Synopsis: When a young woman (Lea Massari) disappears without a trace on a boating trip, her lover (Gabriele Ferzetti) and best friend (Monica Vitti) at first attempt to uncover what has happened to her, but become increasingly attracted to each other during the long search.
1. Released the same year as L'Avventura, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho seemingly shares some of the former's
concerns. In both, the apparent 'heroine' of the piece vanishes. In both, an inquest occurs into the disappearance. In both, there is unease, social and cerebral. Both films were derided upon release, later becoming emblematic of their time. Yet the similarities are merely surface-deep; in Psycho, we witness Marion Crane's terrible death, the following investigation, and the solving of her murder, even if we cannot comprehend the motives or psychology behind it. In L'Avventura, there is no such moment of reckoning. There is no murder, nor is there a true mystery. The characters do not allow for a mystery. The thematic concerns of L'Avventura lie far from the realm of Hitchcock; they lie far from the realm of most filmmakers. The plot may be simple, but the possibilities are endless. If I was going to choose a film that L'Avventura most resembles, it might be another film released in that same year of 1960: Fellini's famous paean to wanton excess, La Dolce Vita. The two are almost flip sides of the same coin; both concern wealthy Romans ensnared in a world of bored alienation, trying anything that comes along in order to 'get their kicks'. Both concern the towering figure of lust, rather than 'love'; nobody could possibly be 'in love' in L'Avventura; there is simply no place for it. Love is another way to pass the time. Just as Marcello Mastroianni finds himself sexually obsessed with Anita Ekberg's starlet, Sandro and Claudia will play with each other until their time is through. Even a tragic happening is a distraction; vanished Anna is essentially erased, as the lusts and needs of a life continued consume each character in turn. Unlike Psycho, this is not a film about a lost woman. It is a film about the emptiness of our modern world, and how we might overcome it.
2. I'll admit, I watched L'Avventura several nights ago and initially dismissed it as 'tedious'; 'bored, boring characters stumbling around in beauty', I wrote on Twitter, trying to sound for all the world like I knew what I wanted to say. The truth is, I was stumped; this is like no film I have ever seen, and I wonder how it has eluded me for this long. It's a running joke with a friend that I've been trying to watch it now for several months, and keep being thwarted; I've concluded that I'd made up my mind about the film before I'd even seen it. I had several plot points fixed in my head, but was mistaken about several; I was convinced the whole 2 hour and 23 minute running time was set on an island; convinced also that it was Monica Vitti who disappeared, and Lea Massari who sought her; convinced there was a lesbian scene, for some outlandish reason. Maybe I was expecting another Persona. And I didn't want another Persona. These preconceptions prevented me from just sitting down and watching the goddamn thing; I thought I had it all worked out. And even as I watched it, I thought to myself, 'This is what I've heard so much about?' Like many, I was blinded by the glare of the film's surface; a series of happenings, played out by a clinically disinterested few, in a world that seems alien and, almost, hostile. This is the world of what many jokingly called 'Antonioniennui'; existential oblivion, devoid of responsibility or passion. These are people searching for something, or perhaps not even searching; perhaps content to float in a limbo of moral dilapidation. I thought to myself, 'How can I relate to these people? What is the film trying to tell me? Is it a warning? Do I desire their destruction, their downfall?'
3. Yet the film has played at the edges of my subconscious since I watched it. I find myself engrossed with the idea of the 'adventure' of the title. It is not, of course, an adventure of the body, nor one of narrative construction. As Ebert says, you can imagine Antonioni sitting down and having a good laugh to himself as he wrote that title. He cleverly manipulates the audience's preconceptions, in that at first we believe we've seen this story before; lost girl, single friend determined to discover what's happened, eventually overcomes the corruption of the police force etc. But this film is more about what becomes 'the disappearance of the disappearance'; the passage of time, even a relatively short amount of time, and how it wipes away the memory of Anna's vanishing; as Claudia laments, how can so much have changed, how can she have forgotten, in only three days? This is an entropic concern; what at first seemed of the utmost importance shrivels into insignificance. The 'adventure' of the title becomes altogether different. It is one of the mind, and it is one born in the mind of the viewer. It is not a journey easily navigable. There are two key destabilizing forces in L'Avventura: Antonioni's wonderful cinematography of space and his treatment of time. These are the elements, far away from the happenings on screen, which make up his 'adventure of the mind'.
