Michelangelo Antonioni
Antonioni made films about people who have everything and cannot make contact with any of it. He came up in Italian cinema when neorealism was the house style and moved away from it early: Il Grido, in 1957, still follows a working man walking out of his own life, but the interest has already shifted from what happens to what it feels like from inside.
The run that reorganised European cinema came next. L'Avventura, in 1960, begins as a search for a woman who has vanished on a volcanic island and then quietly loses interest in finding her, which is the point rather than the flaw. La Notte in 1961 and L'Eclisse in 1962 complete what is usually called the alienation trilogy, and Red Desert followed in 1964. Blow-Up, in 1966, gave him an English-language hit built around a photographer who thinks he may have accidentally photographed a crime and is not certain he cares. Zabriskie Point took the method to America in 1970 and The Passenger took it to the desert in 1975.
His pictures are mood pieces with real architecture behind them: composition first, plot last, landscape treated as a character with opinions. Venice, Berlin and Cannes all handed him their top prize. He kept working late, with Beyond the Clouds in 1995 and a segment of the anthology Eros in 2004, and most of the slow cinema made since is descended from him.
Movies (11)
Where to start with Michelangelo Antonioni
Do not start with Blow-Up, tempting as it is. Begin with L'Avventura, because everything afterwards refines the trick it pulls: a woman disappears, a search begins, and the film transfers its attention to the searchers. If that bores you, the rest will too, and you have saved yourself a decade of homework.
If it works on you, take La Notte and L'Eclisse next in that order, then Red Desert, where the colour does the emotional work the dialogue refuses to.
Blow-Up is the accessible one and a good film to argue about afterwards. The Passenger is the one I would defend hardest, a man trading his life for a stranger's across North Africa and Spain. Zabriskie Point is the interesting failure. Il Grido shows where he started, and how much of the later method was already there.