This week the Zawya Art House Cinema Focus (14-27 June), a week-long programme screened twice, featured a retrospective of the late Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007) including four of his most highly acclaimed films: L’Avventura (The adventure, 1960), L’Eclisse (The eclipse, 1962), Il Deserto Rosso (Red desert, 1964) and the famous English-language Blow Up (1966).

A filmmaker, cinematographer and producer, Antonioni is famous for enigmatic films portraying the alienation of individuals in modern societal structures, using a distinctive style of minimal dialogue along with extended scenes, unrealistic narrative and frustratingly ambiguous endings.

L’Avventura (The adventure, 1960) was Antonioni’s first major international success though many responded to it by saying, “nothing happens in the movie”, due to its lack of a coherent narrative. It features a group of wealthy friends on a sea cruise near Sicily, their expensive yacht filled with amenities and lavish food. Anna (Lea Massari), her lover Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), and her close friend Claudia (Monica Vitti) swim ashore before the others. Anna and Sandro argue, and then Anna is missing on the uninhabited island. Despite all efforts to find her, Anna cannot be found. Another yacht approaches with Anna’s father on board.

The narrative focuses on revealing how unreal and fragile these characters’ relationships are, rather than becoming a conventional adventure searching for Anna. The cinematography features powerful scenes of rocks, sea, and the rooftop of a church next to giant church bells. Once back on the shore, Sandro notifies the police of Anna’s disappearance. He then follows Claudia on a train to start a new adventure, telling her that he loves her. This sequence presents Claudia’s crisis as she struggles to have a relationship with her friend’s lover. When Claudia accepts Sandro, they forget about Anna and check into a hotel. Claudia refuses to join Sandro at the party downstairs and decides to sleep instead. He joins the party and never returns to the room that night. Claudia struggles with fears that Anna has returned and is with Sandro. When she goes in search for him, she finds him lying down with a hooker on a lobby couch.

Antonioni’s favourite muse was Monica Vitti, who appeared in three of his four films. Vitti’s delicate yet mysterious presence lent his often bewildering and motive-less films a touch of humanity. Her characters provided a source of empathy for viewers struggling to find emotional depth in Antonioni’s abstract narratives.

Il Deserto Rosso (Red desert, 1964) was Antonioni’s first film in colour. Set in the wastelands and toxic factories of Italy, the film stars Monica Vitti as Giuliana, a wife and mother who attempts suicide and desperately seeks escape from her reality. Her husband’s colleague, Corrado (Richard Harris) is unwilling to help her. After her son falsely claims a serious illness, Giuliana attempts to escape once by seducing Corrado and another time by attempting to sail away on a nearby ship. However, as in Antonioni’s other films, the pace is slow with lingering shots of streets and places, and the narrative drive and purpose remain elusive.

L’Eclisse (The eclipse, 1962), also starring Monica Vitti alongside Alain Delon, is set against the backdrop of modern Rome with intense long shots of the streets and their exquisite architecture. It opens with a long scene of a couple, Vittoria (Vitti) and Riccardo (Francisco Rabal), splitting up. Abruptly the film starts to follow Vittoria, who heads to the headquarters of the stock exchange where her mother can usually be found trading. Vittoria engages in a relationship with Piero (Alain Delon), one of the most active employees in the stock market, who is always busy and moving quickly from one spot to another. The film follows these two strangers becoming entangled in a melancholy love affair; their relationship starts, escalates and fades away.

Here as elsewhere Antonioni’s characters lack any true emotions as their relations are based on desire, convenience and mutual boredom, and the film delves into existential alienation, bureaucracy, commerce and fake social interactions to reflect on loneliness and materialism.

Blow-Up (1966), for its part, follows Thomas (David Hemmings), a fashion photographer in London who unintentionally captures a murder that appears in a series of photos that he took at the park. Thomas starts to blow up the photos to have a clear view of their content. Of course, with no resolutions are provided for the viewer as the film tackles interesting questions about truth and its perception. Along with complex characters, the film delivers a unique and provocative metaphor.

Antonioni’s style is too abstract and esoteric to reach a wide audience, with characters often lost in dreams and psychological struggles they remain unable to communicate or express, with exterior elements taking on the task of expressing their emotional state.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 22 June, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly