Skip to main content

L´avventura (1960)


 

Michelangelo Antonioni – L’Avventura (1960)

An Exploration of the Mind’s Quiet Spaces

“Michelangelo always went beyond words to meet the silence, the mystery, and the power of silence.”
—Enrica Antonioni

A boat glides slowly toward the shore of a rocky island. One by one, the passengers step onto land. A quarrel between a man and a woman. Sunbathing. The wind picks up...

From the very beginning, L’Avventura unfolds as something more than a narrative—it’s a landscape of mood, silence, and ambiguity.

I was struck by Aldo Scavarda’s cinematography. He floods the screen with one breathtaking composition after another: jagged cliffs, dark rainclouds drifting across distant skies, and starkly deliberate frames. There is a plot, yes—someone from the group goes missing. But this is no mystery film in the traditional sense.

Antonioni gave audiences this premise over sixty years ago: a boating trip, a missing woman. What happened?

A Story of Unresolved Emotions

L’Avventura is a film of tensions left unresolved, a kind of ritual where loss, contradiction, and longing move side by side. It’s difficult to pin down exactly what happens—what matters is the moment. The characters drift in and out of clarity like mirrors catching passing thoughts.

When dialogue emerges, it’s sparse but weighty. Characters speak as if their inner voices are rowing in opposite directions. These internal frictions become the true language of the film—Antonioni's slow-burning barometer of confusion, restlessness, and human disconnection.

Images that Speak in Silence

There’s a moment when Monica Vitti runs across a room, and I freeze. The frame is divided: on the left, a richly decorated interior with small sculptures perched on ornate supports; on the right, an open balcony with hills undulating in the background. The shot is pure visual poetry.

Antonioni’s images don’t just show—they evoke. His films feel like fragments of truth embedded in silence. An everyday mysticism begins to wrap itself around us. Something broken and human always lingers beneath the surface. Everything in his world feels uncertain, fluid—often even foreign.

Why Can’t Things Be Less Complicated?

Monica Vitti’s face is etched with quiet desperation. She rings church bells until she simply stares into the void.
“Why can’t things be less complicated? I like to be clearheaded…”
she sighs. And who among us hasn’t thought the same?

With a few lines and a handful of images, Antonioni captures something essential. Not answers, but questions—about contradiction, about choices, about the in-between.

A Monument of Modern Italian Cinema

L’Avventura is a towering achievement of modern Italian cinema. It’s independent, introspective, and monumental. It holds both beauty and despair—both delicacy and ugliness. That duality makes it human. And that’s precisely what makes it a great film.

More than anything, L’Avventura lives up to its title. It is an adventure—not across oceans or landscapes, but deep into the uncharted terrain of the human psyche.

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Cinematography: Aldo Scavarda
Screenplay: Michelangelo Antonioni
Cast: Monica Vitti, Gabriele Ferzetti, Lea Massari, Dominique Blanchar

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Night Porter (1974 - Il portiere di notte)

  Liliana Cavani – The Night Porter (1974) I wondered what I could write about two people who are “strangers” to each other, yet share a common past. An ugly and horrific past. One was subordinate. The other held power. What are the odds that they would meet again—and would they even recognize each other? One way or another, in Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter , they meet again. A man and a woman. Lucia, a former concentration camp prisoner, and Max, the former camp commandant. The film feels like a long, dark dream in its weightlessness— a feverish delirium trying desperately to change its nature. I couldn't help but think of New Order’s Bizarre Love Triangle , though in this case, there are only two protagonists. When their eyes meet at the reception desk of Hotel Zur Oper, flashbacks from the past begin to rise slowly to the surface. After the initial shock and what follows, one begins to contemplate the dynamic between Lucia and Max. They become increasingly entangled ...
Post a Comment
Read more
The Assessment (2024)     When a film presents two worlds—an old one and a new one—it inevitably brings to mind George Orwell, and why not Aldous Huxley as well? The Assessment (2024) is not, however, an Orwellian dystopia, although it certainly is a dystopian portrayal—one that is multi-layered, sharp, and refreshing. Mia (Elizabeth Olsen) and Aaryan (Himesh Patel) are a couple living in the controlled reality of the new world, and they wish to adopt a child. The setup seems fine—at least, on the surface. Technology has certainly taken the upper hand over the old world. The foreboding begins when the official Virginia (Alicia Vikander) arrives to assess the couple’s suitability as parents. The tone of the film is tense, at times unsettling, with Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch's brilliant film score subtly floating in the background, enhancing the atmosphere of instability. The visual quality is impressive and polished, and the casting is spot on. Above all, Alicia Vikander’s p...
Post a Comment
Read more
  Poetic Realism in French Cinema INTRODUCTION Two men walk along a dimly lit peninsula. They talk quietly. The air is misty. The sea is barely visible in the background, and further in the distance, a house emerges from the haze. There is something otherworldly, picturesque, and poetic in the atmosphere. This brief description is from the 1938 film Le Quai des brumes ( Port of Shadows ), directed by Marcel Carné. This film is where it all began—my fascination with the style of French cinema that emerged in the mid-1930s, later known as poetic realism . The term itself originates more from literary realism than from cinema. Typically, the protagonists are working-class people, fugitives, criminals, or those living on the fringes of society. Love, its loss, and the presence or nearness of death are ever-present themes. The cynicism and pessimism of poetic realism reflect the past while foreshadowing the future: the rise of fascism, the impact of the Great Depression, and the ons...
Post a Comment
Read more