Michelangelo Antonioni

El  presente  análisis  muestra  la  riqueza  que  existe  en  esta  joven  rama  de  la  crítica  literaria en nuestro país. Por tal razón, este trabajo se apoya en la comparación narrativa del cuento de “Las babas del diablo” de Julio Cortázar y su adaptación cinematográfica Blow-up del    realizador    italiano    Michelangelo    Antonioni    para    ejemplificar    concretamente las virtudes de un análisis de esta naturaleza.
Ambos  textos  presentan  un  cierto  grado  de  complejidad  y  la  intención  es  ejemplificar  una  de  las  tantas  posibilidades  teóricas  que  puedan  responder  a  muchas  interrogantes que se han generado respecto a la validez de la obra de Antonioni respecto de  la  Cortázar,  ambas  grandes  exponentes  tanto  en  la  Historia  de  la  Literatura  Latinoamericana como del Cine Europeo contemporáneo.

Texto en castellano

DE ESCIPIÓN A BERLUSCONI. UNA HISTORIA DE ITALIA EN 50 PELÍCULAS
Cuenta André Breton que, cuando el grupo surrealista acudía al cine, acostumbraba a entrar comenzada la proyección, y la abandonaba al poco tiempo para volver a irrumpir en otra sala, donde se exhibía otra película, en cualquier momento de la función. Al final de la jornada, las secuencias dispersas, cubiertos los huecos en la imaginación, iban construyendo en la memoria un nuevo argumento, a partir de la lógica irracional, fragmentaria y elíptica del inconsciente. Algo de la visión «sonámbula», y profundamente liberadora, que reivindicaba el surrealismo, subyace en el viaje por el imaginario histórico a través del cine italiano que recorre las páginas de este libro. Los autores proponen un itinerario punteado de elipsis, saltos, pasadizos subterráneos, flashbacks y flashforwards, un recorrido transhistórico que se apoya en el asincronismo entre el tiempo que señalan las tramas, a partir del cual se ha ordenado la selección de los films, y el de su producción y estreno en sala. En resumen, lo que este volumen plantea es una de tantas historias posibles de Italia —tantas como antologías probables— a través del objetivo de la cámara.

This article studies post-war Italy’s forgetful attitude towards its Fascist past by interpreting a political measure, the Togliatti amnesty (1946), and 1950s film censorship as ‘institutionalised forms of (…) amnesia’ (Ricoeur 2004, 452). The amnesty, which erased the Fascists’ legal responsibility for war and political crimes, represented the first act of oblivion of the Republican political establishment, embodying a forgetful mindset that influenced Italian culture through institutional instruments like film censorship. In 1950s Italy, censorship acted as a further form of institutionalised amnesia aimed at erasing from films the traces of the compromising continuity between the Fascist past and the democratic present. The story of the making and unmaking of the Italian episode of I vinti by Michelangelo Antonioni is a meaningful example of this dynamic. Producers and government commissioners censored the plot and changed it from a story about a neo-fascist militant to one about a young bourgeois who smuggles cigarettes. However, Antonioni resisted the institutional imposition to forget by choosing locations where the material dimension of the landscape still embodied the Fascist legacy of the country.

The paper is part of the ‘Back Home’ research project carried out by a group of PhD students from the Polytechnic University of Milan within the framework of the Paquebot Laboratory. The goal of the present research is to reveal historical premises and sociocultural circumstances that provided the basis necessary for the development of the British post-war housing.
As one of the major sociocultural and architectural phenomena in the modern history of Great Britain, the new residential development has been taking shape under the impact of new realities of the post-war life. A descriptive research method has been applied in order to determine the most significant among these realities, such as the exigency of rebuilding and reforming the country immediately after the World War II, economic upheaval of the next two decades, introduction of new governmental policies, multiple cultural tendencies – form the Swinging Sixties to the Electric Eighties – and an intense critical debate of the period.
The study aims to answer the following research questions: what are the preconditions of the British post-war housing phenomenon, and what has determined the emergence of a new generation of architects ready to exploit new approaches to modernism and avant-garde in Great Britain in the 1950s-1980s. Special attention is paid to revealing innovative tendencies of art, fashion, music and cinema, which have transformed the country into the world’s cultural trendsetter for several decades and become a cardinal requirement for the residential development in post-war Great Britain.

