vinti opens with a shot of a town square, a church and a large home. It cuts to a bedroom with a crucifix over the bed, a shot through large French windows to a square and the introduction of a husband and wife concerned over their son’s absence. The camera follows them to the son’s room where his empty bed is not only central in dialogue but also in visual emphasis.

The son’s exploits in cigarette smuggling are next introduced, police upset a smuggling attempt, shots are fired, and the smugglers run. Carlos, the son of these

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wealthy parents, escapes over a bridge which is under construction. He shoots a watchman, is wounded himself and runs over a narrow construction walk bridge. Unable to go farther, he descends through a maze of construction scaffolding where he eventually falls unconscious on the ground.

Next day he awakens to the movement of construction workers and begins his journey home. There are cuts to the family home, back to Carlos and then to the police who eventually discover that their missing person is engaged in

smuggling.At the film’s conclusion it is once again evening.

A succession of shots shows the square, the church and the home. When Carlos appears, the camera shows him through a barred gate as he walks to the front door of his home, police arrive to make the arrest. His parents are confused by the accusations, which are interrupted by the screams of a maid servant. A cut is made to the boy’s room where he „ lies face down on his bed—dead. The visual elements ofthe film have turned full circle.

Circular movement and line restatement are in evidence in these two examples. What occurs on the level of plot also occurs in an autonomous way on the visual level in the movement of train to train, bed to bed, andmorning to evening. An aesthetic order is established to

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suggest an ethical order inasmuch as life Itself is made to appear moving in an eternal circular motion.

The deep mall with rows of monuments contrasting with a lowly, tired street cleaner restates the dramatic motifs of loneliness and captivity which appear in N. U.The crucifix symbolizes visually the qualities of parental faith or religiosity in X Vintl. The unfinished bridge reinforces metaphorically the characterization of the son as well as prophesying his destiny. The boy’s fall from an unfinished bridge recalls his own life situation. That he awakens as the workers continue building identifies the boy even more acutely with the unfinished bridge.

The maze of building scaffolding which in L’gcllsse signifies hope in that scaffolding is emblematic of progress, growth and potential-,- ironically becomes a cage during Carlos’ descent through it. The vertical lines of the bridge scaffolding as well as those on the gate to his home, establish a recognizable barrier metaphor. The walk of the street cleaner on the mall, which is framed In concrete monuments and buildings, also creates a similar impression of imprisonment. Inasmuch as circular composition and visual restatement do exist and do further extend the meaning of Antonioni’s films, the following pages will examine a few of the more salient and, hopefully, more important visual elements in the films of his second period. These elements

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not only extend Individual meanings of films but considered together embrace a major facet of Antonioni’s philosophy of life.

i. Circular Composition and World ViewIl Grido reveals a beautifully symbolic circular

motif. Much underrated among Antonioni’s major features,2

this first film of his second period attempts to explore man’s inner psychological reality. The opening scene introduces Irma, and provides the initial complication, her discovery that her husband in Australia is dead. From the municipio she Is followed to the refinery where Aldo Is introduced. He is first seen standing on top of the refinery tower, where he apparently works and from which he can oversee the entire landscape beneath. He looks over his shoulder toward the refinery gate. A cut is made and Aldo is seen from above as Irma comes through the gate where she leaves Aldo’s lunch and walks quickly away. Aldo screams for her and begins to run after her, down the tower steps and through the busy refinery yard. Throughout this scene the camera follows Aldo from behind.

The visual aspects of Aldo’s introduction, while having a significance that takes shape as the film

2Richard Roud, ’’Films,” Sight and Sound, 30 (Winter, 1961), 10.

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progresses, identify him with his work in a special way. Not only Is he first seen above the rest of the men on the tower but the initial camera angle suggests that he is as overpowering as the tower itself. When the camera is shifted to a position above him, it functions as part of a selective omniscient narration. In short, the camera view lets the audience see as Aldo sees—Irma is beneath him, as is the refinery and Indeed the entire panorama. Aldo’s view of reality from the tower is like God’s view.

Under Italian law the Irma-Aldo relationship was considered illegal concubinage. Irma Is married and not free to remarry. News of her husband’s death has made her a free woman—free to marry or to reject Aldo. Her choice is the latter. Aldo’s reaction to this is at first Incredulity, then anger and finally despair. He decides to make a pilgrimage with his daughter Rosina to attempt to pick up the pieces of his life and begin anew. The disillusionment within himself only intensifies with each new relationship, encounter and discovery, until finally he returns to that place which provided a former security, the refinery tower.

The closing scenes of II Grido are masterpieces of contrast. The entire town is involved in protesting the building of a proposed jet airbase. The screams and flowing movement of the townspeople toward a chain of

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police is in direct contrast to the mute Aldo who fights desperately to move in an opposite direction. Going to a barred window Aldo sees Irma changing a baby’s diaper and realizes that she has remarried affluently. Little Rosina, Aldo’s daughter, comes down the cobblestone street and enters her mother’s new home. Aldo again looks through the barred window, which visually signifies separation, and is seen by Irma. A final contrast separates Aldo from both Irma and the community. The refinery fence is emblematic of his alienation as he moves along It and passes through the gate toward the tower. While Aldo climbs the tower, the protesting townspeople are seen running in the distance. The refinery is completely deserted bat for Aldo and Irma who has followed him there. Cuts are made between Aldo climbing and Irma running along the fence. Upon her arrival at the tower’s base Irma screams to Aldo, who apparently does not hear as he stands atop the tower taking in once again his former view.The audience shares Aldo’s viewpoint when a cut is made to Irma below from where Aldo appears mesmerized, mechanical and uncertain before hurling to his death.

The original contrasts of the scene depict the collapse of a technological man. The involvement of the townspeople’s protest of the invasion of technology into their midst—a jet airport—contrasts sharply with Aldo’s uninvolvement and his identification with the refinery tower,

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the symbol of his technological roots. The bars on the windows of Irma’s home and the maze of refinery fence intensify the theme of Aldo’s alienation from humanity.Not only has the film ended as It began, but, as in other films of Antonioni, calliope music Intensifies the circular motif of Aldo’s merry-go-round destiny.

A premature sympathy for the estranged and betrayed Aldo, which was created with the opening scene of the refinery, comes into fuller focus as each part of Aldo’s puzzling life falls into place. Thus the final refinery scene summarizes Aldo’s social impotence and completes the circle of his life. Aldo, the technological man, "the super mechanic" as he was called in the film, is most happy on top of the tower from where, as he told Andrelna, he sees the town, his house and.his daughter playing in the yard. The farther away he gets from the previous security of the refinery, the more his Inward desolation and inevitable destruction become clear. His overall failure in lifeappears to be a result of his being technologicalized.

Irma’s refusal to speak with Aldo in the opening scene may be indicative of her awareness of Aldo’s inability to hear or to communicate. By this standard her decision to leave him appears noble and her unheard final screams to a man figuratively unable to hear another’s voice seem to justify her first position. Whereas self-respect, parental

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responsibility or simply human survival fail to motivate Aldo, his return to the tower is but a futile attempt to achieve a former respected self-image. The tower offers him only illusions of godliness, or perhaps nothing at all.

Life goes on aesthetically without beginning or ending, falling into the great circular motion which contains it. Some people, like Irma, Elvira and Andrelna grow inwardly, try to reject what thwarts that growth and achieve a humanness despite the monotony of life. Some, like Aldo, when confronted with life’s challenges, crumble under the pressure. Aldo’s pilgrimage is on the physical level only. There is no Inward growth or discovery for him. His identifIcation with the tower In the first and final scenes also suggests that he has not changed.

The visual -circle in Deserto Rosso is both similarand different from that of II Grido. it is similar in beginning and ending with the same basic scene, with the ending not only commenting upon and giving personality to the opening scene but summarising the entire plot as well.It Is different in that the pessimism associated with Aldo’s failure to assimilate a challenging reality In II Grido becomes in Deserto Rosso a modified optimism because Giuliana is able to adapt to her reality.

Deserto Rosso’s film credits appear against a fascinatingly beautiful background of color. Fragmentized

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images depict parts of a factory; documentary editing of multicolored smoke stacks, pipes and various paraphernalia relating to a highly industrialized place, combine to depict a beautiful but threatening scene. A labor-Industry confrontation is visually described: on one side of the fence is a dormant factory; on the other side striking workers gather around union loudspeakers.

Against this background Giuliana appears, walking with her son outside the factory gate. A bizarre action gives an immediate insight into her neurotic personality when she insists that a workman sell her his partially eaten sandwich; hiding then in the weedy dump outside the factory, she eats ravenously. Her son refuses to bite when she offers him the sandwich. From this scene a cut is madeto the inside of the factory where her husband, aninfluential administrator, is introduced.

There is no human community in the scene. The lines of alienation are clearly drawn. Giuliana, while attempting to ally herself with the workers, is part of neither force. She is not only outside the stream of technology but also outside the stream of mankind as well.

Contrasting Giuliana’s alienation in the film is her son’s involvement in the industrial, technological complex. Significantly, he refuses to eat the bread

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offered him by his mother in the opening scene. William Arrowsmith in a speech given at the University of Buffalo in 1970 made an interesting observation about the discrepancies between the Italian dialogue and the English subtitles of this scene. Arrowsmith’s point about the sound truck announcement to the scab workers crossing the picket line contributes another possible dimension of meaning. He contends that more accurately translated, the announcement means that they are not worthy of the bread they eat.Should this be so, it would add even greater significance to Giuliana’s eating of the striker’s bread, alone and apart in the desolate dump outside the factory. Since her husband is part of the. factory management, the visual implications of Giuliana’s act define the duplicity of her role and perhaps hint at the duality of her personality. While sustained by her husband’s profession, she is at the same time revolting against it. Symbolically, she seeks strength from the opposition in order to face the technological reality of her life. So then, without even getting Into the story, Antonioni has visually stated the major problem and major complication to follow.

The plot and development of Giuliana’s character reflect repeatedly the notion of cycle—in fact, a vicious cycle. At one point in the dialogue Corrado even enunciates the cycle when he says, "We go, go, go—only to be back

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where we start." The circular composition of the final scene is, Indeed, foreshadowed by this remark. Unlike the opening scene, the factory now is pictured entire and in operation. As mother and son walk outside the fence, dressed as they were in the first scene, steam shoots from a pipe. After passing through the gate of the factory, the boy asks about the poisonous yellow smoke and its possible danger to the birds. Giuliana’s response is Interrupted by factory noise; with the noise distorted colors appear, then focus into varicolored drums. Giuliana answers: "Little birds know now and don’t fly through anymore." The last shot of the film is of the bright blue sky with the stream of yellow smoke in the foreground.

The final scene not only brings the film full circle, but also serves as a new and more optimistic beginning. Giuliana passes from darkness to light in the two final scenes. Her initial alienation has been resolved in compromise. The fence stands, the factory operates and the smoke threatens. Giuliana, nevertheless, follows her son through the gate as the confused, distorted drums In the factory yard are brought into clear focus. Although her son’s crossing first through the gate indicates a visual caution on Giuliana’s part, it is she who understands how a fragile nature manages to survive the threat of technology.It is she who understands the value of caution and the need

63for non-confrontation with the destructive forces in life.In short, Antonioni has visually lifted his heroine from the threatening forces that caused her so much suffering.Giuliana now understands how to live and she has learned this without surrendering her sanity or her dignity. Only the compromise of non-confrontation is implied in her new personality. .

The significance of the opening and closing scenesis entirely visual. Antonioni has manipulated each majorelement of the scenes into a circular pattern, whileobviously an aesthetical arrangement, the pattern suggeststhe director’s ethical, convictions as well. Contrary toInterpretations that place adaptation as a necessaryprerequisite for survival, the total thematic significance

3is much greater than mere survival. Survival meansdehumanization inasmuch as It equates man with other animals; Antonioni fears this in II Grido and Zabrlskle point.Giuliana and other heroines who overcome their oppressive reality have passed the test and can now bring a bit of needed humanity to It. Indeed, they have survived, but they have also initiated the conversion process for realityitself.

^Anthony Macklin, "Zabriskie point," Film Heritage,5 (spring, 197°)»

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The visual significance of this final scene is not only an optimistic upswing from the pessimistic elements of the plot, but it is an entirely different visual statement from the circular statement of II Grido. Whereas Aldo is consumed by his technological environment, Giuliana wins out over hers. After reaching the same depths of personal anguish as those experienced by Aldo, Giuliana rises to the challenges to synthesize her environment in terms of a personal wholeness. Antonioni suggests, then, an alternative to the threat of technological annihilation.

Blow-Up, Antonioni’s first feature done entirely in a British setting and the English language, is his third circular feature. The film begins with a shot of modern apartments or office buildings which are undisturbed by any movement or sound until a group of painted-face youth rides into view. The city is disrupted by the partying youth. Not only do they distract from the ordered uniformity of the city, but they place as well an emphasis on their own joviality, suggesting an almost complete freedom from the demands and responsibilities of organized society. A series of quick cuts back and forth from the painted faces of the youth to the dirty faces of factory workers introduces the leading character and prepares the audience for the major epistemological questions of the film—what is real and what is illusion.

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The ending of Blow-Up, though not shot in the midst of buildings, returns to the happy, painted-face clowns of the opening scene. The significance of this circular pattern of composition will be discussed in a later chapter dealing entirely with Blow-Up. Let it suffice now merely to point to Its existence and possible thematic implications.

L’Ecllsse is, perhaps, Antonioni’s visual masterpiece. No other of his films is so completely visually interdependent and integrated. While not manifesting a circular pattern, it does, nevertheless, end with a visual summary of the entire film. In one Interview Antonioni referred to this as his way of showing the "decomposition of things.Whatever his intent, the phenomenon is similar in technique to the circular pattern. The final effect is analogous to looking at a many-coiled spring tied together at one end of Its circumference. Rather than the single circular pattern, in L’Eolisse multiple circles join at the very end of the film, bringing together every part of the film at this moment of maximal signifloanee.

The final scene of L’Eolisse begins with a distant shot of the meeting place where Piero and Vittoria agreed to meet; neither is there. Antonioni develops a multiple-circular pattern by quickly cutting from one object to another,

4Charles Thomas Samuels, "An Interview with Antonioni," Film Heritage, 5 (Spring, 19?0), 10.

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alternating close-up and. distant shots. The effect of this documentary technique is that it creates Impressions rather than logical transitions. The objects that Antonioni selects for the montage are taken from every part of the film. His resultant summary statement illustrates the director’s convictions regarding the ephemeral quality of reality and the mutability of relationships.

The agreed time for the lovers’ rendezvous coincides exactly with the moment of an expected lunar eclipse. Hence the set is relatively dark, in quick succession the following appear: a nurse pushing a baby stroller, a water-gun sprinkler in a park, buildings, a mushroom tower, building materials, a fence around the construction site, a water drum next to the scaffolding, the corner of the building scaffolding site, a trotter passing in the adjoining street, trees, water leaking from the bottom of the drum, a stream of water flowing into a sewer, a woman waiting at a bus stop, a moving bus, the back wheel of a bus, a man and woman exiting from a bus, newspaper headlines: "The Atomic Age" and "peace Is Weak," children playing, a water-gun sprinkler being shut off, water dripping from a bush, the top of a nearby building, the empty streets, the smoke stream of an airplane overhead, two men looking ostensibly at a distant eclipse, a piece of wood floating in a water drum, the side of a man’s face turned skyward, the glasses of

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the same man reflecting the vacant meeting place, the building under construction, the sky above, a woman, a glare of light, the headlights of two approaching cars, the building scaffolding, a bus rounding a corner, people exiting and moving in different directions, the fence around the construction site, the silhouette of the building, complete darkness, a streetlight, the lighted street beneath, a dark,, threatening sky and a bright beam of light in the sky.

The scene lasts but a few beautiful minutes. Most of the finale relates to some point in the development of the relationship of piero and Vittoria. The new ingredients of the summary foretell the breakup of their relationship; the leak of the water drum into a sewer, the newspaper caption, the phallic implications of the water gun being shut off, the final drlplets of water falling from a bush, the empty street, the airplane, men looking off at the expected eclipse where the vacant meeting place is reflected In eye glasses, the glare of light, the street lamp and darkness. The continual emphasis upon water in the summary montage adds a further visual metaphor. Water is shown being shut off and dripping from a faucet and bush in one part of the montage, and running from a drum to a sewer in another. Should water be symbolic of hope, as the

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construction site is interpreted,^ the shots suggest a

cessation of hope.The mushroom tower recalls the end. of Vittoria* s

relationship with Riccardo which occurred at the beginningof the film. The baby carriage, the building site where thelovers met, the lines in the street over which the lovers sofrequently pass, water/ and in two instances a floatingpiece of wood in a drum—all are optimistic symbols whichserve the ironic purpose of reminding the viewer that thevisual hope established in the film comes to no fulfillment,

z 'no resolution and no function.0The circular motif of the newspaper caption, "peace

Is Weak" in one column and "The Atomic Age" in another, the trotter passing, the wheel of a bus, an airplane overhead, combine to suggest a rotation of events. The earth continues its rotation with or without the relationship of Piero and Vittoria. The placement of this summary in the context of a planetary eclipse not only creates an excellent visual metaphor which Integrates the film, but furthermore it demonstrates Antonioni’s conviction of eternal mutability.As the planets continue their circular path in space and meet in time but momentarily, so too, lovers meet but

^Ted perry, "A Contextual Study of M. Antonioni’s Film L’Eclisse," Speech Monographs, 37 (197°)» 86.

^Ibid., p. 81.

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momentarily in time to pass each other in space. While the phenomenon of an eclipse is being viewed by a man on a rooftop, a diminuâted reflection of the construction site where the lovers failed to meet appears in the lens of his eyeglass. The metaphor suggests that a microcosmic view of life Is indeed reflected in a macrocosmic view.7 The

macrocosmic example, in Antonioni’s mind, suggests motion, passing or mutability. His use of light and dark imagery at the film’s conclusion further corroborates the metaphor.

Ethically, Antonioni challenges in L’Eolisse some basic epistemological questions indigenous to his western culture. As he sees it, the most obvious question is the spurious assumption of an inviolable and absolute truth.While philosophers of his culture have traditionally argued for a metaphysical absoluteness using the ordered universe as a reasonable argument, Antonioni takes a second look at the same universe, Isolates the phenomenon of spatial eclipse and draws a contradictory conclusion from it.

Such an approach to truth not only indicates how entrenched Antonioni is In his culture, but also suggests the turmoil that such absoluteness may have caused him personally. It would seem that he attempts to offer no other alternatives than that the past was wrong, that time

7Michelangelo Antonioni, "The Event and the Image,” Sight and sound, 33 (Winter, 1963), 14.

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does change people, that an awareness of such inaccuracies is humanizing, that hope itself Is transitory and that the ultimate responsibility to life is responsibility for oneself. If any of these assumptions is accurate in the reconstruction of Antonioni’s world view, he asks for no tears in the breakup of the Piero-Vittoria relationship and no moral judgment of their intentions. He does ask, however, for a more flexible and less dogmatic ethical system.

ii. Visual Restatement and World ViewVisual restatement is a second major characteristic

of Antonioni’s style. Like the circular motif, this element of style also contributes to an understanding of the director’s philosophy of life, in it can be seen the controlling hand of the director. In this study three types of restatement will be discussed in their relationship to Antonioni’s larger world view; pose, symbol and environmental lines as an extension of character.

The first of these visual restatements is achieved through the pose of a character. Relegating dramatization to a place secondary in Importance, Antonioni is more concerned with the implications of his visual arrangement.His direction is as controlled as that of a puppeteer. L’Eclisse, for example, reveals this characteristic of

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direction in the black and white dog, the airport and the African dance scenes. The mock worship of the stock exchange scenes dramatizes a vicious materialistic liturgy and is a second example of visual restatement. Here it restates Vittoria’s view of a selfish world.

The scene in Piero’s office in which his arm repeatedly hinders a warm, complete embrace may easily be : interpreted as restatement., In the opening shots of Riccardo, Vittoria’s former lover, his arm too appears by itself in an edited sequence that includes lamp, disheveled books, a fan and a desk. Visually then, Antonioni equates both Riccardo and Piero with inanimate objects.Vittoria’s statement later in the film, “There are days when a table, or chair, or book, or man are all the same," restates the opening scene with Riccardo. Piero’s arm in the love embrace which occurs in his office may well have a similar signiflcance. The Piero-Vittoria love scene, then, not only restates visually the opening scene with Riccardo, but foreshadows the future of their relationship.

Immediately following the futile embrace, Vittoria and Piero mime in quick order the progression of their relationship: reserved lovers on a park bench, serious lovers

8john Simon, "Eclipse: Man into Object," New Leader,4 February 1963, pp. 27-28.

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who stare at each other, inhibited lovers kissing through a window pane and, finally, passionate lovers rolling on the floor. This mimed restatement is in direct opposition to a previous scene in which, while lying on church steps, they consider seriously the prospect of marriage. The mood of the mimicry is that love is a big game, that detachment is the sine qua non of relating.

Il Grido’s fight motif illustrates restatement of the Aldo-lrma clash; it also describes Aldo’s inward struggle. When Aldo becomes aware of Irma’s intention, he attempts to hold her by force. The argument which ensues is in three stages, each progressively more violent. Outside their home by the river bank they argue until Aldo raises his hand to slap Irma. Later, inside the house, Aldo grabs Irma, causing her to spill a pitcher of milk. Finally, in the town square Aldo humiliates Irma by physically beating her. Restatement of this fight motif occurs on the evening of Aldo and Rosina*s departure'from home. Their rest is disrupted by noises from a nearby prize-fight. There is a third recurrence of the fight motif when Rosina, eager to retrieve a ball for a group of school children, runs in front of a moving vehicle. : In an outburst of temper Aldo slaps Rosina before the eyes of the children, in the same manner that he slapped her mother in the square. Later Aldo fights men who insult and proposition the woman Virginia.

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A final Instance of the motif occurs when Aldo grabs a doctor and forces him down an embankment so that he willattend the woman Andrelna. In each of these incidents the fight motif functions to describe both the violence within Aldo and the spirit he needs to overcome his fate. It is when Aldo will no longer fight that his personal emptiness becomes evident and his self-destruction inevitable.

Obvious episodes denoting dramatic restatement in Deserto Rosso are the child’s identification with both the fantasy story related by his mother and the mechanical toys given him by his father, and Corrado’s destruction of the red walls In the orgy scene. Except for purposes of contrast, Giuliana’s child has a very, minor role in the film. He is not yet directly involved in the affairs of the adult technological world that surrounds him. As a factory manager, his father is immersed in the technological world; his mother is neurotically fearful of her technological environment.The child shares part of each world. He is cured by the fantasy story and enjoys playing with the toys. His part in the film is to restate the basic attitudes of his parents, but, at the same time, to stand as a composite reflection of both.

The orgy scene concludes with corrado breaking down the inside red wall of the wooden hut. In addition to the conversation about methods of achieving superhuman sexual

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potency which initiates the orgy, the inane destruction of the red wall for firewood further dramatizes this community’s attitude toward life: they see it in terms of myth and violence. By juxtaposing the two episodes of the orgy, Antonioni expresses in different idioms the same idea: both the myth and the violence of these would-be sophisticates reveal purely sensual/attitudes toward life. The natural creative power inherent in sex to build community is reversed by the group and restated in terms of destruction. While Giuliana appears sick, the socially secure group, cast as the accepted norm for society, appears selfish, detached, limited and abnormally insensitive toward life.

Three methods employed by Antonioni in L’Awentura to create dramatic restatement are pose, camera angle and parallel situations. Antonioni develops Claudia’s detached attitude by repeatedly positioning her to look at other relationships through windows and doors, from above or behind and from a distance. This revelation of her character contributes largely to an explanation of her inward fear that must be overcome if she is to love. Claudia and Anna are posed facing a wall while they change clothing after the mock drowning Incident. The camera here is placed directly behind them, visually divorcing the characters and restating the notion of detachment. Not only do all the searchers for Anna amble in different haphazard directions

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on the island, but at the meeting organized for the search each character is posed to look in a different direction. Claudia in the studio scene, as in earlier episodes, stands apart from Giulia and the prince when they embrace passionately. After moving among the nude paintings of the prince, she stands against a background of eyes and lips before expressing her condemnatory judgment. Not only do the nudes against which Giulia is posed express her passionate desires, but the lips and eyes reflect Claudia’s judgmental attitude toward what she considers human imperfection.

The notions of sensuality and guilt are also conveyed through a series of parallel scenes which make reference to prostitution. The Incident centered around the prostitute which creates chaos among the men of a town Is followed by a scene in which Claudia is viewed by the menfolk of Noto as a prostitute. This device functions as a restatement of a public and cultural attitude toward sex, as well as emphasizing the personal guilt that Claudia experiences after having intercourse with Sandro In the field. Sandro Is Identified with this attitude in the scene in which he coldly leaves Claudia In a hotel room against her protestations, which stem from fear of resembling a prostitute. A final parallel scene completes the motif; it occurs late in the film when Claudia discovers Sandro lying on the breast of the prostitute.

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pose defines Claudia’s non-involvement. Antonioni shows her as an observer of humanity who is completely disengaged from the realities of life. Her final acceptance of the fallible Sandro is also an acceptance of her own fallible self. Engaged in neither love nor wickedness prior to that final scene, her forgiving of Sandro indicates her own willingness to tangle with reality.

Each of the above examples of posed restatement is clearly the manipulation of Antonioni. These instances not only enhance the subtle innuendos of his visual composition, but more significantly, they Illustrate facets of the director’s personal view of life. The world is selfish, materialistic and violent. To approach this world on its own terms, or to avoid the responsibilities of approaching it at all, approximates a surrender of one’s humanity.

Symbol is another aspect of Antonioni’s visual restatement. Dominant symbols Inevitably arise in each of his films. The refinery tower Is the dominant symbol in Il Grido; the island and the search in L*Awentura; the hospital and the party in La Notte; the eclipse and the construction site in L’Eclisse; the ship and the factory in Deserto Rosso; the camera and the gun In Blow-Up; the airplane and the desert mansion in Zabriskie point. Despite these more obvious visual symbols, Antonioni is usually not thought

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to be a symbolist film-maker. ms ambiguity in using symbol is perhaps a reason for this for he avoids an overt use of symbol, precisely because of this ambiguity, the merit of a given symbol can almost always be subject to question.*0

Since Antonioni is concerned with the inward human realities during his second period, a valid criterion of a symbolic interpretation would be what light it focuses upon a given character, theme or situation.

A number of these visual symbols help to define Aldo in II Grido. During his argument with Irma the spilt milk as a fertility symbol foreshadows the end of his relationship with her. In one confrontation scene Aldo wants to buy Irma a belt to demonstrate his love. Ironically, the belt symbolizes all Aldo can offer her-—imprisonment and captivity, she refuses the gesture, "Why throw your money away for nothing?" and leaves him standing alone in the shop.

An umbrella defines Aldo’s relationship to Rosina.. Rosina, Aldo, Elvira and two other couples watch a speed boat race in the rain. Each couple stands together under an umbrella. Aldo’s child Rosina stands in front of Aldo and Elvira but outside the protection of the umbrella. As a

oGeoffrey Nowell-Smith, "Shape Around a Black Point," Sight and Sound, 33 (Winter, 1963), 19.

10Ibid., p. 20

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symbol of protection the umbrella functions metaphorically to define Aldo’s paternal protectiveness, or his lack of it. As the couples leave the race with the child who remains in the rain, they walk along the river bank to pass under the supporting structure of a bridge.

Toward the end of the film when Aldo has arrived humanly at his lowest point, Andrelna finds him in a shanty town mending a pair of boots. These worn-out boots are emblematic of his long pilgrimage toward self-discovery. Shortly after this scene the two are shot in a desolate location where two duck decoys stand to their left. Aldo’s nostalgic conversation about his former happiness has angered Andreina who, during the dialogue, absently picks up one of the decoys. The context of the sequence could connote any number of meanings; perhaps the obvious one is the simple parallel the wooden decoys have to Aldo and Andreina— lifeless, empty, hardened and with only an external resemblance to reality. A similar parallel could be attached to the rescue attempt In L* Awentura. There Sandro and Claudia are shot from behind, looking down from a rocky escarpment at two approaching boats; the entire shot is symbolic of their relationship at that point in the film. Rocks, two vertical bodies and two vertical boats: each beside the other but each separate and distinct, each boat and each person involved in an adventurous search.

79perhaps one of the most dominant visual symbols in

Il Grido is the pilgrimage itself. The camera follows Aldo’s movements scene after scene from behind, so that Aldo appears always to be moving away from his place of origin. Not until after the final episode with Andreina, when Aldo has decided to return to the tower, is he photographed coming toward the camera. The effect of this visual composition is to create a growing sense of estrangement from Aldo.

Sexual metaphors enter into Antonioni’s composition in many ways, from the spilt milk in II Grido to the more obvious suggestions of sensuality in L* Awentura, La Notte, L’Eclisse and Deserto Rosso. One sexual metaphor that Antonioni consistently relies upon is the female breast.Sandro In L*Awentura, tempted by his sensuous impulses toward the prostitute’s advances at the party, stops momentarily at a wall painting of a young woman. The painting is just beneath the balcony where the prostitute stands; an old man stands extremely close to the painting so that he appears to be sucking at her breasts. The pose of the shots both describes Sandro’s temptation and foreshadows Claudia’s discovery of him lying upon the prostitute’s breast.

A similar pose occurs in II Grido when Aldo arrives at Virginia’s gas station. He is shot over and beside the breasts of Virginia who stands sidewise in relationship to him. The shot again foreshadows the sensuous nature of the

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relationship that will develop between them. In Peserto Rosso Corrado’s speech to prospective workers for a far-away factory is interrupted by a quite inappropriate question from one worker who asks whether the women in that country go bare-breasted. A surrealistic shot suggesting numerous breasts immediately follows this question. When the shot Is focused, the suggested breasts are in reality but a pile of blue bottles.

phallic symbols occupy a significant place in the visual language of Antonioni. Indeed, the tower in II Grldo could be identified with Aldo’s masculinity. In L’Bclisse when Vittoria is shot beneath and between the legs of a statue, the shot suggests the notion of male dominance that Vittoria so fears. Claudia and Sandro in L’Awentura, after leaving the town of closed buildings and no residents, go to a nearby field to express their affection for each other. Claudia’s aggressiveness is depicted in her insistence upon assuming a superior position. An approaching train takes on the qualities of'a phallic symbol at this point. Its passing near the lovers suggests sexual fulfillment. Cameron, cites in detail the phallic symbols used in La Notte to characterizeLidia.

Part of Lidia’s problem is sexual, and during the first half of the film phallic symbols keep popping up. The champagne bottle in the Tommaso sequence was one. Later there are the rockets. The most blatant of all

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comes at this point In the film. Lidia threads her way along a row of concrete posts, absently fingering the first few. A tracking shot just above shoulder level behind her leaves us in no doubt of their significance.To the foregoing sexual symbols could be added

numerous others which lend themselves to interpretation: the filling of the gas tank of Lidia’s car in La Notte; the balloon which Vittoria sets1afloat from a baby carriage and encourages her Kenyan friend to destroy in L’Eolisse; the spears in the African episode of L’Ecllsse and in the boat scene of L’Awentura; the pillar between Piero and Vittoria in the stock market scene of L’Eolisse as well as the water faucet In the park of that same film; the smoke .stacks and the red walls in Deserto Rosso. In each example cited, the sexual symbol functions as a descriptive metaphor to extend and reflect the sensual qualities of a character’s personality.

The ship, a consistent symbol in Deserto Rosso, represents Giuliana’s desire for freedom and her longing for fulfillment. Her desire is colored and extended in several directions as at one time the ship is identified with a plague and at another with an idyllic utopia. In scene after scene, ships appear: a ship comes up the canal after the introductory scene; a ship carrying a plague victim

11Ian Cameron and Robin Wood, Antonioni (New York: Praeger Film Library, 1971), p. 80.

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arrives to interrupt the orgy on the pier; a beautiful wooden ship appears in the story that Giuliana relates to her son; and a dirty merchant ship tempts Giuliana to flee her situation. While the ship symbolizes escape, the subtle innuendos of reality are not disassociated from the magnificent symbol of ideality that Giuliana so longs after. Perhaps more than any other of Antonioni’s symbols, the ship in Deserto Rosso becomes intrusive.

Color itself is symbolic in Antonioni’s more recent films. The multi-colored walls of Giuliana’s proposed shop in Deserto Rosso serve Antonioni’s belief that man is affected more by his environment than vice versa. Before filming Blow-Up he painted buildings and streets; before shooting Deserto Rosso he painted the marshes. The white-faced frolickers in Blow-Up, the whitened bodies in the orgy scene of Zabriskie point, the factory smoke, the marsh and the hotel scenes in Deserto Rosso further Illustrate the seriousness he attributes to the metaphoric potential of color and black-white.

Religious symbolism enters into most of Antonioni’s films. Inasmuch as religion saturates his native culture, its presence appears quite natural. Often this entails no more than a crucifix on a wall, a person making the sign of a cross or a church dome silhouetting the horizon, perhaps this is the unique significance of the church in his films,

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that it has no significance. It is simply there. Its existence is casual except for certain moral guilts that it fosters; it is wholly Inefficacious in the lives of people.

In L’Awentura the central building in the empty town is a church. It is a church without windows and without bells in its tower; its doors are closed. In the same film Claudia is mistaken by the men of Noto to be a prostitute; the entire scene takes place on church steps. When Claudia and Sandro discuss marriage on the church roof and bells are rung accidentally, they observe that other bells respond.Again In L’Ecllsse Antonioni positions Piero and Vittoria on church steps when they discuss the possibility ofmarriage. In both films the couples resolve against a marriage commitment.

Nuns appear in both Blow-Up and L’Eolisse for no apparent reason and without influencing the action of either film. A priest engrossed in a prayerbook walks past the lovers* meeting place in L’Bclisse.

After Sandro leaves Claudia in the hotel in L’Awentura, he finds the museum doors locked, then spills ink on the drawing of a young architect who is creating a work of art for an empty church niche. Immediately after Sandro spills the ink, a procession of clerics and altar boys leaves a church in an ordered and regimented cadre.Sandro watches momentarily, then joins the procession. Thus

BOWLING GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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after treating Claudia as a prostitute and attempting to escape into a museum, he comes instead to recognize his artistic limitations in the spilling of the ink and joins the only outlet open to him—a church procession.

Upon the arrival of Sandro and Claudia at patrizla*s party, one male member stands on a landing fingering rosary beads. His presence could almost be overlooked were it not that he is positioned so centrally in the picture. Once noticed his presence is laughable, but evidently deliberate on Antonioni’s part.

The religious symbols Antonioni uses clearly cannot be interpreted in terms of church meanings. They are in fact anti-symbols of religion.

While omnipresent, the Church is without vitality.It is simply there, never entering into the lives of the characters, never assisting characters in the great personal struggles which confront them. It surrounds life, it occupies space on the horizon but it is in no way involved with the realities of men’s lives. Sven discussions of marriage on church settings in L’Awentura and L’Eclisse do nothing to motivate a character to give himself to love. The great problems of life remain to be solved by the individuals involved in them. The Church in the films ofAntonioni is a self-sufficient external reality that has no purpose in the life of any of his characters. Its

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presence is a mere emblematic carry-over of a metaphysical world order, so entrenched culturally that in Antonioni’s mind none of the realities of the contemporary world have in any way altered its rigid, unrealistic structures. The Church goes on by itself, in no apparent need of people.The unique cultural position it occupies is one of social and religious disengagement.

In a 1961 Interview with Bianco e Nero Antonionidiscussed this phenomenon as it relates to science. Theobservations that he made at the time are so important, notonly to his view of religion and science, but to his view ofmodern map as well, that an entire excerpt of that Interviewis given in translation below:

Today the world is endangered by an extremely serious split between a science that is totally and consciously projected Into the future, and a rigid and stereotyped morality which all of us recognize as such and yet sustain out of cowardice or sheer laziness. Where is this split most evident? what are its most obvious, its most sensitive, let us even say its most painful, areas? Consider the Renaissance man, his sense of joy, his fullness, his multifarious activities. They were men of great magnitude, technically able and at the same timeartistically creative, capable of feeling their own sense of dignity, their own sense of Importance as human beings, the Ptolemaic fullness of man. Then man discovered that his world was Copernican, an extremely limited world in an unknown universe. And today a new man is being born, fraught with all the fears and terrors and stammerings that are associated with a period of gestation. And what is even more serious, this new man immediately finds himself burdened with a heavy baggage of emotional traits which

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cannot exactly be called, old. and. outmoded, but rather unsuited and Inadequate. They condition us without offering us any help, they create problems without suggesting any possible solutions. And yet it seems that man will not rid himself of this baggage.He reacts, he loves, he hates, he suffers under the sway of moral forces and myths which today, when we are at the threshold of reaching the moon, should not be the same as those that prevailed at the time of Homer, but nevertheless are.

Man is quick to rid himself of his technological and scientific mistakes and misconceptions. Indeed, science has never been more humble and less dogmatic than It is today. Whereas our moral attitudes are governed by an absolute sense of stultification. In recent years, we have examined these moral attitudes very carefully, we have dissected them and analyzed them to the point of exhaustion.We have been capable of all this, but we have not been capable of finding new ones.We have not been capable of making any headway whatsoever toward a solution of this problem, of this ever-increasing split between more and more serious and more and moreaccentuated.12

Culturally, Antonioni can accept the phenomenon that is the Church only if it remains in its place; that is, as a ghost of the past.

A third major type of visual restatement exists where a setting is arranged so that lines become a metaphoric extension of character. This is such an Important part of Antonioni’s style, its use so saturating every film, that a

*2 "A Talk with Michelangelo Antonioni on His Work," L’Awentura (New York: Grove press, Inc., 1969), pp. 221-22.

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comprehensive analysis of lines for each of his films would be a study in itself. Attempts are being made currently to understand this visual language, perry’s Contextual Study of L’Bollsse is the only thorough study that has been done to this moment. Benderso.n is presently making such a frame by frame study of Fellini’s 8-g at the University of Buffalo.

Doors, windows, poles, trees, fences, scaffolding and other objects of similar line potential are used by Antonioni to suggest a disposition, attitude or situation of a character. In effect, environment becomes a "spiritual metaphor.”13 Vertical lines dominate this aspect of

Antonioni’s style although a few instances of horizontal lines, perhaps suggesting peace or contentment, are scattered throughout the films. For example, he uses church steps for such horizontal lines in two films: in the opening scene of N. U. and in a late scene of L’Awentura when Claudia and Sandro are together.

