The Films of Michelangelo Antonioni (Cambridge Film Classics)
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The Films of Michelangelo Antonioni (Cambridge Film Classics) Details
Review ' ... a long-overdue review of an auteur too often dismissed or ignored.' David Martin-Jones, Film-Philosophy Read more Book Description The Films of Michelangelo Antonioni provides an overview of the Italian director's life and work, and examines six of his most important and intellectually challenging films. L'avventura, La notte, and L'eclisse, released in the early 1960s, form the trilogy that first brought the director to international attention. Red Desert was his first film in color. Blow-up, shot in English and set in swinging London, became one of the best-known (and most notorious) films of its era. The Passenger, starring Jack Nicholson, is the greatest work of his maturity. Read more
Reviews
As a past film teacher and now Antonioni lover, I found this book disappointing in a few important respects, although the author is knowledgeable about the subject.A lot of this book seems tending toward the pseudo-intellectual, its author sometimes employing a rather confused and circuitous reasoning that exemplifies the kind of film analysis I tend to dislike. There are some very good points made in the book, and I certainly wouldn't steer any lover of Antonioni away from reading it, but anyone considering purchasing this rather expensive volume should be warned it isn't definitive or, ironically, very thorough underneath the heavy verbiage.One of its main sins is to make the common mistake many film writers make of building interpretations mainly on what a filmmaker says about his own work; indeed, Brunette uses Antonioni's own statements as almost an exclusive and sacrosanct guide to the films' meanings.As a film teacher, I long ago learned the truth of the adage, "trust not the artist, trust the tale", and found the most valuable way to approach an analysis of any work of art is to break apart and study how its elements function together within the work. Many great artists (painters, poets, as well as filmmakers) work a great deal on instinct, and the meaning(s) offered up by their works usually, especially as to the greatest artists, far surpass any of their conscious intentions. It may be of passing interest (or more than passing, but certainly secondary) to learn what Antonioni intended to do, but I think the primary job of film analysis is to dissect what a work of cinematic art he created actually does.I think this is why the author spends so many words in faulting and criticizing other writers like Seymour Chatman who is doing his job by responding more to the artistic functioning of the elements in the films themselves; Brunette strikes me as taking a completely wrong road in trying to make a final judgement on Antonioni films by way of Antonioni's own proclamations.At any rate, the book has much in it that will provoke thought, but, if I were you, I'd rush out and get Chatman's book first.Bob Blenheim