One of the most comprehensive books to focus on the relationship between cinema and the other arts, this volume explores types and stylistic devices of intermediality through a wide range of case studies. It addresses major theoretical issues and highlights the relevance of intermedial relations in film history, mapping the theoretical field by outlining its main concepts and the research avenues pursued in the study of cinematic intermediality, including the most recent approaches and methodologies. It also presents some major templates of intermediality through various examples from world cinema, including closer looks at films by auteurs like Alfred Hitchcock, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, and Agnès Varda. Supplemented by three new chapters dealing with phenomena which came into view since its first publication, the revised and enlarged edition of this ground-breaking volume will serve as a useful handbook to clarify key ideas and to offer insightful analyses.

Ces deux films questionnent les relations entre le cinéma et les autres modes de représentation artistiques que sont le dessin, la peinture et la photographie. Cette réflexion d'un film à l'autre conduit au thème majeur commun aux deux films : les relations complexes tissées entre la réalité et les images de cette réalité.

Five years since Michelangelo Antonioni’s death, the groundbreaking Italian director’s films occupy an increasingly important but odd position. Exemplifying serious ‘art cinema’ at the peak of its European expression – or, as recent scholarship often prefers to locate it, post-war film modernism – his most famous work continues to compel yet also cause problems for critical reception. How to write about such demanding and endlessly rewarding films without falling back on what we are often told are the old clichés of ‘alienation’ and chilly modernist formalism? A welcome addition to the slowly percolating appreciations of the filmmaker in English, Antonioni: Centenary Essays quite visibly, if not perhaps intentionally, struggles with and exemplifies this challenge.

Статья посвящена сравнительному анализу раскрытия образа пустоты в западном и восточном кинематографе на примерах фильмов М. Антониони и Ким Ки Дука. Одним из главных художественных средств, используемым данными режиссерами для создания образа пустоты, является различная специфика подачи пространства и времени, в результате чего формируются разные образы пустоты: пустоте как опустошенности в фильмах Антониони противостоит пустота как открытость у Ки Дука.

Brown University Comparative Literature Honors Thesis analyzing and comparing the Jorge Luis Borges story, "The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero", and the Bernardo Bertolucci film based on it, "The Spider's Stratagem", dealing with the politics of spectacle and the spectacle of politics.

Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini (1920-1993) is one of the most renowned figures in world cinema. Director of a long list of critically acclaimed motion pictures, including La strada, La dolce vita, 8½, and Amarcord, Fellini's success helped strengthen the international prestige of Italian cinema from the 1950s onward. Often remembered as an eccentric auteur with a vivid imagination and a penchant for quasi-autobiographical works, the carnivalesque, and Rubenesque women, Fellini's inimitable films celebrate the creative potential of cinema as a medium and also provide thought-provoking evocations of various periods in Italian history, from the years of fascism to the age of Silvio Berlusconi's media empire.

In Making a Film Fellini discusses his childhood and adolescence in the coastal town of Rimini, the time he spent as a cartoonist, journalist, and screenwriter in Rome, his decisive encounter with Roberto Rossellini, and his own movies, from Variety Lights to Casanova. The director explains the importance of drawing to his creative process, the mysterious ways in which ideas for films arise, his collaborations with his wife, Giulietta Masina, his thoughts on fascism, Jung, and the relationship between cinema and television. Often comic, sometimes tragic, and rife with insightful comments on his craft, Making a Film sheds light on Fellini's life and reveals the motivations behind many of his most fascinating movies.

Available in its entirety for the first time in English, this volume contains the complete translation of Fare un film, the authoritative collection of writings edited and reworked by Fellini and initially published by Giulio Einaudi in 1980. The text includes a new translation of the Italo Calvino essay "A Spectator's Autobiography," an introduction by Italian film scholar Christopher B. White, and an afterword by Fellini's longtime friend and collaborator Liliana Betti.

