L'avventura

Infobox Film
name = L'avventura


caption =
director = Michelangelo Antonioni
producer = Amato Pennasilico
writer = Michelangelo Antonioni
Elio Bartolini
Tonino Guerra
starring = Gabriele Ferzetti
Monica Vitti
Lea Massari
music = Giovanni Fusco
cinematography = Aldo Scavarda
editing = Eraldo Da Roma
distributor = Janus Films (USA)
released = flagicon|France 1960 (premiere at Cannes)
flagicon|Italy 29 June, 1960
flagicon|USA 4 March, 1961
runtime = 142 min
country = Italy / France
language = Italian
budget =
preceded_by = "Il grido"
followed_by = "La notte"
amg_id = 1:27801
imdb_id = 0053619

"L'avventura" ("The Adventure") is a 1960 Italian film written and directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Monica Vitti and Gabriele Ferzetti star. The film has been widely noted for its careful pacing which puts a focus on visual composition and character development, along with its unusual narrative structure which, taken altogether, "systematically subverted the filmic codes, practices and structures in currency at its time."Adair, Gilbert, [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/michelangelo-antonioni-459768.html "Michelangelo Antonioni - Director whose 'L'Avventura' set new parameters for modern cinema (obituary)"] , "independent.co.uk", 1 August 2007, retrieved 20 September 2008] The film was produced in 1959 on location in Italy under difficult financial and physical conditions and made Monica Vitti an international star.Valdez, Joe, " [http://thisdistractedglobe.com/2007/08/26/l%E2%80%99avventura-1960/ L’Avventura (1960)] ", thisdistractedglobe.com, 26 August 2007, retrieved 20 September 2008] It is the first of a trilogy by Antonioni, followed by "La notte" (1961) and "L'eclisse" (1962). "Red Desert" (1964) rather than "La notte" has sometimes been named as belonging either to this trilogy or a wider tetralogy.

ynopsis

"L'avventura" has an unusual narrative structure in which an apparently important central mystery is gradually forgotten and left unsolved. The story begins as two young women, Anna (Lea Massari) and Claudia (Monica Vitti), meet up for a yacht trip. Fetching Anna's lover Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), the three join two wealthy couples from Rome on the boat and wind up visiting "Lisca Bianca", an almost unpopulated volcanic island off the coast of Sicily, where Anna shows her boredom and unhappiness with the sometimes childish Sandro. After napping on the rocks, they awaken to find Anna has gone without a trace. Nettled at first, then worried, they search for her, helped by Anna's diplomat father, who soon comes to the island with a police ship and helicopter. However, within a few days they all drift back into their own lives as the story shifts to a new and somewhat stormy relationship between Sandro and Claudia, who is at once happy and wracked with guilt over her missing best friend. On the rooftop of a cathedral Sandro asks Claudia to marry him but she is mostly too startled by this to answer in a meaningful way. Later, the two check into a swank resort hotel near Messina where Sandro's business partner is staying. While Claudia goes to bed, Sandro stays up, claiming he almost never sleeps. Bored, he wanders among the partying guests. Claudia spends a more or less sleepness night waiting for him to come back to their room and as dawn breaks frantically searches for Sandro throughout the now deserted public spaces of the hotel, only to find him on a couch with a costly call girl. Sandro flees them both but Claudia, in shock, follows him outside. The last scene, which carries no dialog and has to do with how people cope with themselves and each other, starkly shows Sandro's almost hopeless weakness and emptiness as he sits in tears before a blank, scarred wall while Claudia stands steadfastly beside him, Mount Aetna brooding behind her as if ready to erupt.dvdverdict.com, " [http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/lavventura.php L'Avventura: Criterion Collection] ", retrieved 20 September 2008] ejumpcut.org, " [http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc49.2007/Tomasulo/2.html Jump cut: A review of contemporary media] ", retrieved 20 September 2008]

Responses

Released in 1960 the film was booed by some members of the audience during its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival (Antonioni and Vitti fled the theatre) but after a second screening it won the Special Jury Prize and went on to both international box office success and what has since been described as "hysteria."Ebert, Roger, [http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19970119/REVIEWS08/401010338/1023 "L'Avventura (1960) - Great Films"] , "Chicago Sun Times", 19 January 1997, retrieved 20 September 2008] This controversy carried on for decades. "L'Avventura" influenced the visual language of cinema, forever changing how subsequent movies looked and has been named by some critics as one of the best ever made, but has been criticized by others for its seemingly uneventful plot and slow pacing along with the existentialist themes, which even stirred the "waggishly dismissive epithet of "Antoniennui"."

Meaning

Much has been made of Anna's unsolved disappearance, which Roger Ebert has described as being linked to the film's mostly wealthy, bored and spoiled characters, none of whom have fulfilling relationships: They are all, wrote Ebert, "on the brink of disappearance." Along with much of Antonioni's other work, "L'avventura" is often cited as an early feminist film with strong and richly characterized female protagonists.

Cast

Notes

External links

* [http://home.comcast.net/~rogerdeforest/antonioni M.Antonioni] : Tribute site
* [http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=27801 New York Times review]
*
*

* Roger Ebert on [http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19970119/REVIEWS08/401010338/1023 "L'Avventura"]