Because vertical lines are more dramatic and forceful, they suit Antonioni’s themes much better than do horizontal lines. From Antonioni’s use of lines which function independently but complementarlly to the action of the plot, Perry develops an interesting thesis for a barrier motif in L’Bclisse. While barrier and alienation

13-yernon Young, "Of Night, Fire and Water," Hudson Review, 15 (1962), 276.

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are suggested, visually through lines, more distinctions could be proffered as lines relate to action or character at a given moment. One critic has noted that "strict geometric patterns" are "poetically exact" metaphors for the characters

•1 Jlthemselves. This is so because support, confusion, confinement, limitation and isolation motifs also arise from the relationship of lines to character.

Lines suggesting barrier or alienation are seen in Il Grido in the confrontation between Aldo and Irma on the river bank. Like bars, the trees corroborate the division of characters; the camera moves from one character to another, in and around the narrow trees to a point where they almost distract from the action. Throughout the encounter Irma sits signifIcantly with her back against a tree, perhaps to suggest the need for strength or support. Less subtle suggestions of alienation occur late in the same film when Aldo looks through a barred window to see Irma changing a baby’s diaper. In the schoolyard scene Rosina is separated by a fence from her peers, the playing children. Finally, the refinery fence at the end of the film focuses exclusively upon Aldo’s alienation. Visually, from trees to fence, Aldo is defined as a hopelessly separated man.

The factory fence in Deserto Rosso serves a similar

■^Giulio Cesare Costello, "Cinema Italiano 1962," Sight and Sound, 32 (winter,’ 1962), 30.

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visual purpose. Giuliana remains outside the fence at the beginning of the film but passes through its gate at the end when she has resolved some of her fears, passing beyond the fence may suggest her new ability to confront those forces which divorce her from reality. In I Vintl the young smuggler passes through the gate of a grated fence to die.In his case the barrier symbol is one of imprisonment, similar to the fence in II Grldo.

Perry’s study points out the numerous uses of barrier symbols in L’Eclisse. Of those he mentions one of the most striking is the Ironic use of barrier. Perry notes that thelines in the street next to the construction site where thelovers meet are not the lines of a crosswalk but extendinstead in the same direction as the street. To go to their meeting place the lovers must cross over these lines which Perry claims are symbolic visual obstacles. The fact that they do cross over them, Perry contends, visually offers hope for the relationship. In the context of the film, however, they are used ironically—the love relationship goes nowhere.*^

Lines are used in at least three instances to articulate the breakup of relationships. Barrier lines are seen in the breakup of Vittoria and Riccardo. After

*-5perry, p. 87.

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returning to her apartment Vittoria looks from her window to Riccardo on the sidewalk; he stands behind a barred iron fence. A similar shot shows Piero and his unnamed girlfriend through a meshed iron window as they argue and separate; this shot visually completes their breakup. Interestingly enough, after Vittoria leaves Piero at his office for the last time, she walks down a stairwell cluttered with scaffolding to stand momentarily on the other side of the same meshed iron window. This is a visual foreshadowing of the film’s ending when the couple fails to meet as promised; the lines between the camera and the subjects photographed in each of these Instances visually articulate what is not enunciated on the dramatic level; namely, that obstacles exist which hinder the full realization of the relationship.

In ka Notte Lidia is shown in several situations which suggest the sexual unfulfillment of her marriage. One scene captures her fingering a row of poles. Vittoria in L’Ecllsse is shot among flag poles where a small tree is propped by three poles. In these Instances, the major implication of the lines seems to suggest support or theneed for it.

Shooting through windows and doorways, creating a framing effect on the character photographed, is another distinguishing trait of Antonioni. Although a type of barrier motif, it suggests more specifically the notions of isolation,

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immobility or personal limitation.Throughout II Grido Rosina is shot through glass

windows or open doors; she repeatedly stands outside while Aldo stands Inside. Waiting in an open square Claudia in L’Awentura is shot through Sandro’s apartment window as he and Anna make love inside.' This technique ostensibly allows the major action to occur close to the camera while In reality something equally significant is framed as a visual reminder of values. Both Rosina and Claudia are being mistreated, inasmuch as a prior action over which they have no control has isolated them from the main stream of action.

The prostitute stands behind a window when Sandro first sees her at the party in L’Awentura. Vittoria glances from the window of Piero’s parents’ apartment to see a serious woman framed in a darkened window across the alley. In Deserto Eosso ships are continually seen passing in the window of Giuliana’s son’s room. Both Claudia and Vittoria are frequently shown gazing out of windows. This use of the window makes a visual distinction between ideality and reality. Most often ideality is signified by what is outsidethe window.

Another variation of windows and doors suggests a barrier in the sense of deceit, when a character hides something of himself from another character, piero and Vittoria in L’Eclisse kiss through a pane of glass which

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separates them. Claudia in L’Awentura has the door closed in her face by Giulia at the conclusion of the studio scene; Claudia’s face is but inches from the door while Giulia’s face is inches from the same door inside the studio. In an opening scene of that film, after waiting for Anna to return with Sandro, Claudia walks to Sandro’s door and closes it, separating herself from the darkness inside. Near the closing of the film Claudia asks Sandro if he loves her. Again, a door between them is significant. A bit of playful dialogue follows: "I love you. Say it again. I don’t love you. I deserve that. I was only kidding, I love you." Her bedroom door, partially open, separates Claudia from Sandro. Visually, the dialogue is made superfluous by the door which suggests hiding, separation and deception.The prostitution scene follows and corroborates the visual implication of the door.

In 11 Grido the last scene showing Elvira is an excellent example of character delineation through visual lines. Edera, the self-indulgent sister of Elvira, seduces Aldo after a dance. In true character Aldo submits, but guilt prompts his leaving their home early the next day.Edera inquires about Aldo, but Elvira knows only that he left early. The shot of the area where the sisters’ dialogue occurs encompasses two rooms—one in light, one in darkness. Elvira is framed by the open door in the lighted room while

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Edera is in the darkened room a few steps lower than her sister. The visual composition of the shot narrates more about the characters than any action or dialogue could. Elvira is treated sympathetically, framed in light above Edera. While she stands visually as a good woman, she is limited personally in space and time, with little or nothing to offer Aldo. The contrast to this good woman is her sister Edera who is visually indicted for what she is. Her position beneath Elvira and In the darkness suggests her selfishness. The scene concludes with a fade-away. While the sequence communicates on numerous levels, visual and dramatic, the doorway and the positioning of characters on different levels illustrates Antonioni’s adept use of line.

The vertical lines of scaffolding in building construction can be read symbolically or for their sheer force of lines. The scaffolding of the bridge construction in - Vinti suggests hope on the level of symbol, while on the level of lines entanglement is suggested. The boy’s escape forces him to move against the vertical support of the new bridge as he climbs down and eventually falls.

L’Eolisse depends heavily upon the visual implication of such scaffolding, which surrounds the building where Piero and Vittoria meet. Scaffolding is found, too, within the stairwell of plero’s place of work. Close scrutiny indicates its presence outside his office window

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as well. "The scaffolding outside Piero’s office window and in the stairway is not only a sign that the world is in the process of being constructed, but also that this construction serves as a barrier between people, isolating them."^ On

the visual level Antonioni provides a plentitude of hope for the fulfillment of the love relationship of piero andVittoria. -

Should the scaffolding be read as imagery of support, a similar ironic effect is achieved. There is but one idea that can be added. Vittoria, after leaving Piero’s office where their mimicry of love has just occurred, descends steps surrounded by scaffolding. She leans her head against a beam momentarily before going outside to be shot through the Iron mesh window. The relationship is over, literally and visually. The boy’s descent through scaffolding in I Vinti foreshadows the destiny of another love relationship. Should the scaffolding lines suggest support, Antonioni may well be commenting upon the unpredictability of human freedom. In L’Eclisse he may be suggesting that support alone is not enough to fulfill a love relationship.However it is read, the additional visual implications of the characters* environment is, Indeed, an attempt to extend the inward reality of a character into an external phenomenon which further clarifies the human element

16perry, p. 86.

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involved.A final line characteristic, strongly suggestive of

personal confusion or detachment, is Antonioni’s use of corridor and door shots. Characters appear to be running toward further confinement when shot from behind; that is, as they move away from the camera. When the character approaches the camera, the effect is quite the opposite, as if to suggest leaving a tunnel toward some new recognition.

In I* Grldo Aldo is photographed in the former manner when Andreina leaves him. His search for her has led to her new place of residence. The scene is shot for the most part from behind and in corridors. While Aldo is asking for an explanation from her, the darkened corridor and doors suggest a maze. No less than five doorways are passed through; the camera remains behind him. Immediately after this scene Aldo begins his trek home to the tower. Metaphorically, Aldo could be described as running deeper into the tunnel of personal desolation.

Claudia’s walk to the studio with Giulia and the prince in L’Awentura, also shot from behind, concludes with a seduction scene and Claudia’s rejection by Giulia and the prince. Immediately after this scene Claudia decides to join Sandro in his search for Anna. Her decision is influenced as much by her discovery of emptiness in the aristocratic world around her as it is by her desire to be

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with Sandro. Visually, therefore, Antonioni follows Claudia down corridors until she reaches the depths of the tunnel; only then is she ready to consider her alternative to joinSandro.

Interestingly enough, Claudia’s final discovery of Sandro and the prostitute is introduced by her running through corridors, toward the camera, as she searches. Her body appears larger as she approaches the camera. This filming technique achieves an effect opposite to that achieved when a character moves away from the camera. Claudia Is leaving the visual tunnel. She discovers Sandro but can accept and forgive now. The lines of the corridor and the motion toward the camera are strong visual statements. Claudia’s regeneration, or perhaps resurrection, to the light of reality is suggested by the visual dimensions of the scene. Antonioni prepares his audience for the positive outcome of the film and says much about the inward personal growth of Claudia.

The visual dimensions of Antonioni’s film language are rich, subtle and ambiguous. Obviously, the visual characteristics of symbol, dramatic manipulation, line design and circular patterns but scratch the surface of the "new movie language and the beauty of its images" that the special award at Cannes recognized in L* Awentura. While substantiating the fact that Antonioni is attempting to bring

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the cinema to a fuller realization of its potential by a greater Interest in a visual language, this chapter has attempted to listen to the words of that visual language inasmuch as they relate to a comment about life itself— Antonioni’s world view. Consistent with his interest in the Inward man during his middle period, visual metaphors never become ends in themselves. They remain always part of the integrated whole of a given film. Their significance, then, must be interpreted in terms of that whole and Antonioni's purpose in creating it. It Is a contention of this study that Antonioni is making a significant aesthetic judgment about life—its pressures, contradictions and failures, as well as its abiding values, goals and victories. Ultimately, the responsibility to meet and win out in life must be met by the individual.Man’s success or failure in that confrontation depends upon his ability to read and to understand the involved cultural reality around him. Success or failure is not so Important for Antonioni as the willingness to confront it.x Confronting reality is not only humanizing for man, it is the way to realize ahumanized culture.

"^Stanley Kauffman, "Arrival of an Artist," New Republic, 10 April 1961, p. 26.

■^Nadine Liber, "Antonioni Talks about His Work," Life, 27 January 1967, pp. 66-67.

Chapter III

Sound and Silence: Integral Elements

Musical accompaniment to a film of Antonioni will never attract attention on its own merits. Partially at least, this is due to Antonioni’s own philosophy on sound andthe humility of his composer and director, Giovanni Fusco. Fusco’s music is found in every feature of Antonioni until

-J1964 with the exception of La Notte. Beginning in 1948 with N. U., all but two of his shorts could be added to the list,twelve films in all.

in an article Fusco wrote for Leprohon*s book on-^ntohlohiV 'lie °of f érs?r hdi sI’ve "remarks on theecbor’’¿ss dise --~of music:

•- !A 'peculiar -and-very-personal relationship, exists between Antonioni and music: he hates it, and he cannot do without it. But we ought not to conclude that this derives from an attitude

’ lightly arrived at; the revulsion he feels ..toward music is the fruit of long meditation.His sole and true obsession is the cinema.The translation of life into the exact dimensions of the cinema, the search for cinematographic equivalents to human values: this is what matters to him.2

*Ian Cameron and Robin Wood, Antonioni (New fork: praeger Film Library, 1971), pp. 43-51.

2Pierre Leprohon, Michelangelo Antonioni: An Introduction, trans. Scott Sullivan”(New fork: Simon and Schuster, 1963), p. 165.

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After confessing that Antonioni is not the easiest man to work with, Fusco says that he generally agrees with the objection Antonioni has for conventional background, music

which usually "ends by ’spoiling* the poetic atmosphere of the work."3 Fusco believes with Antonioni that music should

illuminate "certain situations . . . from a distance to the work’s dramatic texture" so as to "help the spectator to understand It at its most secret levels, and particularly to plumb the depths of character."^

Small orchestras of three to five instruments weremost effective for Fusco. Antonioni supervised the musician’s scores as they were composed, "questioning everything," determined to make them as skeletal as a film

.-.^required,, and.nothing more.-5 ..... . . .

.... . . -'Consistent -with'the tenets of neo-realism, Antonioni-believes that the extensive conventional use of music and dialogue with notable absences of background sound are contrary to experience. Conventional cinema in Antonioni’s mind Is too heavily dependent upon drama: its conventional plots are overly chronological; its use of flashbacks are tooartificially contrived into a time sequence; its dialogue is

3Ibid.^Ibld., p. 166.

5ibid.

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extremely verbal; its mood music is extraneous to the action; and its natural sounds are too unrealistically erased. In short, Antonioni believes that conventional direction has relegated the visual and audial dimensions of cinema to supporting aspects of drama. While drama is an analogous art form, it is, in Antonioni’s judgment, but part of the integrated whole in cinema. From the beginnings of cinema, the goal of an integrated form encouraged numerous directors to search for different avenues of expression. Thus,Antonioni’s experiments are but one director’s awareness of the potential In a growing modern art form.

Sound has been an adjunct to cinema from the early days of silent-film.- In-Antonioni’s mind the conventional use of sound has been one of the most misused and non-integrated

w ^'-elements!!ofj~fl-‘lm.‘ "His’effort -to--create'-films- with a -thematic- - •' wholeness -which--is motivated-‘by -a unif ied aesthetic idea .

has had a noticeable effect on his use of sound.Sound and silence have a predesigned place in all of

Antonioni’s major films. Silence, dialogue, music and natural background sounds are four elements of this one audial dimension. The characteristics of these elements as they exist in Antonioni’s films from II Grido to Zabriskie point are generally these: minimal reliance on verbal communication, use of music only when it is part of the dramatic and visual mood, the use of background sounds when they can be

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understood as narrative and finally, long periods of absolute silence.

Antonioni’s early documentaries, N. U. and t vinti, films of his first period, exhibit far more conventional audio characteristics than do his films of the second and the third periods. While more conventional, they nevertheless manifest an evolution of style towards his later position.The short documentary N. U., for example, employs a narrator’s voice only at the beginning of the film. There is no dialogue. A subdued but bouncy piano rhythm is used at the opening of the film; blues music later complements the mood of the street cleaners* plight. Sounds of a train when the film opens and again when it closes and the sound of wood burning on an open fire are the dominant background impressions. _ ,T.he f,i.to«< in ¿.short ,; ris fully under, the director’s -control. His use -of-blues-is-intended as an integrated mood music: its sound becomes prominant only at the climactic point of the film when people and pigs scavenge together in the city dump.

The director’s judgment can also be seen in the music used in the three episodes of I Vinti, a dramatic documentary of the early fifties. The film was commissioned as a documentary on the unrest of post-war youth. Antonioni gives each episode an ironic twist with the music he selects. Jazz in the French episode comments upon the pressures and pace

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of. modern living. The theme song "Danny Boy" in the English episode clashes with the suspense story of a young psychopath who attempts to gain the recognition of society. While externally the gentle "Danny Boy" type, the youth is really a schizophrenic maniac. The use of calliope at the beginning and end of the Italian episode carries the connotation of a fatalistic life cycle. It corresponds to the visual circular pattern found in the same episode.

In both N. U. and I Vinti the economy of words characteristic of Antonioni’s later films is evident. The director’s goal of a unified aesthetic impression, even in these early films, meant that he subordinate the many elements

- . •—-pf-film to the'visual element. Consequently,- the- music heselects never overshadows his visual arrangements. The

<? éA&si?è5'^b:s:ence:^of -silence-bhly'-e'lemeht .of, Antbnioni^.mpra, mature style that is not exhibited in these two films.

' - " ' - ’ Antonioni’s mature--theory,- with respect -to sound andsilence as integral thematic elements, is reflected in the films of his second period, II Grido to Deserto Rosso. Music never overshadows what is developed visually and dramatically. The natural background sounds of wind, waves, storm, birds, etc. are not erased from soundtracks, except in those instances when complete silence is better suited to his aesthetic idea. Sounds arising in dramatic situations are heard coming from radios, phonographs, dance bands, automobiles, boats, planes

and trains.

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Music other than that found in dramatic situationsseldom occurs in the films of Antonioni. Wen such does occur in introductory and theme music, it is characterized by economy: the music itself is heard infrequently and onlyone or a few instruments are used.

The film L*Avventura is introduced with a heavyarrangement of horns and strings which resembles the opening bars of the prize-winning musical accompaniment to Never on Sunday, also a film of I960. The light harmony of ’’Never on Sunday," however, is converted to a heavy, almost discordant sound in L’Avventura. In a progression of three repeating beats, the musical introduction establishes a somber, if not ominous si tone. The'credits of L’Bclisse open to the ■ -background of the "L’Eclisse Twist" sung by Mina, a popular

v «,‘-this¿abruptlyu-'èfiifts- to. heavy,,-/threat ening.^K'^AiÀ';z

——classical music. The credit music here is emblematic and." foreshadowing of the mutability theme developed in the film, • • - •inasmuch as the joys of life are portrayed as momentary and transient. So too the eclipse and the love relationships, like the music, are brief, pass quickly and change. Hence the introductions demonstrate the director’s effort to integrate the music with an overall thematic idea.

The last film of Antonioni’s second period, Deserto

°Ian Cameron, p. 150,

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Rosso, Illustrates the high degree of success he was able to achieve in integrating sound with other thematic components.In addition to color and focus, Antonioni associates music, too, with the hallucinations of Giuliana. From the Introductory music through each of Giuliana’s mental aberrations, the same eerie sound, suggestive of factory whistles and machinery.,) is consistently used. The credit

music bears strong resemblance to factory noise and evolves into the wailing of a human voice, singing in a whistling fashion. A marching sound with a machine-like military beat follows the introduction. Its resemblance to the later machine sounds of the factory is more than suggestive. Each time Giuliana hallucinates, the same sound recurs. When she • relates to her son the idyllic story of the little girl on an

r;~the' baffbphohW&woiPeiof <the • bredi-t s equenc e, -imitati»•-6- -of--whistles-..and- factory machinery, again sounds.; ____ , __ . ..

■ " ' . ' - As ah integrated component, the sound not onlyestablishes an eerie mood, but also distinguishes hallucination from actuality and suggests Giuliana’s basic fear ofdehumanization from her technological environment.Antonioni certainly realizes his goal of total integration in the sound track of Deserto Rosso.

That Antonioni used calliope music In I Vinti is Interesting since he later chose to use calliope sound in both Il Grido and L’Ecllsse. This sound, reminiscent of a

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carnival, a circus, a merry-go-round, or organ grinding, often occurs in conjunction with a circular motif: in II Grido the calliope plays at the beginning and ending of the film, coinciding with the visual metaphor of Aldo and the refinery tower; in I Vinti the calliope sound concludes the Italian episode when the boy returns to his bed to die. Since the episode is developed with a circular motif, the concluding calliope music is a strong corroborative element of the motif. Thematic integrity is present in each instance cited; the vicious cycle of life, the monotony of personal defeat or the depersonalization of culture are all suggested by thedirector.

The ironic mood of a carnival or a circus pervades the waterfront scene in L’Bclisse when Piero’s car is lifted 'fróat';thb'>fl;ver'''wlth'*à*d’è’adj’iaah -sitting behind' ■-the' wheel-. - One»

• of■■■■the -»many.-curious-spectators-in the - crowd of- onlookers.falls into thè river'as thè car is" pulled ashore; the crowd breaks into laughter and talk. The irony of the scene, complemented by the calliope, is as forceful as the stock market scene of the same film; in both cases death is treated superficially, formalistically and insensitively.The cold detachment of people at a tragic happening is heightened by the calliope.

A striking similarity exists in each instance where Antonioni uses calliope. The sound is heard at those

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.. moments when he is revealing negative aspects of life: the death of the boy in I Vintl, the death of Aldo in II Grido and the death scene from L’Eclisse. It was no accident or ignorance of good music that prompted its use. Calliope was chosen deliberately, not a perfectly harmonious calliope but one slightly cacophonous to accentuate the carnival atmosphere imposed upon a serious event.

To fit Antonioni’s concept of realism, background sounds are used as they would exist in reality. Band music is heard in the dance scene of II Grldo, the party scene of L’Awentura and the nightclub act and party episodes of La Notte. A record of African drums and the cafe music at

. ... the airport are nece'ssary’dramatic' sounds for’ the ideality "search in L’Bclisse. The singing of the old man and Rosina

;;Wr&h£in5lh.:GridQ: ;?contrasb-Siithe"JSi.mple <?happines s; ofi'aeommunicatlve - t a e- people .with the complex ..isolation.of the non-communicative.

/Sound;“ as was. noted in the above discussion of Peserto Rosso, is frequently used symbolically. In L’Awentura the sound of a train suggests sexual passion while screaming wind and thunderous waves suggest Anna’s annihilation. The sound of a screaching bus in L’Bclisse accentuates the idea of change and motion. When motor boats, helicopters,automobiles, airplanes and ships are heard, they can often be interpreted within a thematic context. The stock market bell summons a deafening crowd to ritualistic silence in

10?

L’Bcllsse; while in L’Awentura bells talk to one another naturally as characters struggle to communicate. The death implications of the orgy scene in Deserto Rosso are heightened by the fog horn of the ship.

Silence is probably the most outstanding characteristic of Antonioni’s sound tracks. Although cinema is multi-media, Antonioni considers the visual medium its most Important element. Thus he believes that the visual aspects should be able to carry most if not all of the meaning of a film. It Is, perhaps, this conviction that occasions great stretches of silence, while the visual and dramatic elements progress to the background of silence, meaning is conveyed very often in the silence Itself. The silence of the island in L* Awentura, the hospital scene of La Motte, the final

;.... <piort!ipns;; pfpA'ldb As travels• ¿In-Il'^Gr-ldo, -.the stppk exchange..and, ""'the airport scenes of "~L*BdlTsse, 'the factory and orgy-sequences ■ - of Deserto Rosso are all integral parts of the,total meaning. . .

Such silence is an appropriate adjunct to the struggles of each of Antonioni’s protagonists in these films. Bor each major character the ability to communicate the deep inner realities of life is a serious problem. Their despair, isolation, disillusionment and loneliness are emotions characterized most adequately through silence.

More specifically, Antonioni's directorial points of view, unorthodox plots, stoic moods and non-communication

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themes virtually dictate the style of his sound tracks. The narrative point of view is solely the prerogative of the director. In Antonioni’s mind, no outside Influence should infringe upon this domain. Actors are not to interpret their roles beyond what they are told when Antonioni directs a film. So too, background mood music would be a foreign or outside narrative adjunct. Antonioni considers the control of the narrative voice of the film the privilege and responsibility of the director. What cannot be narrated visually should not be narrated musically.

The bold unorthodoxy of Antonioni’s plots is another factor which works against a musical background score.

. Musical .scores ordinarily build with the progression of action contained in the plot so that the climactic points of the

-«music coincide-withthe dramatic climaxes: In II Grido, *'?~’Awentur a, ¿L’Eclisse and La Notte, Antonioni begins' -his -

action at climactic moments in character relationships without any warning or dramatic preparation for his audience. What follows in each instance explains post facto why failure exists. Were Antonioni to select musical background scores to coincide with his dramatic situations, such music would necessarily have to convey a significant absence of emotion in his characters; at the same time the musical score would have to express dramatic climax at the beginning of each film. Music is ordinarily used to accentuate emotion. Not only

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would music be used contrary to its conventional functions, but the unorthodox plot structures themselves would be contrary to the normal progression of a musical score. Hypothetically then, even were Antonioni not opposed to musical backgrounds, they would probably clash with the dramatic structures of his plots and his stoiccharacterizations.

The mood of Antonioni’s films is a third reason for his extensive use of silence. Music is traditionally used to overstate, or at least intensify, what is happening dramatically. There are few moments of open emotional conflict in Antonioni’s films. He is a director ofunderstatement. Situations which would ordinarily warrant emotional displays such as quarrels, love entanglements or .painful.'^;.eparat.ipna,jtiAntpniQni-.depicts ■ instead’ in a very low key. Aldo’s quarrels with Irma, Rosina, Virginia, Andreina and his fellow workers ,in II Grido are all shown in passive terms. Giuliana’s quarrels with her husband in Deserto Rosso and Claudia’s quarrel with -Sandro in L1 Awentura are understated. The love relationships of Vittoria and Piero in L’Eciisse and of Claudia and Sandro in L* Awentura; develop and deepen in the course of the films without supportive background music. Only at the culmination of the Claudia-Sandro relationship near the close of the film does the director add the dimension of music to intensify the

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importance of emotion. The separation of Lidia and Giovanni in ka Notte is also intensified by "a slow number, in harmony with the melancholy dawn of this new day.”7 The use of music

in each of these instances is consistent inasmuch as it appears in each case only after Antonioni has visually and dramatically already said everything about the relationships. The music is not an extraneous element; rather it is a corroborative of what the audience has already seen. The painful passing of Tommaso’s life in the opening scene of La Notte occurs In silence. Anna’s disappearance and the subsequent search episodes in L* Awentura are classic examples of silence when music would conventionally be

-- heard. Vittoria’s separation from Riccardo at the beginning of L’Bolisse and from piero near the conclusion of the film 'happen •without-extraneous music-. --Silence-in these, instances.,, « is conststent with'Antonioni’s belief that the visual level should carry the deep emotions of a film.

Thematically, the failure of communication is at the heart of all of Antonioni’s films. His characters not only fail to communicate with each other but are often not in touch with their environment because they fail to perceive reality correctly. If one accepts the premise that music

^Michelangelo Antonioni, Antonioni; pour Screenplays (New York; Orion Press, Inc., 1963), p. 276.

Ill

intensifies emotion and embellishes theme extraneously to what is happening visually and dramatically, the use of music with non-communication themes would be redundant.Dialogue itself ironically appears to function for no other reason than to indicate a failure of communication.Giuliana’s conversation with Corrado in his hotel room in peserto Rosso, the dialogue about love between Claudia and Sandro immediately before Sandro meets the prostitute in L’Awentura and, finally, the dialogue of Blow-Up throughout the entire film—all are inconsequential, if not meaningless.

An audience conditioned to elaborately sweeping background themes ivill be disappointed in the sparse musical dimensions of Antonioni’s films. Antonioni would considersuch reaction an indictment of the audience rather than of his art form. Few directors are more concerned with the tedious reconditioning—or•unconditioning—of an audience than is Antonioni. His sounds and silences, music and noise, voices and muffled words are always intended to contribute to the total meaning of a given moment. It Is Antonioni’s ambition to have cinema become a unique and a self-containedart form.

llA

Chapter IV

Antonioni’s Neo-Realism: Three Aspects of Reality

The preceding chapters indicate the importance of the concept of reality in the thematic, visual, and audial elements of Antonioni’s style. The relationship between style and theme, if not integral, is indeed intended to be so. Everything that Antonioni has said about his cinema is generated by his perception and Interpretation of reality.

In the 1950’s Antonioni, philosophizing about the future direction of neo-realism in cinema, saw a need for changing its emphasis from the events of a troubled post

? world-war Europe, to the•individual person suffering those1effects. His films from the late fifties through the

mid-sixties reflect this change of emphasis. They constitute what is identified here as his second period. Thematic emphasis during this period is upon the psychological reality of characters.

Antonioni saw not only a need for a new personal emphasis in neo-realism but a need as well to capture the

^Pierre Leprohon, Michelangelo Antonioni; An Introduction, trans. Scott Sullivan '(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963), PP. 85, 89, 96.

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phenomenon of change itself. The changing world, was such an obsession with Antonioni that he identified, change as the cause of much personal suffering. People, as Antonioni saw them, were simply not adjusting to the demands of a fast changing world.

Wile noting the possibilities that an ever-changing reality provided the neo-realists, he was, nevertheless, unwilling in 1955 to predict the future direction of his own

pcinema. Three years later, his thoughts more solidified, Antonioni expressed confidence in an ever-changing world as offering neo-realists an infinite repertoire of themes. "Reality changes so rapidly that if one theme is not dealt with, another presents itself. Allowing one’s attention to be attracted by each little thing has become a vice of the ,imagination., All ¿one has to,do is keep...on$*js ..eyes open: everything becomes full of meaning; everything cries out to be interpreted, reproduced."3

While reality is central to Antonioni’s philosophy of life and cinema, three distinct references to the notion of reality arise within his expressed theory. There is the external reality of an ever-changing world, a world which continues as if there were no change. There is the inward

^Ibld., p. 89.^Ibid., p. 88.

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psychological reality of his characters, which is developed, by focusing upon the interaction of character with external reality. Finally, there is an aesthetic reality which is the director’s attempt to articulate and interpret cinematicaliy the world reality. This last expresses Antonioni’s view of the world by dlrectorlally controlling every aspect of the inner psychological reality of character and the external sociological reality revealed inhis films.

The above deliniations are not always clearly distinguished in Antonioni’s statements about reality, perhaps he views these various aspects of reality as intimately bound to one another and trusts that his- aesthetic reality is a most authentic re-creation of the

--interaction; of >psyGhologicg.l .and sociological realities. Perhaps he has not distinguished them from one another In

. his own mind. In either case, the distinction isimportant if for no other reason than to follow Antonioni’s trend of thought when he talks about his cinema.

i. Inward Character RealityAntonioni’s goal of creating a deep psychological

reality not only marks his departure from earlier neo-realist films but from conventional films the world over. With

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respect to neo-realism, he saw his own cinema as a natural outgrowth of that tradition. Feeling that neo-realism had exhausted its material, however, he said in a 1961 Blanco e Nero article that the direction of neo-realism had to change emphasis from external to internal reality. "And it seemed to me that perhaps It was no longer important to examine the relationship between the individual and his environment, as it was to examine the individual himself, to look inside the individual and see, after all he had been through (the war, the Immediate post-war situation, all the events that were currently taking place and which were of sufficient gravity to leave their mark upon society and the individual), out of all this, to see what remained inside the individual."5

. , t Antonioni, knew -,-as .-.early.. as,.,1958 that his venture-intothe psychological depths of character necessitated stylisticmodifications different from those of his neo-realistpredecessors and from the dramatic emphasis of conventional cinema. One stylistic modification he imposed was. the lengthening of scenes by following his characters with the camera after the normal dramatic encounter had occurred.Scenes became longer, but more significantly, Antonioni’s

^Hollis Alpert, "Talk with Antonioni," Saturday Review, 2? October 1962, p. 65.

-^Michelangelo Antonioni, "A Talk with M. Antonioni on His Work," L’Awentura (New York; Grove press, Inc., 1969), p. 212.

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understatement became more pronounced in a style thatemphasized the reflective, solitary moments of an individualcharacter’s life. "The technique I use . . . seems to me tobe directly tied up with my desire to follow the charactersin order to unveil their most hidden thoughts. I mayperhaps be deceiving myself in thinking that one can makethem speak by following them with the camera. But I believeit is much more cinematographic to try to catch a character’sthoughts by showing his reactions whatever they may be, thanto wrap the whole thing up in a speech, than to resort to

zwhat practically amounts to an explanation."0Another significant stylistic modification that

resulted from Antonioni’s attempt to reveal inward psychological reality was his metaphoric use of environment.

ai Environment' often'describes a character’s inward- condition,• establishes visual correspondences that can accentuate._certain feelings and reactions, and assists Antonioni’s development of theme. While this use of setting is certainly not innovative, Antonioni has given it a personal touch which is singularly his own. Environment is not symbolic as in the films of Bergman, nor is it emblematic as in the films of Ford; in Antonioni environment is intended to be part of the overall visual impression. A character and his

zLeprohon, p. 96.

11?

environment in a given shot appear as one, and. communicate together as one visual entity. For Antonioni the two are so closely related, that neither should, distract from the other, but together convey a single impression. Many directors approach their sets in fear of the limitations they impose.On the contrary, Antonioni considers these limitations stimuli for the imagination. "Limitations of this sort help the imagination much more than they constrict it. There's another reason as well. X am interested in the relationship between the internal space and the external space of setting. In reality one cannot exist without the other and in fact the second often conditions the first."? In an interview after the filming of Deserto. Rosso Antonioni-expressed the degree of importance he attributes to setting. "Some film- make'rs-decide-to tell a story and then choose-the. decor which suits it best. With me it works the other way around: there’s some landscape, some place where I want to shoot,

Qand out of that develops the theme of my films."0One may object that such notions diminish the stature

of character. Such an assertion might be true were dramatic criteria applied to his films, cinematicaliy, Antonioni

^Michele Manceaux, "An Interview with Antonioni," Sight and Sound, 30 (Winter, 1961), 8.

QMichele Manceaux, "In the Red Desert," Sight and

Sound, 33 (Winter, 1964), 119.

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presumes that reality belongs to man and expects that while his characters and settings are closely related, they, in fact, serve to reveal the deep inner realities of man better than either drama or setting alone, in other words, Antonioni presumes that interpretations of his films must fall within the framework of the human reality for it is only this reality that has any importance to man.

ii. External RealityA second reality to which Antonioni refers is that

larger external reality which exists outside and often independent of the inner'psychological reality of his characters. External reality is the reality which is in constant . change.. . .It is .the reality which few people. .. perceive accurately. Certainly none of Antonioni’s characters see it. At times, Antonioni insinuates that the perception of this reality is a unique possession of theartist.

Rarely does Antonioni discuss external reality without using the inner psychological reality as his point of reference. The tension between the two provides him the material for all of his themes. The willingness or unwillingness of people to confront external reality functions as Antonioni’s formula for character development.

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From thematic tension and character confrontation is revealedthe kernel of Antonioni’s ethical stance. The world needsheroism? not a heroism of killing dragons, or triumphingover personal, foreign or ideological enemies. The heroismAntonioni espouses involves a personal conversion, aliberation from the forces of culture which control and limitman’s human potential. After this occurs, Antonioni’s herofaces boldly the ever-changing and ambiguous culturalrealities which keep mankind in bondage. Antonioni’s herois an iconoclast, a myth-breaker, and a realist. In short,Antonioni’s neo-realism is strongly utopian. He lookshopefully toward a better world in which free men see andadjust to the ever-changing demands of reality:

I look at all that [unrest} with a great deal of envy, and would like to be already in this new world. Unfortunately, we aren’t there yet: it’s

- a;-drama that’will'last/several generations—mine,:... yours and the*-generatlon of those to be born .

right after WW II. I think that, in the years tocome, there are going to-be violent transformations, both in the world and in the individual’s interior. Today’s crisis comes from this spiritual confusion,. from this confusion of conscience, of faith and politics: there are so many symptoms of the transformation to come. Then I said to myself,’What does one say, today, in the cinema?*And I wanted to tell a story based on these motivations I was talking about before.9

oJean-Luc Godard, "Interview with Godard," Cahlers du Cinema English, No. 1 (January, 1966), p. 26.

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At the heart of Antonioni’s perception of external reality is the dichotomy existing between a European technological culture and a Catholic Jansenistic culture.The two cultural forces are the major reasons for the tension of modern living. While one is leaping forward and continually asking man to change, the other, because it is bound to the past, forbids change. As a result, society, with a foot in each cultural reality, has inherited a collective schizophrenia.

Antonioni maintains that modern man is not realizinghis human potential largely because of his inability to cometo grips with this external reality. The fact that thisreality is in a constant state of flux only augments thecomplexity of the challenge.

That everything has become uncertain, oscillating between two extremes: the principles of knowledge and those of morality, the basis of authority and the basis of philosophy, the premises of law and those of politics. We are surrounded by a reality which is not defined or corporeal. Inside of us, things appear like dots of light on backgrounds of fog and shadow. Our concrete reality has a ghostly, abstract quality.

But at least one thing remains positive: a sincere effort, even by a few, to understand and find a solution. If ever my pictures have a purpose, I believe it is to.contribute in a humble way to this effort.

The few, then, who are gallant enough to confront their

^°Hanceaux, "An Interview with Antonioni," p. 8.1 1 Michelangelo Antonioni, Screenplays of Michelangelo

Antonioni (New York: The Orion Press, 1963), p. xiii.

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reality serve as Antonioni’s protagonists. The fact that Antonioni uses women almost exclusively as his protagonists may indicate that he views women as less affected by the controlling aspects of reality. They, In fact, serve him best because they are, in some vague way, more culturally free; free to search for and understand solutions.Regarding those static Individuals who are not aware oftheir reality, he says: "Man deceives himself when hehasn’t the courage enough to allow for new dimensions inemotional matters—his loves, regrets, states of mind—just as he allows for them in the field of science and

12technology. Protagonists who confront reality without aself conversion are, nevertheless, admirable. The .confrontation is the important thing for Antonioni. "A man

- who /renounces something -is also a man who believes in ' * 13something." >

In American youth Antonioni found the willingness to confront external reality and the willingness to address themselves to the tensions existing between the external and the internal realities of life. What Antonioni had dreamedabout and fictionalized in his cinema for a decade, he found

•1 QManceaux, "An Interview with Antonioni," p. 6.

13Ibid., p. 8.

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actually existing. This discovery prompted his most explicit statement about contemporary culture when he directed Zabriskie Point:

When I came to America, the first thing that Interested me was this . . . reaction to thp. society as it is now—not Just to society, i to the morality, the mentality, the psychology

.of Old America. - I-wrote some notes,-and when I came back I wanted to know if what I had written down, the Intuition, was true or not.My experience taught me that when an intuition is beautiful, it is also true. When I came back £to America] I realized that what X had in mind was true. I decided on the story when I came to Zabriskie Point. I found that this place was exactly what I was looking for . . . .I want a relationship between the characters and the place: I can’t separate them from their milieu.*2*

In a later article in L’Espresso, he speaks of the stimuli for change in America: waste, innocence, poverty, vastness.On this last, he notes:: . .. A.country of such -vastness, with- such distances.... j. and such horizons,.-, could not help but be molded

: ■ in-the dreams, illusions, tensions, its--solitude, faith, innocence, optimism anddesperation, its patriotism and revolt, its dimensions. Personally, from the point of view of my work, this experience of vastness

.. ----- -counted-and -is "counting a lot. How can I goback, I sometimes ask myself, how can I return to Italy?