The article proposes that Michelangelo Antonioni's films "The Red Desert" and "Blow Up" were deeply influenced by the director's enthusiasm for the abstract-expressionist paintings of Mark Rothko. 
It begins by recounting Antonioni's special visit to Rothko's studio when in New York for the premier of "L'Eclisse", and the film-maker's uttered responses upon seeing artist's vaporous abstractions in situ.  The article then discusses Antonioni's known use of values derived from modern art to compose with his cinecamera to that point, then carefully shows overt correspondances between Rothko's art and the handling of colour within his next film, "The Red Desert".  Specific scenes are used to demonstrate the points, indicating clear connections with Rothko's "misty" work.
The analysis then shows how the visual puzzles posed in Antonioni's next film, "Blow Up", directly connected with contemporary discussions of abstract art - including Rothko's work - as well as the phenomenology of perception.  Close attention is paid to the crucial scene set in an artist's studio featured within the film, and how the director presents the interpretation of blown up photographs.
6pp.

Incrinando i meccanismi del racconto tradizionale in ordine al materiale tematico (la condizione umana nell’epoca post-industriale), agli strumenti narrativi (l’irrisolto intreccio giallo), alla composizione dell’inquadratura (la preminenza del paesaggio), alle tecniche di montaggio (i falsi raccordi e la continuità di ripresa), L’avventura consacra internazionalmente Michelangelo Antonioni, lancia Monica Vitti come attrice drammatica e indica la strada della modernità al miglior cinema coevo. Incrociando la poderosa letteratura critica sul film con materiale largamente inedito (soggetto, sceneggiatura, documenti di produzione, ecc.), il presente volume intende proporne una più autentica analisi, nella sua precisa collocazione storica e culturale.

By violating the traditional conventions of narrative cinema with respect to thematic material (human condition in post-industrial era), storytelling techniques (unresolved ending), composition of the frame (centrality of the landscape), and montage (discontinuous editing and long takes), L’avventura consecrates internationally Michelangelo Antonioni, launches Monica Vitti as dramatic actress and points the way of modernity to contemporary art cinema. Crossing the massive critical literature on the film with largely unpublished material (treatment, screenplay, production documents, etc.), this volume intends to propose a more authentic analysis of the movie, in its precise historical and cultural context.

Die historischen und die aktuellen Varianten des Surrealismus entwickeln besonders in Spanien und Lateinamerika – im Rückgriff auf hispanische und präkolumbianische Mythen und Bilderwelten, barocke Traditionen des theatrum mundi, der Groteske, Farce und Satire – intermediale Spielformen, die durch Brüche, Passagen und Zwischenräume gekennzeichnet sind. Der Band tastet das Spektrum der intermedialen Kombinationsmöglichkeiten unter medienästhetischen Perspektiven ab. Im Rekurs auf konkrete Fallstudien zu Borges, Cortázar, Carpentier, Buñuel, Dalí, Frida Kahlo u.a. analysiert er die Zusammenhänge zwischen historischen Spielformen des Surrealismus und neueren Entwicklungen im spanischen und lateinamerikanischen Mediensystem bei Almodóvar, Amenábar und El periférico de Objetos. (Abstract zum Buch)

Este é um artigo publicado em acesso aberto (Open Access) sob a licença Creative Commons Attribution, que permite uso, distribuição e reprodução em qualquer meio, sem restrições desde que o trabalho original seja corretamente citado. Galaxia (São Paulo, online), ISSN 1982-2553, n. 39, set-dez., 2018, p. 53-71. http://dx. Uma pálida neblina: paisagem e melancolia no cinema italiano moderno Ângela Freire Prysthon I I-UFPE Recife (PE), Brasil Resumo: A partir de um panorama conceitual sobre a paisagem no cinema, que implica na distinção entre uma concepção cênica e territorializada em contraposição a uma função mais contemplativa e material do espaço, o objetivo desta apresentação é analisar quatro filmes de ficção italianos ambientados no Delta do Pó-"O grito" (1957) e "O deserto vermelho" (1964), de Antonioni; "A noite do massacre" (1960), de Vancini; e "O jardim dos Finzi-Contini" (1970), de de Sica. Esse pequeno conjunto, marcado por sua aderência ao cinema moderno italiano, revela também uma unidade pictórica. Nossa hipótese inicial é que a ambiência e a formação de estilo são simultaneamente determinadas e condensadas por características da paisagem na qual os filmes são localizados. Para desenvolver essa hipótese e para a análise baseio-me tanto no lastro teórico dos estudos da paisagem como em abordagens mais pontuais sobre a ambiência e a espacialidade no cinema moderno, além, evidentemente, da literatura sobre o cinema italiano moderno. Palavras-chave: paisagem; melancolia; cinema italiano moderno. Abstract: A pale mist: Landscape and melhancholy in the modern Italian cinema-From a conceptual panorama on the landscape in the cinema, which implies the distinction between a scenic and territorialized conception as opposed to a more contemplative and more material function of space, the purpose of this paper is to analyse four Italian fiction films set in the Po Valley-"Il grido" (1957) and "Deserto Rosso" (1964) by Antonioni, "La lunga notte deí43"(1960) by Vancini and "Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini" (1970) by de Sica. This collection, marked by its adherence to the modern Italian cinema, reveals a pictorial unity. Our initial hypothesis is that this ambience and the formation of style are simultaneously determined and condensed by characteristics of the landscape in which the films are located. In order to develop this hypothesis and to analyse the films, I adopt the theoretical framework of landscape studies, as well as on specific approaches to modern cinema, and the literature on modern Italian cinema.

