Jornal da Mostra

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Michelangelo Antonioni

AFTER BERGMAN, ANTONIONI LEAVES CINEMA EVEN MORE SILENT

One day after Ingmar Bergman’s death was announced, we hear of the decease of another master of cinema, Italian Michelangelo Antonioni, the architect of existentialism, the maestro of incommunicability who contaminated audiences with immortal films such as L’AVVENTURA, L’ECLISSE, IL DESERTO ROSSO, BLOW-UP, ZABRISKIE POINT and PROFESSIONE: REPORTER.


Antonioni spent the last years in a wheelchair, having had his right side immobilized by a stroke in 1985. Unable to speak, he dedicated his time to painting, mastering to perfection the articulations of his left hand. He first painted a series of alpine landscapes. After that he went into figurative painting, also very successful in the exhibits his wife Enrica promoted in European galleries and museums.


In 1991, Antonioni received us in his house in Rome to decide which of his paintings would be the poster of the 15th São Paulo International Film Festival (see below). He didn’t seem to like the suggestion I made of communicating through an especially adapted computer, such as many I had already seen around the world. He preferred to make himself understood through his wife, who, sometimes, also had difficulties to interpret what he mumbled. The master surprised us every time he seemed to be taken by his destiny.


For the ones who thought Antonioni would never shoot again after IDENTIFICAZIONE DI UMA DONNA, made in 1982, the surprise was the announcement, in 1992, of the beginning of the production of the film AL DI LÀ DELLE NUVOLE/ BEYOND THE CLOUDS (19th Mostra selection), with the stimulus and the collaboration of German filmmaker Wim Wenders.


The film was only finished in 1995 and didn’t have a good acceptance by the Italian critic, which hurt the master deeply. Worse still would be the presentation of his next film at the Venice Festival in 2004, when IL FILO PERICOLOSO DELLE COSE, part of the episodic feature EROS, also directed by Steven Soderbergh and Wong Kar-wai, was so badly accepted that Antonioni decided to re-edit the episode. The vice of speed in the cinema and the remote control on the minds of the new generations of journalists hurt more than once the master of incommunicability.


With his premonitory vision of the future of cinema, back in 1980, Michelangelo Antonioni would anticipate himself and present IL MISTERO DI OBERWALD, made completely in video and later transferred to film. With IL MISTERO... he would work for the last time with his muse Monica Vitti. A great experimental surprise after the excellent repercussion of his film PROFESSIONE: REPORTER, made in 1975, with international American distribution.


In 1995 Michelangelo Antonioni received an honorary Oscar in Hollywood. The statue would be on a shelf in his house for less than a year. On the following Christimas his apartment would be broken into and the statue would disappear forever.


English version: Laura Rebessi

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