In the midst of this chaos of products and goods, of waste and poverty, acceptance and revolt, flows a current of continuous, tumultuous change. Europe felt to me like a far-off museum. I don’t mean Europe with its intellectual presumptions, its cynical illusions,

14Marsha Kinder, "Zabriskie point," Sight and Sound, 38 (Winter, 1969), 287’ ~

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of knowing everything beforehand.My film Is in one way or another, about

all this. It was filmed. . . with difficulty, with anger, and also with love and great passion. It was a wrestling match with the most beautiful and most disagreeable reality in the world.

After directing Deserto Rosso, Antonioni admitted that his vision of external reality offers no solutions to its problems.Such an admission is only partially true, for in all of his films a solution is offered through characters who find in suffering through their external realities a personal resolution for them. The resolutions are neither romantic escapes nor cynical prophesies of doom. Quite the contrary, they'reflect a spirit of scientific humanism: fundamental trust in scientific progress and

•'hia&iii'ty ^tb-Preallze an, evermore ennobling;; freedom. "I don’t say that there ought to be a return to nature, that’ industria'Ilzation is wrong. I even find something very beautiful in the mastery of man over matter. 'To me, these pipes and-g'irders- seem just as moving as the trees. Of course it’s horrifying to think that birds which fly through these fumes are going to fall dead, that the gas makes it impossible to grow anything for miles around. But every age, after all, has called for its sacrifices, and

^-•^Michelangelo Antonioni, "What This Land Says to Me," Atlas, 13 (1969), 36.

l&Manceaux, "In the Red Desert," p. 119.

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it’s out of these that something else has grown."I?

iii. Aesthetic RealityA third, way that Antonioni uses the word, reality

occurs when the director refers to his aesthetics of film-making. The aesthetic reality is the director’s attempt to translate and interpret a larger world reality in artistic terms. In Antonioni’s case these terms tend to be ambiguous, not only because he sees external reality as ambiguous but because he believes art must communicate external reality metaphorically. "I feel the need to express reality in terms that are not completely realistic. The abstract white line that enters the picture at the beginning of a sequence of the little gray street interests me much more „than the car that arri-vesj-it *-s a way of* approaching-the" - ■ character in terms of things rather than by means of herlife. "18

While Antonioni insists upon this metaphoric reality in cinema as a vehicle to translate external reality and to create an internal psychological reality in his characters, he feels, nevertheless, that such ambiguity is a normal stylistic and thematic development of neo-realism.

17Ibid.

l®Godard, p. 28.

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Neo-realism focused, largely upon sociological phenomena; Antonioni focuses upon psychological phenomena as It Interacts with the sociological. Consequently, in Antonioni’s mind, the change in thematic focus necessitates a change in style. His aesthetic reality, then, is largely connected to the way in which he communicates cinematically. "Cinema cannot do an exact portrait of reality. The best it can hope to do is create a personal reality. In my case I suggest a new relationship between people and their > surroundings. I began as one of the first exponents of neo-realism, and now by concentrating on the internals of character and psychology I do not think I have deserted the movement, but rather have pointed a path towards extending its boundaries. Unlike early neo-realist film-makers, I am not trying to show reality, I am attempting-to re-create ’ *realism.

The overriding influence upon the aesthetic reality of Antonioni’s films is the single artistic idea of the director. It is this idea which must control every aspect of a film. Acting, dialogue, music, plot, camera, and color must be integrated into the director’s idea, so that the end result is unequivocally the director’s creation."I regard a tree, a wall, or a cloud, that is, as just one

19Alpert, p. 65.

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element of the overall soene; the attitude or pose of the actor, as determined under my direction, cannot but help to affect the framing of that scene, and I, not the actor, am the one who can know whether that effect is appropriate or not."20

In an article in which Antonioni takes issue with the / z /idea of cinema verlte, he emphasizes the fact that nothing

artistic can be created without the director’s overriding idea. "Nothing is changed when directors of cinema veritez,

their cameras tucked under their arms, mingle with the crowds as they film their investigations. They must always be guided by an idea, a controlling point of view, without which their cameras would remain as inert as the mightiest computer were it deprived of a program—and this despite its superhuman memory and unlimited data .... The problem may be that unless the visual imagination has a tale to tell, it operates in a void."21

The controlling idea of the director, furthermore, should have the power to see external reality and to create a harmonious aesthetic whole from that contact. "When we say that the persons we approach are all potential characters, over whose faces pass expressions, from whose mouths come lines; that places are not just images but rhythms,

?0Antonioni, L*Awentura, p. 226z z 21Michelangelo Antonioni, "Reality and Cinema

Verite," Atlas, 9 (February, 1965), 123.

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.. vibrations; that everyday events very often take on symbolic- meanings';-'"we- must add that it is the relationships of allthose things among each other in time and space which make sense to us. It is the tension thatforms among them.- This is, I think, a very special way of being in contact with

. ------realirtyi-"22'"7 - . ' ~ ".

Because of Antonioni’s insistence upon thesuperiority of the director, his relationship with actorsand actresses is often strained. His comments in a 1961interview with L’EXpresso are typical of Antonioni’s demandsfor aestheticautonomy. "It is not possible to have truecollaboration between actor- and director. 'They work on twoquite different levels. The director owes the actor noexplanations except general ones about the character and the.film. It is-dangerous to go into details .... The

director must not compromise himself by revealing hisintentions. The actor Is a kind of Trojan horse within the

23director’s citadel." In the same interview Antonioni emphasizes the singular relevance of the director’s aesthetic idea for the integration of all elements of a film. He said; "The actor is one of the elements of the image." The actor’s voice is but "one noise mingled with other noises,

22Antonioni, Screenplays, pp. vili-ix.^Leprohon, p. 101.

128the relationship among them is fully understood only by the director."2^

Music, background sounds and silence become part of the aesthetic idea. Antonioni feels that music is an extraneous element which needs more editing than do the visual elements of a film. ”1 have always opposed the traditional musical commentary, the soporific function

... ...ordinarily ...as signed to_it,.. ...Itls this idea of ’setting images to music,’ as if it were a question of an opera libretto, that I don’t like. What I reject is this refusal to let silence have its place, this need to fill supposed voids .... The only way I accept music in films is for it to disappear as an autonomous expression in order to assume its role as one element in a general sensorial impression.”2^

' -The interview that. Antonioni gave to_cahlers du ... ,Cinema after L’Awentura was released demonstrates the •meticulous, control the director has over his films. It alsopoints to his notion of a single aesthetic reality forwhich the director alone is responsible:

For L’Awentura, I had an enormous number of sound effects recorded: every possible quality of the sea, more and less stormy, the breakers, the rumble of the waves in the ghettoes. I had a hundred reels of tape filled with nothing

2Zj-Ibid. , p. 102.

25pierre Billard, "An interview with Michelangelo Antonioni," L’Awentura (New York: Grove Press, Inc.,1969), p. 241.

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but sound, effects. Then I selected, those you hear on the film’s soundtrack. For me, that is the true music, the music that can be adapted to images. Conventional music only rarely melts into the image; more often it does nothing but put the spectator to sleep and it prevents him from appreciating what he is seeing.26

To help create an aesthetic reality with color,Antonioni painted streets and buildings in Blow-Up and the marshes and factory among other things in Deserto Rosso. The scene in which the multi-colored walls of Giuliana’sempty shop appeared was, in substance, an explanation which defined aesthetic reality from external reality. Giuliana could not decide which color best expressed her subjective reality. The aesthetic reality, in other words, must be truer than the external reality in the sense that it signifies the director’s perception of external reality as it relates to

' his single' "aest'het'rc^'idea?*' '“Gpeakihgz'abbut" the''"color*' o'fDeserto Rosso, Antonioni said: "I dyed, the grass, around the shed on the edge of the marsh in order to reinforce the senseof desolation, of death. The landscape had to be rendered

... •... .. ... .. 27truthfully: when trees are dead, they have that color."From Antonioni's belief that the director’s idea

creates the aesthetic reality, it follows logically that the camera is the director’s eye. Antonioni’s control over

26Leprohon, p 100.

2?Godard, p. 28.

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cameramen is no less than that which he exerts over his actorsand actresses. In a recent interview with Samuels hecited many examples of his control over cameramen: "I have always imposed my wishes on the cameraman. ... I chose the shots, even the moment at which.they should be taken. ... Everything depends on what you put in front of the camera, what perspectives you create, contrasts, colors. The cameraman can do great things, provided he is well grounded technically. If a person hasn’t the raw material, I obviously couldn’t do anything with him. But all I ask of a cameraman is technical experience. Everything else Is up tome.”2^

IMore than once Antonioni used the analogy of a poetor.a, painter to define his role as a director. His referenceto., a painter comments upon the director’s duty to. conveyreality aesthetically in a totally integrated form:

A director is naturally a man like everyone else. Yet his life isn’t normal. For us, seeing is a necessity. For a painter too, the problem is to see. But while the painter has to discover a static reality, or even a rhythm perhaps, but a rhythm stopped in mid-air, the problem for a director is to catch reality an instant before it manifests itself and to propound that movement, that appearance, that action as a new perception. It isn’t sound: words, noise, music. It isn’t an image: scenery, an expression, a motion. But an

Charles Thomas Samuels, "An Interview with Antonioni," Film Heritage, 5 (Spring, 1970), 3-4.

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indecomposable whole.29 •

In summation, Antonioni’s theory of cinema demands an understanding of the way he uses the word reality. Antonioni has no control over external reality, but he can read it and see its effect upon the psychological reality of mankind. He attempts to communicate both of these aspects of reality in his cinema. This last is his aesthetic reality, his contribution to art, and his statement about reality in the visual art form of the cinema.

The quarter century of Antonioni’s career has created consternation among critics. Seldom are there neutral reactions to his films. His themes, while addressed to the masses of people, for the most part are too literary for the populace to read. No one is more aware of this communication gap than Antonioni himself. Nevertheless, his faith in the humanization of culture is prophetic. He believes the generations to come will not only understand and appreciate his art but also assimilate and value his message.Antonioni is directing films and articulating a cinematic language for the future. As a visionary director he Is unconcerned about contemporary critics. As a literary director, he welcomes the scrutiny of critics—the critics of tomorrow. "My contribution to the formation of a new

29Antonioni, Screenplays, p. vui.

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cinematic language is a matter that concerns critics. And not even today’s critics, but rather those of tomorrow, If film endures as an art and if my films resist the ravages oftime.

^°Billard, p. 242.

Chapter V

Blow-Up: An Aesthetical World. View

Much is changed, in Antonioni’s Blow-Up, but the essential world view of the director is forcefully present. Robin Wood enumerates some of these changes in his excellent chapter on Blow-Up, in Antonioni. Wood notes that Antonioni abandons the central female star, the slower pace which is "preoccupied with beauty of style," and the hero figureunable to live in "advanced environments of moderncivilization."^- The fast-paced Blow-Up is built around a

male character who presumes he can live in an advanced civilization..,, ,Tp. Wppd’n, .lip.t^.could, ba added^Antjonlpni.As.-/_ change... in' na.rratlvS'J .pplntitbfC.'v£ew-,” wh'i cK-is~ -far- -more- dist ant from his protagonist and a.more objective treatment of reality than the narrative point of view during his second period. One critic describes the change in this way: "Employing the means of the film medium, he causes his hero to vanish, leaving only an unbroken expanse of green. This is Antonioni’s ultimate vision. It is a vision larger and

iIan Cameron and Robin Wood, Antonioni, (New York;

Praeger, Inc., 1971), p. 125.

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more terrifying than his hero’s by a good deal,"2 This

larger and more terrifying vision with a more omniscient narrative point of view, is the basis for placing Blow-Up in a third category, one that is different from the five features that precede it.

Making this significant change in his narrativepoint of view, the director places himself in a positionwhich enables him to combine and summarize those themestreated individually and meticulously in his second period.Writing about this summary of themes in Film Quarterly,Max Kosloff offers the following insight:

Blow-Up is not only a film which deals mysteriously with photographic enlargements; it also emerges as a magnification of Antonioni’s whole repertoire of themes, now incised with a feverishness that borders on hallucination. Without doubt, most of his earlier perceptions are present: of the ,insufficience and. transienc.e of human affections,

."./of. chilled".er.o'tlc'lW,?ofA*th'e' fifflitfene's.S? of ’■ objects-," of intermittent hysteria, and a sundered social fabric. Into this always pessimistic but understated matrix of themes, he introduces such sharp awareness of the nominally bright-eyed mod London locale, that its various strata burst more freshly into recognition than in many a film of a native director.3

With the exception of Kosloff*s judgment about Antonioni's themes being "always pessimistic," the observation is

2G. Slover, "Blow-Up: Medium, Message, Mythos and Make-Believe," Massachusetts Review, 9 (Autumn, 1968), 759.

^Max Kosloff, "The Blow-Up," Film Quarterly, 20 (Spring, 1967), 28.

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extremely acute.While appropriately different in narrative point of

view, and thematically a summary of earlier films, Blow-Up is more significantly the composite of those realities which created such personal isolation: loneliness, suffering and desolation in his characters during the middle period. Once again, then, a key to a valid interpretation of Antonioni’s films is epistemological. His ambition to revealaesthetically the truths of reality, however complex and ambiguous, continues within the stylistic changes of Blow-Up.

During Antonioni’s second period, his protagonists searched and struggled within the limitations of a personal inward reality. The focus upon reality shifts from the inward psychological to the-external, artificial,"’ and"’ màn^made "in

Blow-Up. The sophisticated Thomas is deceived by external reality. Thinking he controls it, he discovers how controlled he is by it. Antonioni’s concern for truth, his desire to make audiences aware of the potentially controlling aspects of reality is a central motivating idea of Blow-Up.

The following study will examine three motifs which epitomize the epistemological question of truth as it is embodied in reality. Thomas and the mystery fall within a framework of this larger reality versus truth. The three motifs which substantiate the thesis presented here are:

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(i) the use of black and. white; (ii) role reversals; (iii) racndWi-bimunication artifacts. • '

i. The Use of Black and. WhiteDeserto Rosso was Antonioni’s first color film,

Blow-Up his second.. He had. demonstrated, in Deserto Rosso the cinematic implications of color while integrating its metaphoric allusions into his overall design. Antonioni proved not only that he could use color effectively but also that he could use it to suit his thematic purpose. There was nothing to prove, perhaps, in Blow-Up except that his years of experience in black and white prints in no way conflicted with his current color films. Ingeniously, he melts into Blow-Up an extensive use of black and white''on

~ co lor ’print to add-a~ further- artistic -dimension' to the'film as well'as to help articulate his perceptions of reality.

To establish concrete points of reference for the black-white motif, it seems necessary, -albeit-tedious, to recount the obvious instances where the motif appears.Thus, the following paragraphs will summarize those episodes of plot where the motif occurs.

The opening montage of Blow-Up, created by the quick cutting from young frolickers to factory workers, immediately forecasts an ideality-reality motif. The director suggests

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the motif dramatically by contrasting people of divergent interests and visually by his extensive use of black and white. In one cut to the youth, two black nuns are seen, dressed in white. The faces of the frollckers are painted white, the faces of the factory workers are blackened with dirt. The obvious implication of the introduction, which becomes questionable In the course of the film, is that the workers are in a real world, the youth in an unreal one.

Thomas, a professional photographer, is feigning a factory worker in order to take pictures for a documentary book. He breaks from the other workers to get into his black and white Rolls Royce. He returns to his studio, which is decorated, with few exceptions, in black and white. A model dressed in an abbreviated black costume, Impatient to leave for Paris, has been waiting for him. Her reflection is first seen in a mirror. Thomas, still dressed, in his colorless factory clothes, proceeds to snap pictures of the

white model in black costume against a backdrop of black paper. The scene develops into a mimed orgasm. After changing into dominantly black and white clothing, Thomas orders that his working clothing be burnt and admires his developed black and white shots of the factory.

Behind a plexiglass screen on the studio balcony a group of models await the photographer; they are dressed in black and white simulated bird costumes, posed against

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black screens and. a white wall. After taking some initial shots, Thomas d-ictatorially demands that they close their eyes and again leaves. Returning from a visit to his ;neighbor, Thomas learns that the models’ eyes are open. "Tell them to close them again," he commands.

Thomas drives to an antique shop opposite a park where he observes two men walking two white poodles. One man wears white pants and black shoes, the other wears white shoes and black pants. Thomas reacts distainfully, assuming that they are homosexuals.

Later at a restaurant, Thomas and Ron, the ’Wiv collaborator of a documentary book, admire with other photos the now enlarged black and white shots of the factory workers. As the two speak, a group of blacks in nativecbbtume'walk' pa§F*-wX^"s':fcS!urafit'.."Shortly after’ his 'abruptdeparture from the restaurant, anti-war picketeers place a large placard reading "Go Away" in black and white in the rear of his convertible.

During the long blow-up episode in his predominantly black and white studio, Thomas pieces together the mysterious events of a park scene; he does this by continually enlarging the photos that he snapped. They are black and white pinned against a black and white wall.

Returning to the park, this time at night, Thomas walks beneath a large sign, lighted against a black

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background. The scene itself is a colorless- one--whites and darks predominate: there are the white face and the dark clothing of a corpse, and the white face, hands and trousers, and the dark jacket of Thomas.

On a busy avenue beneath a sign lighted in white to a black background and reading "permutit," Thomas sees the girl he photographed in the park earlier that day. He chases the girl into a rock session where everyone listens passively in a white and black room; a black and white couple are among the few people dancing.

Later Thomas seeks out Ron, whom he finds at a marijuana party in a Victorian mansion. The exterior of the mansion Is dark, and the interior Is dimly lighted. When Thomas awakes there in the morning, daylight'warms and

; .brightens..the. place j^the.^eens^in^^the^yayd^j ¿and the. deep . colors of-the room reverse the gothic impressions of the evening before.

The final scene of the film shows Thomas returning to the park, where the white-faced revellers reappear.For no apparent reason, the large sign which lighted the park the previous evening is lighted again in daylight.Before Thomas disappears from the field at the end of the film, he Is seen from above in a distant, momentary black-and-white shot.

The marriage of style and theme effected by

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Antonioni in other films indicates that the director has a - - - definite purpose behind his extensive use of black and white

in Blow-Up. As a matter of fact, Samuels points to Antonioni’s use of black-white and color in one instance to criticize many misinterpretations of the film. He includes the colors purple and green .along with black-white to develop a thesis that Blow-Up is essentially an investigation of reality and Thomas’s perception of it. Without offering a concise interpretation of color and non-color himself,Samuels says;

The film, is composed mainly in four hues: black, white, green and purple. The hero’s studio is black and white, as are most of his clothes and those of Vanessa Redgrave, so too are photographs.In fact, -the meaning of the event in the park was ’as clear as black and white’ before he photographed it, which is what makes for . significance in his initial failure of perception

f ; • ^xu'^sri^fe;iix^^dM<;hibtund.srlying;.failurp;>.ife©j understand. -the implication of his way of life. The green park was penetrated by evil. Suitably, the door of the photographer’s dark room, in which

■ he brings to light the dark deed, is-also green.Not, however, until he copulates with the teeny- boppers in a sea of purple does he realize that he did not prevent the crime. Appropriately, the door- to-tbe room,-in .which he blows-up the -—fatal still Is also purple. One of the teeny- boppers wears purple tights, the other, green.

