La Notte (1961)

La Notte (1961; aka The Night) is the middle of Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni’s trilogy including L’Aventura and L’Eclisse, and the one I’d always wanted to see. Antonioni’s slow, dispassionate style is intentionally alienating and difficult to wrestle with; I completely understand those who get bored by his work. Yet I do find something of […]

Zabriskie Point (1970)

I mainly knew that Zabriskie Point (1970) was a flop at the time of release, a disappointment for Italian art-film director Michelangelo Antonioni after the international success of Blow Up. That, and thanks to a SCTV sketch, I knew that things blew up real good at the end. Palace Cinemas Raine Square were screening Zabriskie […]

Red Desert (1964)

Michelangelo Antonioni is a divisive auteur and I can understand why some people don’t like him – wealthy people being bored in slow narratives where nothing much happens. But I really like L’Eclisse and The Passenger as absorbing portraits of alienation. Red Desert (1964; Il deserto rosso) was advertised as Antonioni’s first film in colour, […]