Michelangelo Antonioni (redirected from Michaelangelo Antonioni)

Antonioni, Michelangelo 

Born Sept. 29, 1912, in Ferrara. Italian director. He has been a film critic, a scriptwriter, and a producer of documentary films.

In 1950, Antonioni made his first feature film, Story of a Love Affair. The common theme which runs through his works is the isolation of man in contemporary bourgeois society. He has made the films Le Amiche (1955), The Cry (1957, in Soviet release Despair), L’Avventura (1959), La Notte (1960), Eclipse (1962), Red Desert (1964), Blow-Up (1967), and Zabriskie Point (1972). Not accepting the contemporary bourgeois reality, Antonioni, with the skill of a researcher and astute psychologist, shows the destruction of man’s internal ties with the surrounding world. The tragic lack of mutual understanding between people, the aimlessness of existence, the spiritual impoverishment of his heroes, who find it impossible to overcome their isolation, are depicted as the sole and inevitable form of life for all mankind. Antonioni’s films are pessimistic; they are strongly marked by irrational motifs. The pictures bear the mark of his great skill as a director—his subtle choice of means of expression and the subordination of all the components of the film (music, camera work, and actors’ performances) to the director’s scheme.

REFERENCES

Turovskaia, M. M. “Antonioni . . .” Iskusstvo kino, 1962, no. 6.
Karaganov, A. “Vstrechi v Italii.” Iskusstvo kino, 1965, no. 3.
Capri, F. Michelangelo Antonioni. Parma, 1958.
Leprohon, P. Michelangelo Antonioni. [Paris, 1961.]