Colorful though it is, Blow-Up seems to be moving toward colorlessness, black and white— almost as if Antonioni were trying to make us face the skull beneath the painted flesh. But that is not what most reviewers have done. That they should, if my reading is correct, have missed the film’s meaning so completely is a phenomenon almost as significant as the

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film itself. What, after all, does their error tell us?4

The black-and-white reality of Blow-Up is a perception that Antonioni attributes to the contemporary civilized world. Reality for Antonioni is a dynamic ever-changing phenomenon, not something black and white. Its very mutability forces its dynamism. Any philosophy of life that presumes it understands and controls reality is, in Antonioni’s mind, fallacious. Hence, Thomas perceives his environment in exactly opposite terms from Antonioni.Contrary to the interpretation that Blow-Up isautobiographical,3 Antonioni in no way identifies with

Thomas’s black-white perception of reality.With the exception of the factory-frolickers montage

at the opening of the film, blacks-whites appear within adominant sea of white until the scene in which Thomasdiscovers the murdered man in a blow-up. Black-white in a white sea, coincidently, is the world that Thomas understands and controls. He is lord, master and judge in this world.The mere suggestion of homosexuality outside the antique

^Charles Thomas Samuels, "The Blow-Up: Sorting Things Out," in A Casebook of Film (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 197°), p.233.

3James F. Scott, "Blow-Up: Antonioni and the Mod World," in A Casebook of Film (New York: Van Nostrand . Reinhold Company, 197°)» P» 217.

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shop is odious to him. Although the situation is beyond his control, he nevertheless perceives it in black and white. Once the body is discovered on the black and white blow-ups, perhaps an overriding reminder of the ambiguity of reality, Thomas enters a world of blacks-whites within dominantly grey textures: the body in the park, the intrusion upon his artist friend during copulation, the chasing of Jane (should that really be her name) into a darkened rock session, and finally, the ominously dark Victorian setting of the marijuana party.

One reviewer, who traces death imagery from a viewpoint of-thematic plot development notes a similar switch in the character of reality at that place in the film where the photographer discovers the corpse in the blow-up.

- Without' mention "of ''¿blacks-whites. ih/dominant./grey.. seasy*he writes: ' • - - • - ......

Images of breakdown, emptiness and death fill the screen; the shambles of Hemmings* studio as he returns to it; the soulless hysteria at the soul-rock music performance with its canned music, the breakdown of the electronic equipment, and the discarding of the broken phallus, the bridge from the ineffectual musician’s guitar; and the empty bliss at the marihuana party, an urban reflection of the earlier rural scene, as it were, everyone smoking ‘grass’ and the same perfect tranquility with the same overtones of dangerous emptiness. Even the presence of death is carried forward by the bust of that strangely incongruous 18th century gentleman, standing solid and

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cadaverous amid the gently floating marihuana spirits.®

The colorful brightness of morning at the film’s conclusion is a foreign reality to the black-white perceptions of Thomas. Indeed, his confusion is manifested by his desperate surrender to this unknown reality at thetennis court. The fact that Antonioni erases hisprotagonist from the film in the final lawn shots may be an indication of the director’s own impatient judgment upon Thomas. While the frolickers with white faces playfully control their environment with an imaginary tennis game, they at least do it'knowingly and'artistically. They create a fantasy without any pretensions of truth. On the other hand, Thomas has deceived himself, believing that he was re-creating and re-ordering a valid reality. A murder had occurred;"his'\ba2iierb''is'aw it’;’•’T'homas-’missbd It. His attempt to re-create the-scene intelligently, logically and syllogistically from a general to a specific conclusion in the long blow-up sequence, momentarily assured him that he had prevented a murder. Ultimately, it shocked him.into the realization that reality has a deceptive character of its own that cannot be controlled. The entire black-white imagery in Blow-Up is then ambiguous. The world created by

^Herbert Meeker, "Blow-Up," Film Heritage,2 (spring, 1967)j 45.

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the willful manipulation of the frolicking youth is as artificial as the manipulated world Thomas created.

Reality, in a sense, swallows Thomas at the . ,conclusion of the film. From Ron, his collaborator with the documentary, he had sought strength on the plot level. Instead, what he found in Ron was for him but a fuller, more graphic realization of.an attempt to create a reality from hallucination. Thomas’s surrender to marijuana at Ron’s party was emblematic of his relationship to aesthetic reality as a photographer.

On the level of imagery Antonioni blends black-white into the texture of a fantastically beautiful color film, : with a setting he had repainted before shooting to more closely approximate his idea of London. Black-white provided the ironic subtlety that hi£_antonomous^real.ity_possessed. Unlike Giuliana in Peserto Rosso, Thomas is entirely too far removed from reality to assimilate a viable compromise for himself within it. The recognition of his own contrived black-white entity-within the awesome but »cftorful expanses of the real world comes too late. The forces of external reality simply cannot support his self-styled godliness.

Antonioni asks of people, especially the artist, to recognize the deceptiveness of reality. Attempts to make personal realities will eventually crumble under the dynamism of truth. Reality for Antonioni is something man

14-5

humanizes when he conforms to it. Reality will not conform to the manipulations of man, not even to the manipulationsof an artist.

Ii. Role. ReversalsA reversal of plot and. character throughout Blow-Up

is a second, motif reflective of Antonioni’s perception of a man-made, topsy-turvy reality. The murder 'in the park and the mystery associated with the plot is but a mirror of the mysterious reality man has created in the name of cultureand civilization.

Commenting on the first images to appear during the Introductory credits,-Robin Wood makes an interesting observation which not only corroborates the idea that man has bastardized"his_.reality,/but; explains; in part-the visual , disappearance of Thomas from the grass in the final frames.

Blow-Up begins with grass. Through the printedTetters of the titles we see a model or starlet striking erotic poses for photographers. At once a basic and simple reality Is set against the corrupting artificiality and falsity of the modern commercial world. As we watch, we become aware of a curious effect. If vie concentrate on the grass, the credits appear to be imposed on it as on a solid; as soon as we concentrate on the lettering, it appears like patterned windows cut into the grass (which becomes a mere facade) revealing the gesturing girl behind. So, at the outset, we are presented with a simple ambiguity in spatial relationships that undermines our

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confidence in our own perceptions, our certainty about what is real.?

A voyeuristic interpretation of Blow-Up originated, with Leslie Fiedler in his lectures at the University of Buffalo. Voyeurism is suggested by the technique of "patterned windows cut into the grass.” Antonioni, however, is not renowned for his erotic images; nudity is simply not part of his style. Windows In the grass may be Antonioni’s invitation to his audience to see the artificial reality they have accepted as truth. All who watch, then, are treated as voyeurists; not simply voyeurs of the erotic, but voyeurs of a decadent and contrived unnatural reality. Stylistically, the windows take his audience through the colorful reality that the director perceives to the unreality that he believes his audience sees.

Once the theme of an ambiguous reality is established visually, the duplicity of plot and character continue to fortify the development of the theme in a series of reversals. While the plot progresses with clear divisions between the real and unreal as Thomas distinguishes them, the audience can see beyond the character to a larger upside down reality. Furthermore, Thomas is seen as part of that larger contrived reality.

?Ian Cameron and Robin Wood, Antonioni (New York; Praeger Film Library, 1971), p. 126.

Ib7

The opening montage of London—youth with painted faces and grimy factory workers—immediately follows the credits. Suggestions of illusion and reality prevail here. The protagonist, introduced as one of the workers, is later shown to be part of neither group. His identity is defined -within the limits of the world he creates. The London of frolicking youth includes a shot of Negro nuns in white and a soldier in red costume. Such shots subtly suggestInversions.

Personification of the camera in the suggested orgasm scene not only reduces Thomas to an extension of his camera, but reverses the natural order of things. Three of five models are dressed as birds who-gape down at. Thomas from, behind a transparent screen; later they are told to think

'■’like . rT^Q^S^lX^s^^d-oby-T^o^a-s as .. .part of the .artistic reality he is creating, in the larger reality of-the film they are little more than dehumanized harlequins who parallel the white-faced frolickers, but contrast-sharply with the...pigeons.-, in the, .park,,that Thomas later photographs. The unregimented park pigeons simply are not part of an artificial order.

Thomas’s neighbors Patricia and Bill live together but are incompatible. Patricia fondles Thomas sensuously in Bill’s presence. When Thomas inadvertently intrudes upon the couple as they copulate, Patricia uses her eyes to

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communicate with Thomas. It is evident that duplicity exists on every level of their relationship. Even the relationship is ambiguous, inasmuch as it is not clear whether they are married.

While the world of Thomas unfolds in reverse of what might be expected, the world over which he has no control appears equally reversed, shots of black nuns in white habits, an oriental secretary, and blacks in African garb suggest a social inversion. The salesman In the antique shop who refuses to sell Thomas anything, the effeminate men walking poodles and the very masculine looking woman working as a park custodian, the young owner of the antique shop who listens to Hawaiian music and wants to go far away to Nepal or Morocco because she is "fed up with anitques," are-»not able“'bxamp lb’s--of'Tbc laT.^r fevers ails'.' -Ironically;’';»f. » Thomas has little patience with the reversals of the world that he does, not control.

Jane, the female subject of the blown-up photographs, is apparently in a love entanglement with an older man. The age difference may suggest a natural inversion. The duplicity of the scene reveals, as a result of Thomas’s investigation, an even more overt reversal when Jane bites Thomas’s hand animal!stically in her attempt to obtain the pictures. Another reversal appears In the dialogue between Jane and Thomas: "We haven’t met, you’ve never

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seen me. •• Appearance and. reality, then, before the plot moves toward, a suspense mystery, is completely inverted..

Women in Thomas’s estimation are "birds" or "bloody bitches." The semantics of such dialogue finds a reality of its own in the manipulated man-made world of Thomas.When the woman Jane comes to Thomas’s studio, the visit is replete with duplicity. That she is able to find the studio to begin with is not the least occurrence that may stretch a credible reality. Thomas attempts to identify her in terms with which he is most familiar, asking if she has ever done fashion stuff, "show me how you sit." Answering the telephone, he tells her that the call is for her. "Who is it?"—"My wife."—"Sorry, the bird I’m with won’t talk to you." The monologue which follows contains one contradiction

. after, anotherShe-',isri.np;t.^ris>iWif«pi'they just ¿.'have ki-ds.No, It just feels as if they have kids. "She isn’t beautiful, just easy to live with. ..No,., she Isn’t, so I don’t live with her."

Reversals become more, obvipus. as the scene develops. While using the head of a statue for an ash tray, he turns up the volume of the music and directs Jare to go "against the beat." When Thomas catches her stealing the camera,Jane attempts to seduce him in order to get the negatives.He promises to give her the negatives but cuts other film in its pla.ce, despite his having assured her in the park

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that he always keeps his word.. Not following the seduction through to its culmination, Thomas is satisfied to get her telephone number before she leaves. The entire scene is a lie. Filled with layers of human duplicity, it reveals a reality that Antonioni despises.

An interesting shot of Thomas hanging and examining the blown-up park pictures on the studio wall is taken from behind the hung pictures. Thomas pours some wine for himself. The pictures appear transparent; the technique immediately gives the audience a unique glance at the protagonist. It also substantiates a narrative point of view, that along with the final park scene denotes a camera objectivity not often used by Antonioni. Such anobjectivity, however, is most appropriate since reality itself Is tfee':prlmary"'isub'Jbct^-oT"Ttot-ohf6M>,s--'?d3rfecti:bhi -~-

~ "The 'deception“Involved "in' Tfibmas’ s"discovery “of a -'' gunman—that is, his belief that he has saved a life—is but another example of duplicity. The aspiring models, perhaps emblematic of a return to a natural reality, are seduced but In their turn rape Thomas. The scene has a similar effect on Thomas as did the fairy-tale sequence upon Giuliana in Deserto Rosso, for Thomas too Is brought back to reality.In both instances, the momentary diversion Is therapeutic.He subsequently discovers that a murder has been committed, that his original perceptions were deceptive. While Thomas

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apparently asserted, his superiority during the orgy, the initial aggression of the girls was their reversal from unreality to reality, from inhibited, inarticulate girls touninhibited free naked creatures. Even in their inhibitedstate the girls are closer to nature than is Thomas. Thus, his contact with them brings Thomas closer to reality.

Completely unable to cope with the real, however, Thomas is further weakened by his discovery of murder. He no longer trusts his perceptions. Very appropriately named, he becomes even more a doubting Thomas. Seeing Jane among shoppers but not finding her, seeking help from Hon but receiving none, Thomas spirals toward skepticism. “What did you see in that park?” Hon asks. "Nothing.” Thomas

- ■ jbins^his-i-model..in .’.’Parish jbyps.urrendering.,tom-.the • escape .of:- v- *• -a'-mari juana-party.- His-■participation in the1‘imaginary tenni's •

game before his ultimate disappearance is but an appropriateepilogue to his self-discovery on reality’s terms. While having a separate significance for him as an artist, the disappearance complements the window technique in the credits. Reality in all its magnificent color champions its fornicators In that final disappearance shot.

Noting the thorough "ambiguity, uncertainty, the blurring of distinctions” that ’’inform every episode” of Blow-Up Robin Wood concludes.: ’’The main drift of Blow-Up seems to me very clear; we are shown a young man inhabiting

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a world, in which everything combines to undermine the firmness of his hold on reality."9

Consistent with Antonioni’s themes, It might be more accurate to say that we are shown a man-dominated and artificial world, in which everything combines to undermine the firmness of a young man’s hold on it. Samuels would seem to agree with the larger implications of the film. He describes It in terms of a cultural revolution: the modernworld overturning the old world but with little to replaceits traditions.

Antonioni fills the background in Blow-Up with examples of tradition being razed to make way for a gray, anonymous wasteland. As the photographer drives through London, the camera pans along the colorful walls of the old city only to be abruptly lost in blank space surrounding a new housing project—all grays and browns. . /When he visits the antique shop, scouting realL es-fcatevf or‘ his' agent, he advises purchase since the neighborhood seems to have attracted homosexuals-—those great contemporary buyers of the past. The old caretaker, however, refuses to sell him anything, but the young mod owner is only too anxious to turn the shop into cast for a trip to Nepal, where she hopes to escape from antiques. ’Nepal is all antiques’ the photographer dryly observes.

The modern world, however, seems bent on destroying its traditions. On the wall of the photographer’s apartment, an old Homan tablet is overwhelmed by the hallucinatory violence of the modern painting at Its side. More important, traditional human pursuits are being drained of their force, politics is

9'Cameron and Wood, p. 131.

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novi playacting .... Love is unabsorbing.... Art has lost its validity. Murder is ignored.16

Antonioni’s world view is capsulized quite accurately here. While not a defender of tradition by any means, Antonioni looks at the modern world quiteinquisitively. Artists of the present, he is saying, must return to the real and use their genius to investigate the true order of reality and rebuild accordingly. Artists simply cannot accept the cultural premises of truth that they have inherited. In Thomas’s case, his blind acceptance leads to the eradication of his right to exist in the real order of things. Hence, Antonioni has him disappear in thefinal scene.

ill. : GommuffiffSWbB»i^tIfactbat-Gr»i/'/^?s - --.¿ffk'In a rather casual but favorable review of Blow-Up,

Penelope Houston remarks; "Without going out on toohazardous a limb, one could put up a case for Blow-Up as afilm essentially about the textures and deceptions of

11modern art, within a factitiously swinging context."

10Samuels, "Sorting Things Out," p. 231.-^Penelope Houston, "Hot for uncertainties,"

Spectator, 24 March 1967, £• 341.

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An article comparing Cortazar’s short story withAntonioni’s adaptation, in a vein similar to Houston’s,attributes the film’s significance to a comparison betweenthe photographic and written media:

Cortazar’s theme is the tension between two media, one temporal and one spatial, and the tension between the man who uses those media and reality itself. Since reality moves along both dimensions without any boundaries between them, the man who dares to separate them, the man who invents and uses media, must suffer the consequences of such hubris . . . . Antonioni makes him [Thomas^ disappear at the end of the film reminding the audience that his is a film and that there is someone at the other end of the camera. Nevertheless, though the presence of the moviemaker is not really felt until the end, there is, at least, the same tension between a fluid reality (narrative) and a static reality (photography) that .we saw in the story. Yet, reality itself is larger than its representations in the media, for the protagonist, like a movie: garnera;co.r:ka;,:narratbry‘can ^brcarve- only -part -of- .. . -.......A third rather interesting but compromising

interpretation reads the film along two independent lines:the one as a reflection of Antonioni’s aesthetic philosophyand the other as his ethical philosophy:

Blow-Up can be seen as Thomas’ vision of art and reality and also as Antonioni’s, but the visions are certainly not identical. The film can be seen in terms of centripetal and centrifugal meanings. Centripetally,Blow-Up is a separate world that creates its own context, that has its own time and space.

Henry Fernandez, "From Cortazar to Antonioni: Study of an Adaptation," Film Heritage, b (Winter, 1968-69), 23-29.

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From this perspective, the blow-up sequence - evokes, a powerful esthetic- response-.-the joy —-of discovery and creation—emphasizing the focus on art. The film can be treated as an art object complete in itself, like the propeller, with .autonomous beauty,.Centrifugally, Blow-Up is a film about London in 196? or, more generally, about Western civilization undergoing changes in

. . its conception of human relationships. If ...we approach the blow-up sequence in this way, we are struck by the strangeness of Thomas’s response. Why isn’t he concerned with finding out more about the murder: Who did it? what was the motive? who was the victim?Why doesn’t he call the police and help solve the mystery? The film can be treated as a reflection or- imitation of outside reality; like the propeller, its meaning is

.... . altered by its' context, and it evokes imagesand associations that do not actually appear in the film. Although the centripetal- side is dominant, both meanings work in Blow-Up.

■ - -The various possibilities for interpretationoffered by the film as a whole, the continuing focus on ambiguity, especially in the central episodes, the importance of

> ./context-.Iwjidentifyirfe ahd-valaingvobj^cts, - ■■•/ and the structurally significant role of the mime troupe all seem to emphasize Antonioni’s view, which incorporates different ways of experiencing the film. -Its-nature of meaning, always subjective, will be created by two acts of imagination—that of the filmmaker who wields the camera and that of the

...... - viewer, -who responds to , the, moving picturesbefore his eyes.*3

These observations lead to the third motifessential for interpreting Antonioni’s world view. Though very discerning observations, the above theses could be

....... *3jv[arsha Kinder and Beverie Houston, Close-Up; ACritical Perspective on Film (New fork: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, Inc., 1972),"pp7 261-62,

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extended, to include all of modern communication media.Interpreting Blow-Up within a communication motif

negates none of the interpretations cited, but does suggest a central, comprehensive and unifying idea for the film. In broadest terms, the communication motif includes the reversal and black-white motifs developed earlier in the chapter. Through a communication motif, Antonioni insinuates a significance far beyond modern art, the camera and changing conceptions of human relationships. Every media of human communication, natural and technological, are woven meticulously into the film. Indeed, one of the most convincing arguments for Blow-Up being a summary statement of Antonioni’s themes is its embodiment of the total inefficacy of modern communication media for drawing mancloser to his f el lB"wmah'7 or'"' eTt end! hg hiâ 'Beyb'bdhi-sspatial limitations existentially.

The unanswered questions provoked by the purplepaper in the studio and the large neon sign which says nothing are two- strong clues pointing to a communication . motif. This last clue is especially Interesting in light of the fact that Antonioni erected a neon sign for the film.^ Asked the significance of the sign, Antonioni

replied that he needed light for the evening park scene.

14Houston, p. 341.