Rossellini, Resnais, Pasolini, Ivens, Marker, Antonioni, Malle. C’è stata una stagione – orientativamente tra gli anni Cinquanta e i Settanta – in cui alcuni grandi cineasti europei hanno compiuto viaggi in Asia per realizzare film, documentari, inchieste, spinti chi da curiosità intellettuale, chi da militanza politica, chi da contingenze di lavoro. Le loro opere hanno spesso fatto parlare di sé: alcune sono state considerate imprescindibili (India di Rossellini), altre hanno causato incidenti diplomatici (Chung kuo - Cina di Antonioni), alcune hanno «inventato» nuove forme di racconto (Lettre de Sibérie di Marker), altre ancora offerto sguardi inediti su avvenimenti capitali del Novecento (Hiroshima mon amour di Resnais). Orient (to) Express è il primo libro che considera questi film come un fenomeno frutto di un’unica temperie culturale, terrain d’entente grazie al quale riconsiderare alcune questioni teoriche che hanno attraversato la storia del cinema. Prima di tutto il concetto d’autore, poi le adiacenze tra moderno e postmoderno, il carattere visibile e fotogenico delle immagini e ancora l’orientalismo come pratica politica e come genere. La stessa esperienza del viaggio appare cruciale in questa ricerca per la sua dimensione pragmatica e archetipica e perché espone i registi a malintesi e incomprensioni, slanci e insicurezze, rendendo i loro film degli oggetti controversi, complessi, talvolta rabberciati, assolutamente da studiare.

This paper examines the objections leveled by semiologist and theoreticians of the visual media against the widely held belief that photographic and cinematographic images may act as realist maps of the extradiscursive world on the basis of their intrinsic features. It is argued that Saussurean semiology, as well as, to a lesser extent, Peircean semiotics, do not support the concept of photographic images as unchallengeable signs. Saussurean semiology, in particular, deals with photographs as with any other arbitrary sign. This semiological skepticism, the paper points out, informs the analysis of still photographs, cinema, and computer-generated images. Against these uncompromisingly antirealist claims, the paper sketches out a theoretical framework by means of which visual evidence may be reclaimed for realism. The argument suggests that, more than a matter of semiological analysis, what is at stake here is an axiomatic judgment about the consistency and stability of the lifeworld.

This paper is the sixth instalment of a book-length study provisionally entitled On Virtual Grounds: A Blueprint for a Postmimetic, Dialogical Realism. Previous instalments—entitled respectively “Toward a Dialogical and Postmimetic Realism,” “Classic Realism, the Nostalgic View,”  “Modernist Antirealism: Existential Alienation and the Solace of Form,” and “The Thingless Sign: The Structuralist and Poststructuralist Challenge against Referential Illusion,” and “The Politics of Mimesis”—are also available on Academia.edu.

