Synopses & Reviews
Michelangelo Antonioni's starkly beautiful
L'avventura is one of the great masterpieces of European art cinema, though at Cannes in 1960 it baffled and enraged its first audience. The plot is simple: a woman disappears while visiting a tiny, remote island with friends and it's as if they don't notice that she's gone. What has happened to her?
L'avventura disclaims the conventions of narrative cinema in the most radical way: it never provides an answer to this question.
Antonioni has often been labelled pessimist but, as Geoffrey Nowell-Smith argues, his work is not judgemental and is better described as sceptical, concerned with truth rather than consolation. L'avventura seems indifferent to either progress or decadence, Nowell-Smith writes: its characters are placed fairly and squarely where they are, with no past to return to or future to advance to. Stripped of consoling certainties, existentially alone, they are observed with a meticulousness that takes nothing for granted.
As well as detailing the circumstances of production, Nowell-Smith relates L'avventura to other groundbreaking films of the period and to all of Antonioni's earlier and later work. In order to appreciate the significance of L'avventura, he concludes, it is necessary to understand not only that the film is a classic but also that it was a revolution in cinema.
Synopsis
The starkly beautiful L'avventura is one of the masterpieces of European art cinema. The plot is simple: a woman disappears while visiting a tiny, remote island with friends and it's as if they do not notice that she has gone. L'avventura disclaims the conventions of narrative cinema: it never provides an answer to this question.
Synopsis
This study provides a detailed account of the 1960s film, "L'avventura," arguing that in order to appreciate its greatness it is necessary to understand not only that the film is a classic but also that it represents a revolution in cinema.
Synopsis
This study provides a detailed account of the 1960s film L'avventura. The book argues that in order to appreciate the film's greatness, it is necessary to understand not only that the film is a classic, but also that it represents a revolution in cinema.
About the Author
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith is Director of the Joint European Filmography and editor of the Oxford History of World Cinema (1996).