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Perhaps he should, have been asked.» "Why erect a sign which says nothing?" For the question posed., his reply was as evasive as the reality he portrayed, in the film.

An examination of each medium appearing in Blow-Up will indicate that either the medium has become completely non-functional, or it has acquired a new function sjF contradictory to its purpose as a result of human contact.

.. In some respects, this communication motif negates theMcLuhan teleological thesis that media will eventually unite the world in some close tribal fashion. Antonioni seems tosay the opposite: that media is a major contributor to the decomposition of things and alienation of people from one another and from their environment. Inasmuch as Antonioni trusts his own perceptions of reality, while obviously

iv, ® ..7.::..;3<askingxhis ^audience../fco,;see• as he sees, the posture.-of. ..the m— motif-is not pessimistic'. " it” merely warns audiences” not.... - ~

- to surrender their humanness to media without firstquestioning its humanly beneficial or detrimental function.

In Blow-Up the unique exceptions to the inefficacyof media are the camera and the gun. The camera communicates reality contrary to Thomas’s designs. The gun communicates a reality contrary to the designs of an ordered reality.The black-white blow-ups communicate a reality which in no way fits into the manipulated black-white world of Thomas.He believes the documentary prints to be true because he

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trusts his perceptions of reality. To make his documentary • book, Thomas shoots a violent reality. . But the camera,Thomas ultimately learns, has an autonomy of its own. Its function, the reflection of the truth of reality, is not dependent upon the artistry of a photographer. The camera requires only that the artist perceive the reality to which it is- exposed. In the case of the documentary shots, Thomas was unknowingly in step with the real. That is, the camera has isolated a momentary spatial truth from the movement of time. The photographer, in substance, was the instrumental cause of the documentary pictures, not the efficient cause. Thomas does not create the reality but merely assists the camera in capturing it. This recognition later in the film contributes to his complete loss of confidence in his perceptions ofL_the_fcreal, „5-Hs.sees, himself.7,as s foil of his camera, ., the sole communication... medium in. the film which functions properly to communicate reality.

The inefficacy of other media is visually articulated quite early.- Thomas leaves the factory, rolling work clothes... into a bundle, throwing them into the back seat of his Solis to be burnt later; a newspaper Is also discarded in the rear seat. The short-wave radio in the car is used to communicate trivia; after the antique shop scene the radio emits a screaching static as Thomas speaks into it, recording his observations of the neighborhood.

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■ An incident provoking interpretations that see Blow-Up’s significance in terms of modern art is that one where Thomas admires one of Bill’s paintings and is told art means nothing. The one painting that Thomas wants apparently cannot be sold or given, away because Bill has yet to unravel its meaning. As one communication medium of many, it suggests that art has no meaning, no objectivity. Like Thomas’s studio shots, the painting is given its significance by the artist. The artist creates his own reality.*3

consideration of the film’s development and resolution, here as in his other major features, Antonioni seems to be saying that such godly illusions of. creating.reality are humanly paralyzing, if not self destructive.

In the antique shop, Thomas stops to glance at some sculpture. Two statues'- without-.heads are near- him; heads; it appears, are located-in-a separate area. -- Ironically, after just admiring Bill's abstract, he asks for a landscape. Returning later to the shop after the park episode, he is greeted by the seemingly incongruous sound of Hawaiian music. The young owner, in contrast to her older salesman, is eager to sell antiques so that she can go to Nepal or Morocco. She is fed up with antiques. Thomas sees a wooden airplane propeller and decides that he

•^Kinder and Houston, p. 256.

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"must have it now--can’t live without it." When he attempts to put it into his car, the young shopkeeper tells him that he "can’t treat it fthe carj like that." She assures Thomas

that the propeller will be delivered, in a proper van.While very little has happened on the dramatic

level of plot to this point in the film, on the visual level communication artifacts are quite meaningful. Almost without exception they have a function which is contrary to their purpose for existing. Clothes and newspapers are discarded. A short-wave radio is used for play, or produces distracting static. The Rolls Royce is treated as a moving van; a coin is used for tricks, radio music is either ignored or not heard, because of interference. Art has no objective significance, not even for the artist. Antiques are either not sold or not appreciated. Sculpture has no totality, no correspondence to reality; there are only pieces—bodies or heads. Hawaiian music offers escape from a north Atlantic island. An airplane propeller is purchased for its aesthetic possibilities.

These visual symbols combine with a totally abrupt, Inconsequential and misleading dialogue to unite into a single unifying idea: communication is non-existent. Furthermore, human manipulation of technological communication media has reduced life to an unreal plaything.

As the film continues the list of ineffectual

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communication media Increases to include a menu, protest placards, car horn, telephone, phonograph, sex, clothes, neon signs, rock sessions, and marijuana. Thomas meets Ron in a restaurant to discuss their documentary book. He finds the menu useless and requests a meal like one he sees a waitress carrying. He speaks of money making him free: "Wish I had tons of money, then I’d be free.” Not staying to eat the lunch, he follows a would-be thief who is attempting to get his camera from the Rolls convertible.With complete disregard for a group of blacks in African garb, he drives recklessly and purposelessly through their midst. The chase is abruptly halted by a protesting group carrying placards. The placards for the most part are incoherently written. Some are upside-down, some display only a few disconnected _and non-communicating words. The general impression connoted by the protest is that it is an anti-war demonstration without a specific objective. Thomas allows one placard inscribed "Go Away" to be placed in the back of his Rolls. Moments later, he watches with perfect indifference as it blows away.

The functional use of a menu, money, a moving auto, and protest placards appears as ambivalent as Thomas’s own purposelessness. Always busy, he never sees anything through to its conclusion, with the exception of his blow-up adventure. Not concerned with goals, Thomas is almost

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completely process-oriented.. Communication media in Thomas’s world are not valued for their communicative --™function.

The horn on Thomas’s car is the next medium of questionable efficacy. Returning to his studio he does two things which’are completely futile from a functional - -viewpoint. For no apparent reason he leans on the car horn. With his studio telephones across the street, he steps Into a public telephone booth on the sidewalk. None of the conversation is heard except a final command: "stay where you are."

As Jane attempts to negotiate a return of the negatives, Thomas puts a record on the phonograph; neither listens to the music. When finally their attention isfocused upon: the music;' T.ffomaff- Orjaff^s..her 'to f'mbve agaih'btthe beat. The ringing telephone is ignored for a couple of rings, then frantically*sought'and found under a chair. The conversation which follows approximates one great paradox. The head of a statue next to the sofa serves Thomas as an ashtray. Unsuccessful in her attempt to gain the negatives, Jane decides that sex is a medium of exchange in Thomas’s world. She takes off her blouse and offers herself to him. They are interrupted, however, by the arrival of the propeller. Thomas has it placed on the. floor in front of a large photo of parachutists, telling Jane he purchased the propeller as a piece of sculpture. "What’s it for?

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—Nothing, it’s beautiful." Jane’s suggestion, nevertheless, is practical and. more consistent with function. She would, "hang it on the ceiling like a fan."

In the midst of a man manipulated reality of questionable authenticity, Antonioni alludes to an unmanipulated reality in his use of the colors purple and green. While waiting bare-breasted for Thomas to return with the negatives, Jane sits next to a large-purple screen. In another shot she is framed in the purple; Thomas kisses her. Antonioni’s visual characterization of Jane appears to identify her with a true reality. Not only her practical suggestion for the propeller, but also the green field and purple in the studio combine as well to make this suggestion. The orgy to follow later shows three persons rolling in

4purple,.,?while^ one/g'irin4.-?n^3r^?.?«d.s4'P- 'O,ther.. in. i...'purple. ' Samuels attributes Antonioni’s color hues of green

16and purple, to. a natrual reality., Visually, then, one could conclude that Thomas does have Intermittent associations with a true reality and, furthermore, these associations are therapeutic. After each episode his thirst for the creative process is heightened. The blow-up process begins after contact with Jane, as she was framed in purple. The creative impetus reaches a culmination after the purple orgy with

l^Samuels, "Sorting Things Out," p. 233-

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the young girls.Numbers that appear in the film are either non-

communicative or designate an aspect of Thomas’s contrived studio world. »»39«» is his studio address, and ”439" his short wave number. The telephone number given him by Jane is inefficacious in assisting Thomas’s investigation.She has given him a wrong number.

The long blow-up sequence is prematurely interrupted, by a telephone call to Ron. "somebody was trying to kill somebody else—fantastic—I saved his life.—Hold on, Ron, there’s someone at the door." Distracted by the arrival of two aspiring models, Thomas forgets that he has left Ron.When he does return to the telephone much later, Ron has hung up. Apparently Ron’s interest in the supposed murder attempt is as ephemeral as Thomas„interest in.the rest-of reality —quite ironic for two documentary authors. The telephonecall itself is a bizarre combination of fascination and fantasy. Leaving the telephone unattended for such a period of time emblematically defines its function.in.communicatingtruth in Thomas’s world.

A person’s name i? the next inefficacious communication medium. With Ron waiting on the telephone, Thomas asks the one girl of the other, "What’s her name?" Perhaps uninterested in names communicating a reality, he quickly adds, "Ah, forget it. What do they call you in bed?" Not

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only does this comment reduce the significance of her name, but such an attitude channels his identification of people, as fit has done earlier with Jane, into the unreal boundaries of his own manipulated world.

The meaning of clothing as a means of communication is especially apparent in the stylized orgy with the young girls. References to clothing until this point in the film remain in the play world of Thomas. Factory clothing enables him to play a worker. Model costumes help him create an ornithic illusion. The clothing of two poodle-walkers and a park attendant demonstrates the inverted world he perceives. The clothing of the two girls, on the other hand, illustrates cultural imprisonment.Thomas, after turning a rack of clothing onto the floor, playfully* begins';to' -st'-fI-p-'one''girl.- '-'AT ber“'Scb'bmpli'shIng - this, Thomas and- the naked girl strip the second girl. The girls then turn upon Thomas to render him naked. As the three are rolling in clothing and wrapped in purple paper, the scene cuts. 'The next "shot Is of the two girls, again dressed, putting clothing on Thomas. He is pensive, removed from the frolic bf the previous scene.

The implication of clothing in the scene is that it too is an inefficacious means of communicating the human reality beneath. The girls, although innocently natural, remained stifled by that cultural phenomenon. Once naked,

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both girls become free. They lose all their previous inhibited, shyness, and. instead, behave aggressively. While Thomas apparently asserts his own natural male superiority during the orgy, as Is indicated by the girls* dressing him, the experience, nevertheless, is refreshingly healthyand natural because it is one of the few instances of anunmanipulated reality to surface in the film.

During the orgy the faces of two men are seen behindthe models. Asked the significance of this occurrence, Antonioni replied, "Because I hadn’t noticed. Because there is no explanation.”*7 Should such be the case, the men’s

faces were merely an editing oversight. Should the reply, however, be an evasion on Antonioni’s part, the faces could be interpreted in any number of ways. The voyeur motif offers b'ine "InterpretatIbh:-:';''~The exterhai'are^.llty-of'the ' director who believes that his vision of the real is unmanipulated and true, offers a second possible " " interpretation of the faces. The faces are part of the real order of the world. As do Antonioni’s-eyes,-theirs see a true reality. This second interpretation is especially plausible inasmuch as the faces appear in a scene that is apparently an escape from the unreal world of Thomas. It is

*?Gharles Thomas Samuels, "An Interview with Antonioni,” Film Heritage, 5 (Spring, 1970) 10.

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a scene which momentarily brings Thomas back to the realityof Antonioni.

Sexual fulfillment as a communication medium takeson an entirely different meaning in the following scene. Visiting Patricia and Bill, perhaps in the despair of losing his blown-up shots, Thomas discovers them copulating. Evidently detached from what is happening, Patricia reaches to Thomas with facial gestures. What would seem to be man’s deepest avenue,' of human communication is reduced in significance to an inefficacious function.

When Thomas returns to his studio to find but one blown-up print (the last and most obscure print of a corpse), Patricia wearing a red transparent mesh dress visits him.The subsequent dialogue is completely ambivalent, switching back and forth from-her needs to the murdered" man," She requests help but Thomas has none to offer, telling her instead that he has seen murder. Asked how it happened, he contradicts his previous statement, ’’I didn’t see." "You didn’t see?" "No." Patricia’s response to the blown-up print is that it "looks like one of those paintings." In short, what had communicated enough reality to Thomas to prompt his return to the park in search of the corpse, conveyed as much reality to Patricia as did Bill’sabstracts. Not only Is the blow-up an ineffectual medium of communication for her but it suggests as well that the

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subtle ambiguities of reality can only be seen by the artist. Admittedly, Thomas stumbled upon his discovery but, nevertheless, he is an artist. The fact that he later mistrusts his perceptions as a result of his earlier floundering indicates that he was unable to bare the responsibility of his newly discovered vision of an ambiguous reality.

The Yardbird rock concert provides another example of an inefficacious communication medium. Inconsistent andunpersevering Thomas interrupts his search for Jane to become involved in a rock session melee. Not an eye moves from the performing Yardbirds when Thomas walks in front of the mesmerized crowd. When one amplifier used by the group failsto function, an irate_performer kicks it.,.. Finally, In __disgust, he breaks the guitar and throws its arm into the gaping crowd. Thomas, for whatever reason, attributes the same importance to it as the now chaotic crowd.Successfully escaping with the broken instrument, he negates its previous importance by throwing it on the sidewalk. Another young rock fan claims the detached arm but he toodiscards it.

The inefficacy of the rock medium is acutely dramatized in this scene: still more significant is the importance that the guitar receives within and without the confines of the session. Within the confines of the rock

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session it receives a man-imposed, significance. The valuesof the rock artists and. audience are similar to those ofThomas’s own closed, manipulated world. In the larger order of events, the broken guitar arm has no functional or aesthetic significance. Both the amplifier and the guitar arm are communicatively inefficacious.

The reality of the pot party contrasts sharply with the reality of murder. Marijuana provides Thomas his escape from admitting the nagging recognition of the violent death that he has discovered. As a medium used for communication of truth, however, marijuana is totally, if not intentionally, inadequate. Thomas’s struggle with truth is complete in this episode. He chooses to deny further growth in the real order, and regresses to his previous illusions of life.

The .closing-: tennis:.„.game.,,-a.s...a...mediihn.«.of communication, while deliberately stylized, defines Thomas’s final relationship to reality, placing his camera, his source of communication with the real, on the grass, Thomas throws the imaginary tennis ball back onto the court. At this moment the sound of the ball joins the illusion. His surrender is complete. Recalling his surrender to marijuana in the previous scene, the reality of the unreal continues in the manipulated world of this modern technological civilization.

An enormous neon sign above the park with "carefully indecipherable lettering," faces in the direction of the

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murder Incident.while signs are not ordinarily erected to face parks, the very unintelligibility of its message equates the sign and its words with an inefficacious function. The sign blinks on and off the evening Thomas finds the corpse: as he bends over the body with the realization of death on his face, a clicking sound, similar to a camera’s shutter, is heard on the sound track. Before leaving the scene Thomas looks around in an awareness of the sound. When he returns to the park the following morning, the sign, at first not in focus, begins blinking in the light of day. The Image of the sign appears as follows:

1 Penelope Houston, Spectator, 24 March 196?, p.

"Hot for Uncertainties,” 341.

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Inasmuch as Antonioni considers every detail of a set so that the image is totally integrated, one is skeptical in accepting Antonioni’s remark that he used the sign for lighting purposes alone. The sign is closely related to the murder mystery, which is also the crux of Thomas’s artistic challenge to see external reality accurately. Albert Benderson, currently completing- a study on Fellini at the University of Buffalo, offers an interpretation of the ambiguous sign which is both original and consistent with the entire communication motif. He says that the sign suggests both a gun and a camera: the left and top lines represent a gun, the collective lines of the entire sign represent a camera—the center connected lines suggesting the eye of thecamera.

Such an interpretation. implies.that. Anbonioni•reminds his audience in every park scene that the only functional media in the film are the gun and camera, the one a violent medium and the other an artistic medium. Just as the two faces in the orgy scene are emblematic of a reality beyond the one that Thomas ordinarily perceives, the sign too represents an omnipresent truth that exists despite man’s perceptions and manipulations. Hence, the neon sign is not only a key to solving the mystery of the plot but also of the Illusion-reality motif. Whatever doubts Thomas may have of his perceptions, a murder did occur and his camera

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captured, that moment of truth. The clicking'sound that Thomas hears in the park is also explained, by the gun-camera sign inasmuch as Thomas is figuratively photographed, by reality Itself.

The second, sign of seemingly insignificant value is a shop sign which appears above Jane when Thomas sees her among a crowd, of pedestrians; this sign reads "Permutit,” and attracts attention because it is the only sign of the avenue not written in English. Considering Antonioni’s own Italian heritage, this sign too may be read as an ambiguous comment upon reality. The word seems to be derived from a Latin infinitive "permutare” which means, perhaps very significantly, to change the order of arrangement; to change in character or situation; a transformation. . In the context of the entire film, such., assign may be a comment upon Thomas’s participation" in reality.’ In the context of the scene, it may relate to Thomas’s recent discovery of a murder through the deductive process of changing the order of an initially perceived reality from an apparently peaceful to aviolent one.

The circular structure of the film, beginning and ending with young frolickers, suggests that man-made reality is potentially dehumanizing. The opening montage contrasts the real and unreal. However, the concluding scene quite

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obviously has deleted, a montage which includes reality. Figuratively, then, in the final scene nothing of the real is perceived. Man’s creative dominance has chosen to Ignore reality. Not only artists, but society itself has elected to play life. The final grass shot of the film is symbolic of the all-prevailing reality that exists with or withoutman.

Wood reaches a similar conclusion concerning the circular pattern;

The students are Introduced at the beginning of the film, driving round and round a deserted space enclosed by tall office blocks, hectically shouting and gesturing with frenetic gaiety to an audience which isn’t there: an image suggesting at once their unreality and ineffectuality. Their reappearance at the end is difficult to explain in naturalistic terms, and must be taken symbolically, as the logical outcome

A^o;f.-£what-<we;,T^Se^e^^|l9wh*,--., In,the ysurrounding reality of grass and’Trees'"'the "Whitb'painted' faces look grotesque and deathly; the faces of the ’spectator,* pressed against the netting

. of the tennis court to follow an Imaginary ball, are the faces of the lost. Thomas’ retrieving of the ’ball’ marks his final surrender; his grasp of objective reality fatally undermined, he.is a lost (because disintegrated) soul. His face is that of~a man hear the'verge of insanity.The last two shots of the film show him (a) in long-shot against a great stretch of grass, diminished and alone, and (b) disappeared. The film ends, as it began, with the simple reality of growing grass which, like Giuliana’s escape-ship and escape-island, has no human complications to make existence a quicksand, but which, unlike Giuliana’s island, at least exists, and is there, unequivocally, for us

17b

to contemplate. Thomas no longer exists.Antonioni’s camera focuses upon grass alone, creating

the final cinematic triumph of reality over man-made unreality. The distant, more objective narrative point of view in Blow-Up is substantiated here as it had been in the blow-up episodes. There, the audience has a unique glance of the protagonist through the blown-up pictures which appear transparent. The narrative point of view in both instances denotes a camera objectivity not often used by Antonioni. The view isunmistakably the director’s own.