Michelangelo Antonioni’s cinematic universe is one
where established forms of narration are challenged,
creating a space and time –familiar as much as otherworldly–
for the maladies of the modern worldtounfold.
Alienation, the “greatest” of modern evils, is thoroughly
studied in the director’s famous trilogy,presented
during the beginning of the ’60s.All three parts, The
Adventure (L’avventura, 1960), The Night (La notte,
1961) and The Eclipse (L’eclisse, 1962), follow their
bourgeois characters and female protagonists in a
state of ennui, where the absence of communication
leads to a restless wandering around the urban and
suburban landscape. In this context, walking becomes
a state of isolation, a chance for the modern subjectto
confront its inner numbness. Passing through the various
scenery, thus,functions as a reflection of the characters’
fragile psychological state. This article, hence,
explores the multiple connotations engulfed in Antonioni’s
filmic depiction of walking by examining three different
scenes; one from each part of the trilogy.

From the back cover:

"‘Post-War Modernist Cinema and Philosophy: Confronting Negativity and Time' represents an advanced, sophisticated, extremely well informed and challenging contribution to the rapidly growing area of film-philosophy scholarship. It will become an important moment in (re)establishing the philosophical significance of cinema (and film studies’ efforts in addressing this) well before the current trend in Anglo-American Philosophy’s 'discovering' of film emerged. . . . Ford draws on a wide range of research across film, modernist cultural and aesthetic theory and continental philosophical terrains. The work engages both with more recent film-philosophy scholarship and the disciplinary resources of film studies work on the movements and individual filmmakers in question. A successful and important contribution to scholarship on these films, their historical and aesthetic significance and their capacity to 'do' philosophy."
— Patrick Crogan, University of the West of England, UK

"Often, work in this area is far too devoted to a particular theoretical corpus and tends to lose originality; alternatively it falls into being a merely impressionistic mention of philosophy to make otherwise unremarkable claims. Hamish Ford’s book is remarkable for its engagement with the deepest problems of modernist aesthetics and the presentation of time. He works closely with cinema, philosophy and criticism while always maintaining his own argumentative position."
— Claire Colebrook, Penn State University, USA
                                                     
"Hamish Ford’s energetic and erudite work is both theoretically and historically engaged and highly accessible to a broad readership. He is ideally positioned to contribute significantly to the discussion of post-war European cinema through this important book."
— Adrian Danks, RMIT University, Australia, co-editor of Senses of Cinema

'Post-War Modernist Cinema and Philosophy: Confronting Negativity and Time' is a unique study of four feature films chosen as emblematic works of 1960s modernist cinema. 'Persona' (Ingmar Bergman, 1966) and 'Two or Three Things I Know About Her' (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967) are explored through the theme of negativity, while 'L’eclisse' (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962) and 'Last Year in Marienbad' (Alain Resnais, 1961) are examined for their violent rendering of time. The book argues that these films exemplify film modernism at its peak of philosophical interest, substance and significance. Its focused analysis of four emblematic works selectively draws on the work of German philosopher and aesthetic theorist Theodor Adorno, in particular his account of negativity, and French poststructuralist philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s analysis of temporality in post-war cinema, amongst other theoretical and critical sources. Grounding this study is a close consideration of the critical and aesthetically remarkable gaze these particular films cast upon their immediate social real and modernities as presented on screen. But rather than a strictly historical analysis, the book suggests that such complex and profoundly ambivalent renderings of the modern world have much to say to us today via what amounts to a genuinely challenging return in digital form, the films' remarkable aesthetic surfaces and layers looking even more properly science fiction-like than ever. 'Post-War Modernist Cinema and Philosophy: Confronting Negativity and Time' will appeal both to an academic audience, from upper-level undergraduate through to career researcher level, and a wider readership attracted by the book’s extensive analysis and appreciation of films that have countless and increasing admirers the world over."

Published review: Michael Godard, Senses of Cinema, July 2016, Issue 79, online: http://sensesofcinema.com/2016/book-reviews/post-war-modernist-cinema-and-philosophy/

Henri Bergson, in Matter and memory, theorizes a universe of images that exist before subject; after almost ninety years, Gilles Deleuze, following Bergson, defines cinema as a non-centered set of movement-images. Through the study of Dziga Vertov’s kinoglaz,  Michelangelo Antonioni’s desolate shots and Alain Resnais’ sheets of memory, this paper aims to highlight the main points of a cinema-thing, where ontology and aesthetics, creation and construction coincide in the end with a virtual plan of immanence, conceived as the impersonal genesis of every reality.