The film depicts both the real and unreal worlds throughout. Antonioni’s own world view intervenes, however, at the very end. What happens to Thomas will never happen to Antonioni. Should Antonioni *s.audience view the world, as he thematically, implies, they.too, will humanize.their,_ environment and the technological extensions intended to help them communicate. The world of Blow-Up is a sad world indeed. People of this world have allowed themselves ironically to be imprisoned by the .very things that were .created to free and to ennoble. Rather than find a greater humanity, the people of Blow-Up find what all of Antonioni’s protagonists encountered—a cold, detached, lonely dehumanized wasteland.

While Blow-Uo relies less than Antonioni’s previous■ »Hl .

19'Cameron and Wood, p. 138.

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films on the visual•implications of set, with the exception of visual symbol in the communication motif, the few uses of lines suggesting barrier and. imprisonment' are significant in the overall interpretations of reality. Furthermore, the dichotomy established between the contrived real and the natural real by lines not only indicates the director’s judgments upon the unreal but serves the audience as a continual reminder not to take that world too seriously.

Visually, the world of Thomas is a prison. The initial shot of Thomas captures him behind the factory fence. Doorway and corridor shots of Thomas further suggest the limitations of his existence. The cloudy transparent screen, suggestive of a bird cage, along with the bird-cage hat of one model, points to the deceptive irony of Thomas’s vision. While Thomas himself is imprisoned, 'Antonioni-'mevertheiess creates a fantasy bird prison for the models which is indicative of how Thomas views life for others.

When Thomas returns to his studio, blows his car horn and calls from a public telephone, another barrier motif is suggested visually. The telephone conversation is apparently of far less importance than the visual image of Thomas In the telephone booth. Nothing is heard of the conversation but the last words, "Stay where you are." Significantly, the red booth has barred windows. Visually the bars and confines of the booth suggest Thomas’s limitations, if not

176his Imprisonment. The final command, is ironic, inasmuch as Thomas, the visually imprisoned.,. is simultaneously imprisoning another' by' dictating to him. It may be v -a aa

interesting to recall that this exact camera shot is used to characterize the British lad in I Vintl. The boy in that film is a homicidal psychopath.

The park episode is full of barrier imagery. Thomas shoots pictures from behind a picket fence, then moves closer using trees for the same purpose. This visual description of Thomas is in direct contrast to the running, leaping, and jumping shots of Thomas as he enters the park. Appearing free, he immediately Is imprisoned. When confronted with the idea that he has violated a privacy, Thomas tells Jane that a photographer has the right to invade privacy. The parallel of Thomas and the murderer, also behind a fence, is quite clear.'- 'Both gunman dhd cameraman; are:Tmprisoned behind - visual barriers. Both in turn are manipulating reality.Quite appropriately, then, both are visually defined with ' their limitations. Both are using media (a gun and a camera)’‘in an abusive'manner:- 'The-visual implications of lines make the interpretation of the neon sign even more plausible.

When Thomas enters the Victorian house toward the end Blow-Up, he is seen from behind a fence. Once again the visual description of Thomas corroborates the thematic description. The fence around the tennis court is the last

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suggestion of imprisonment. The deathly white and intent faces of the young frolickers feigning reality are seenbehind the tennis court fence. Thomas too watches and is seen through the fence. The scene is done in absolute silence. Consistent with other interpretations of visual barriers in Antonioni’s films, the people behind the barriers are lonely, alienated from life, and imprisoned. Thomas is no exception.

I*1 Blow-Up, Antonioni has chosen a protagonist who moves about in both worlds, a photographer. The real world and the contrived world of contemporary culture should be easily perceived by him. His view of reality should be as all inclusive, as discerning, as the director’s view is in narrating both realities. Thomas’s final disappearance is Antonioni'’s' PënsbrbKlpr'~'bAnt'oniûni' implies, /perhaps-too ■ simply, that artists.above all others have the greatest responsibility to truth. Thomas fails. The ultimate epistemological question is, then, the pivot upon which the film revolves. Truth'is all-important. Recognition of truth is essential. Contemporary culture rather than facilitating the communication of truth, works ironically against it.

Almost without exception, critics of Blow-Up have viewed this film of Antonioni’s in the same way as his other

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features. That is, they see its significance in terms of. a central dramatic role. But while this was appropriate for his films of introspection from II Grido to Deserto Rosso, such interpretations tend to restrict the director’s thematic statement in Blow-Up. The characterization of Thomas, furthermore, does not seem to warrant the same attention that his other central characters demand. Not only is he a different type of character, hut he is developed differently. He is treated with far more objectivity as a result of Antonioni’s narrative point of view. This narrative change from a limited individual reality to a more universal reality is the substantial difference between Blow-Up, and preceding films. The fact that Antonioni continued such a narrative point of view in Zabriskie point places these two films in a

’ separate - i;f;ihbt-‘W:Siew3-b&itbgbr(y,f'';6fi''AnB6nibhf’b'’iwbrks!r?;;

His transition from the introspective film to the panoramic film, nevertheless, was natural. Environment, set, lines, and symbol have always been read by critics as the objective correlative essential for- interpreting the deep inward reality of characters. While little importance was actually attributed to that objective correlative,it was used to Interpret the most complex of characters.In short, it was taken for granted except by those short-sighted critics who wanted to reduce Antonioni to some sort of sociological cliche. "According to such critics

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L’Awentura is about the evils of wealth, L’Ecllsse condemns the stock exchange, Deserto Rosso denounces industrialization, Blow-Up contrasts illusion and reality."20

The two clearly drawn world views in Blow-Up are strongly suggested in all three motifs; black-white, cultural reversals and inefficacy of communication media. Sven Thomas, the central character, exists in both worlds ■ simultaneously, not simply in the limited world where other major protagonists exist. The effect of such deliniation of worlds within this larger narrative framework makes Blow-Up a thematic synthesis of earlier films.

While the objective correlative In earlier features was used as a mirror to interpret those films, the reality of Blow-Up is much more than a mirror. Quite to the contrary, the characterization of Thomas within his own fantasy world'isthé objective correlative in Blow-Up. Antonioni’s philosophical position, while stated indirectly as an objective correlative during his second period, is directly articulated in Blow-Up. He views modern contemporary technological culture as narrow, stifling, unable to keep pace with its ox*jn progress. Rather than work toward an earthly utopia, the forces of civilization in all of Antonioni’s films, especially in Blow-Up, are conditioning

20Gerald Mast, A Short History of the Movies (New York; Pegasus, 1971),~p7 353.

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man to live unnaturally. Alert sensitive persons, In most cases women, grow to recognize this subtle dehumanization process and react accordingly to rehumanize their environment. Thomas, of all the protagonists in Antonioni’s films, was the only one placed in a position to move in either direction. He chose the path of personal desolation, as had all male protagonists before him.

Antonioni’s aesthetic world view is much more comprehensive than any sociological or psychological cliche. It is a world view that reaches from the lonely, hidden world of person to the gigantic powers of civilization Itself. Art, religion, technology, politics, and national and international cultures as they affect and are affected by man are the controlling Ideas in Antonioni’s philosophy of life and cinema. The tension among these areas of life provides substance for his plots and themes in cinema.

As threatening as reality is within this context, Antonioni’s scientific humanism remains. His abiding faith in man’s triumphant realization of a better, more human world is implicit In every film. While realistically cognizant of human fallibility, Antonioni believes that man himself—whether disillusioned, ignorant and afraid, or creative, dynamic and purposeful—is the creator and master of his own destiny. Mankind’s willingness to see and understand the ever-changing truth of human existence

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is the sole criterion for future success or failure. Manalone holds the key to his humanization or dehumanization.

Chapter VI

World. View and. Apocalypse

The theme of ideality versus reality characterizes all of Antonioni’s films through his middle and popular periods. Truth, as it exists in the natural order of things and as it exists in the dreams or escapes of people, is Antonioni’s overriding epistemological concern. He trusts his personal vision of reality, and attacks in his films the monolithic orderliness of the metaphysical world view upon which cultures and institutions are founded. His perceptions of the natural and technological orders have no correspondence, whatever to an, ontological reality. In every sense of-the word, Antonioni is a modern anti-metaphysician.

Thematically, ideality and reality are integrated Into every aspect of Antonioni’s conception of cinema: the dramatic, the visual- and the audio... Antonioni’s own vision of reality unfolds in his cinema as a selective negation of diseased realities and bizarre Idealities. It is by implication, then, that his own personal vision evolves.

In summary, the broad thematic hinges upon, which

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every major film swings are easily identifiable in termsof the ideal and the real. Il Grido has its foundation inthe suffocating, dehumanizing reality in which Aldo gradually discovers his own inward desolation—that of a technological slave. L*Awentura begins in two different but equally unreal idealities and resolves Itself in the reality of accepting the shortcomings of another and of oneself. L’Bolisse opens on a real note, the recognition of the limitations of a relationship; it passes through the brutal unreality of a stock market world, the romantic unreality of Vittoria’s utopias, and the unreality of the Vittoria- Piero relationship; the film concludes in the reality of a separation. La Notte, too, opens In the reality of friendship and appreciation for life at the bedside of a dying friend and works through a dark night of unreality to conclude in the reality of lost love. Deserto Rosso, much like II Grido, uses reality as its basis. While a sensitive woman who fears the dehumanizing influence of reality attempts to escape into an hallucinatory ideality, the film resolves itself in an apparent cautious acceptance of reality. Blow-Up states the ideality-reality question immediately. Antonioni’s more distant narrative point of view in this film supports a synthesis of the entire epistemological question that the theme of ideality versus reality provokes. Zabriskie point, in a similar distant

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narration, dramatizes the same theme in the glorification of police over-reaction, fantasied explosions, and a desertorgy.

There are clearly a number of conclusions regardinglife and culture which can be drawn from the network ofideality-reality motifs evident in Antonioni’s middle period from Gr3-8.o through Peserto Rosso: (1) modern communication media do not of themselves improve or perfect humancommunication; (2) technological man suffers and is controlled by his environment when he disregards his artistic and cultural heritage; (3) the more man becomes involved in technological society, the greater is his danger of losing his human identity; (4) man cannot relate humanly because he is not free to relate; (5) man cannot respect death because he is not respecting’lifethd'bebson"whomaanipulsttes people is himself manipulated by culture; (7) the sensitive, suffering person is more noble than the cultural robots.;(8) man must learn to understand his fears and escapes as • they relate to a misdirected dehumanizing technological world; (9) the challenge confronting contemporary man is to synthesize the romantic and real, to love nature while appreciating the possibility of using technology in a humanizing way.

With these themes explored thoroughly during the second period, Antonioni ventures forth in Blow-Up and

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Zabriskie point to develop a new narrative perspective, the perspective of cultural overview, and to articulate thesame vision but in a far more direct manner.

In Blow-Up human and technological communication proves useless. A hero who believes he can discern the difference between reality and ideality discovers his utter inability to identify anything. Thomas is a supreme manipulator. Reality and illusion, he believes, can be created or destroyed at his whim. His final recognition that he controls nothing, that he Is in fact controlled by his environment, appears to be a significant cultural statement. Thomas Is in future shock.

When the illusion-reality motif is fully established with the opening scenes of Blow-Up, the narrator follows Thomas in his. adventure through both.. .the real ,.and unreal worlds. Any number of communication attempts from sex to a two-way radio are woven into,the film as emblems of man’s terribly inhuman situation. Communicative metaphors, artifacts and devices communicate nothing. In actuality they merely contribute to the illusion that man is in control of his environment. Antonioni has laced Blow-Up with a substantial number 'of varied communicative elements that not only fail to fulfill their function but, in fact, hinder genuine human communication.

The indistinguishability of the realities of black

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and. white and. the progress of the film from light to darkness, contribute to further fog ideality and reality. Character and dramatic reversals make the authenticity of the ideality-reality propositions in Blow-Up even more questionable. Visual symbols, line design in relationship to character, and sound corroboratives define the reality of Blow-Up in terms of the contrived and the manipulated. Circular compositional motifs suggest the vibious circle of reality itself. Personal disillusionment, alienation and confusion are but logical adjuncts to Antonioni’s perception of reality. In short, the reality versus ideality motif reaches far deeper than a mod world versus a factory world, than a mimed tennis game versus a documentary book.

In a more overt cinematic statement Zabriskie point also draws two clearly d'efined’'worlds: ohe of"extreme 'htechnological proficiency, of well-ordered social controls; and the other of disillusioned romanticism. Antonioni surely sympathizes with revolution as an alternative to annihilation but more importantly, he creates the ultimate world of future shock. It is a technological world in which a plane and a car must make romantic flirtations and touch before the two young people using them have an opportunity to meet. Their attempt to personalize that technological

■^Joseph Gelmis, "Antonioni; What’s the point?,"Film Heritage,. 5 (Spring, 19?0), 32.

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phenomenon by painting the plane in a multi-colored design with a teat on each wing is but a useless gesture at humanizing. It is no wonder Mark suffers police over-reaction upon his return. He has, after all, violated the rules of that world. In this sense, the stealing of a plane is a more grievous crime than the killing of the policeman. The policeman is just a human extension, a protector of the technological world. Reversal of values is clear in Zabriskiepoint.

The Sunny Dunes Real Estate office is as emblematicof technological society as the jailhouse is emblematic ofthe non-technological: simultaneous views of a T.V.commercial, people, in the office and a distant shot of the

2billboard of downtown Los Angelos contrast sharply with the juxtaposed shot-oluabeard edrclergyman;*-an uadmirer of Malcolm X and imprisoned youth. Standing between the technological society and the romantic escape of Zabriskie Point is the human refuse of the technological age: a punch-drunk prizefighter living on the glories that society once permitted him to experience, primitive children running around a junked car after a "piece of ass," a collection ofincommunicative people in a bar who ironically worry about someone changing the old ways as "Tennessee Waltz" plays in the background.

2Marsha Kinder, "Zabriskie point," Sight and Sound,37 (Winter, 1968-69), 29.

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Critics who were disappointed, in Blow-Up and Zabriskie point may have been so because they were already conditioned by Antonioni’s middle period to expect some penetrating inward revelation about man. In Antonioni’s popular period, the period of cultural overview, man is surely important. As a matter of fact, he is of supreme importance, but only by inference or consequence. Emphasis upon cultural milieu to such an extent, however, changes perspective, deals with different problems, and creates a more directly stated world view of civilization. The fact that one film is set In England and the other in the United States Is really insignificant. These places providedAntonioni material divorced from the cultural traditions of Latin Europe, perhaps this is what he sought.

...In Antonioni’s middle.period, he .questions reality from the standpoint of inward man. He delves into those private experiences of life, asking if man or his environment are the causes of man’s humanity or inhumanity. Antonioni’s popular period questions reality from the standpoint of civilization and technological culture as a product of man’s creation. He delves into the artistic and technological creations of man, while asking if man’s cultural creations are functioning to enhance or enslave humanity. In Zabriskie Point technological reality and institutions are portrayed as a positive threat to humanity. Those characters unable

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either to see or to deal with the consequences of advanced technological culture in his popular films are already in a future shock. Characters from both periods who attempt to humanize their enviornment, questioning its dangers and controls, are certainly more human; they are among Antonioni’s enlightened.

The subtle articulation of reality-ideality in Blow-Up is completely lost in Zabriskie point. Zabriskie Point’s reality-ideality theme is revealed in blunt catastrophic terms, terms that are found nowhere else in Antonioni. One can almost sense in Antonioni a certain urgency and /- t desperation that he aesthetically disguised in his previous films. His loss of subtlety and ambiguity in this film, except for certain visual arrangements, makes Zabriskie point his most overt thematic articulation of a world view in terms of an ideality-reality framework. Ahtonioni may have sacrificed artistry for message for any number of reasons in Zabriskie Point, not the least of which were the production problems related to the filming. On the other hand, he may have sacrificed artistry out of an ever increasing conviction that he must express in no uncertain terms what he thought of the world and Its future. Whatever the artistic merits or demerits of Zabriskie Point, however, its themes flow from a vision of reality that Antonioni has woven painstakingly into every single film: a vision of beauty and hope

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co-existing with a vision of ugliness and despair.Antonioni’s world view is essentially unchanged

throughout his films despite the fact that he chose a different, more encompassing narrative posture in his popular period. While not a philosopher in the exact sense of the word, Antonioni does mirror in his films the intellectual turmoil of today much in the manner of the great literary artists of the past.

The intellectual tradition with which Antonioni hasidentified his art is a twentieth century iconoclasm. It is a tradition which fights the same Intellectual battles as did the disciples of Galileo. This tradition attempts to formulate a plausible world view to replace that upon which systems of a culture are built. No longer willing to accept antiquated systems founded upon-correspondences and hierarchical orders of being, contemporary iconclasts turn their attention to the varied realities of life and culture that exist primarily as a result of a former metaphysical world view. While the metaphysical world view has virtually disappeared among intellectuals, structures and systems created within that former rationale continue to existunquestioned. The contemporary iconoclasts do question existing structures and systems, and simultaneously suggest alternative systems more congruous with the growth of human knowledge and experience.

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Similar theories about mankind’s destiny are voiced in any number of the academic disciplines. Referring to the present and the past, the thrust of these new theories points to the future. Hence, they tend to be prophetic and in some instances apocalyptic. The unique common qualityof each new voice is a call for an extension of humanfreedom. Social, religious, political, sexual, racial, industrial, military, economic, environmental, educational and psychological systems are called upon to justify the premises of their existence. A new world order is Inprocess.

Antonioni’s films are, indeed, part of this new world movement. They question the past and present but look toward a future world; a world less selfish and more willing to change. Antonioni contends that environmental reality, in all its dimensions, is significantly affected by man; but man is even more affected by the reality of his environment. Antonioni asks his audiences to be aware of the dehumanizing influences of reality and to arrange reality the way it ought to be, the way he perceives it. If past systems cannot be removed in the present, they should be understood for what they are and ignored. Every film of his second and third periods in its own way screams out to audiences to recognize the truth of reality and build new systems around that truth. Man, in Antonioni’s estimation,, has

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lived, an untruth far too long. Antonioni’s hope of the future rests with those persons willing to accept the consequences of a cultural revolution which can free man from a destiny of future shock, and from the metaphysical absolutes of the past.

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Aristarco, Guido. "L’universo senza qualità."Michelangelo Antonioni. Ed. Carlo Di Carlo.Roma: Bianco e Nero, 1964. 256-63.

Barzini, Luigi. "The Adventurous Antonioni." Holiday,April 19ó3, pp. 99-115.

Beatto, Alberto. "Le strutture narrative in Antonioni." Michelangelo Antonioni. Ed. Carlo Di Carlo. Roma; Bianco e Nero, Î9'64. " 52-66.

Bellone, Julius, ed. World of Film. London: Collier- Macmillan, Ltd., 1970. ~

Bernardini, Aldo. "Dibattito su Blow-Up. " Cinefonim,13 Ottobre 1968, pp. 36-47.

Bratina, Darko. "Il modello sociale su Blow-Up."Cineforum, 13 Ottobre 1968, pp. 43-497

Cavallaro, Giambattista. "Michelangelo Antonioni simbolo di una generazione." Bianco e Nero, 18 (1957)» 17-56.

Coleman, John. ."Colour problem.” New Statesman, 2 April 1965, p. 544.

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Hamilton, J. "Antonioni’s America." Look, 18 November 1969, pp. 36-40.

Harrison, Garey. "Blow-Un." Sight and Sound, 38 (1967), 60-62. -----------" -------- ’——

Hart, Henry. "Blow-Up." Films in Review, 18 (1967), 52.Hernacki, Thomas. "Michelangelo Antonioni and the Imagery

of Disintegration." Film Heritage, 5 (1970), 13-37.Hirsch, Foster. "Zabriskie point." Film Society Review,

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