4. Antonioni's 'cinematic language' was hailed at the time as one of the most innovative cinematic techniques in history; critics at Cannes circulated a petition declaring the film 'irredeemably important', following a harshly critical reception at the initial screening. It's hard now to imagine modern cinema without Antonioni's innovations; fluid long-takes, epic spaces, the marginality of the characters. All of these were given life in his breakthrough film. What first hits you about this film is the importance of sheer scope. The great liberty of Antonioni's spaces allows for seemingly boundless reflection; in L'Avventura, there is, it seems, humanity, and then there is nature. The parallel between the two is where cinematic perfection is found. The 'adventure' becomes one of inward contemplation, between these great spaces and the distinctiveness of each and every character. Antonioni begins with the island, the physical representation of the moral wasteland of these characters. Throughout the scenes when the characters search for Anna, his cinematography accentuates the insignificance of these subjects in comparison to the vast perpetuity of nature; characters are located off-centre, several wandering aimlessly at the peripheries of each shot. The vast ocean of the background accentuates the barrenness of the foreground; everything is 'other', completely separate from these tiny figures trying to navigate their way. If you are to take this notion that there are humans and there is nature, you could find yourself at the inevitable conclusion that Anna has simply been consumed by the landscape; nature has taken her. There are hints of logical explanations; a boat is heard leaving the island, a group of smugglers are interrogated and appear reticent to explain themselves. Yet the fact of the matter is still the same for the audience; Anna is gone. And by ceasing to exist, at least within the temporal framework of the film, she has rendered the thread of existence as infinitely fragile. The discrepancy between this fact and the behaviour of the characters is what creates the thematic contention; they continue as if nothing has been altered.
5. The lack of human centrality in scenes continues after the island. Empty space, devoid of human subject, is one of Antonioni's most important innovations; Scorcese took it as his own, most notably in Taxi Driver, another film concerned predominantly with alienation in the vast urban landscapes of America. Throughout the second hour of the film, Claudia and Sandro float from place to place, never truly connecting with any one landscape, until, perhaps, the very final shot of the movie. The dramatic contours of the island yield to city streets, hotel rooms, a bell-tower. The framing of a scene becomes the purpose, rather than the character within it; idle moments and spaces which do not engage the viewer in movement or happenings. Human interaction, as much as it is, occurs on the borders of the frame, or in altering perspective; Sandro in the extreme foreground, for instance, and Claudia lounging in the background, her back to the viewer. More than any, this affect estranges the viewer; the idea that subject is simply an aspect of the space, that the space exists and will always exist; they appear into, and disappear from, the spaces, never making them their own, reflecting their eternal disinterest with everything around them. Similarly, the face is not the integral aspect of each character; Monica Vitti becomes the focal point of the film, yet during many scenes, her face is not displayed at all, either too distant for us to make out, or simply turned from the audience. We come, also, to know her body; the curve of a neck, the basin of an ear; details of a human figure that cinema had, until this point, kept hidden from us. Everything is decentred, rendered abstract; we spend our entire time with these characters, yet we cannot know them.
6. This disjointedness of space becomes united with Antonioni's idea of temporal reality, of the passage of minutes, hours, days; the discrepancy between past and future becomes blurred and indistinct. Time, in L'Avventura, is part of the method. Strangely enough, the film is almost doggedly linear; no flashbacks, no scenes out-of-place, barely any sequences running in parallel. The entire second half of the movie follows Claudia and Sandro on their 'quest' to discover the truth about Anna; their are no interruptions from this narrative. Yet the pacing, the construction of individual scenes, and the blank spaces between, create a feeling of unease, of alienation from the temporal flow of time. The film glides along at a glacial pace, the sheer duration of scenes contributing to what I at first labelled the 'tediousness' of its method; viewers are given too much time and space to contemplate events, to look and to think. Silence reigns, broken only by meaningless babble. The cultivation of a kind of disinterestedness in the minds of the viewer is reflected by the characters; Monica Vitti pulls faces at herself in a mirror; reclines against a wall as Sandro talks to a witness regarding the disappearance; conversations begin, are halted, begin again; Claudia sings to herself, pulling stockings onto her feet. The entire flow of time, already fragmented by the disappearance, slows to inconsequential moments and slots of happenings, where nothing is revealed, no great narrative consequences occur; we are merely witnessing the passing of lives, in the search for something to pass them with. The viewer becomes inexorably bound in this moment-by-moment existence, by turns bored and anxious. This is the world of a life lived without purpose.
7. L'Avventura is also a masterpiece of body language and sexuality. Sexual desire fills the movie, and it is mixed up with the threat of violence. Desire is often portrayed literally; the gathering throngs that follow Claudia through the dusty streets, eyes ravishing her lovely body, are manifestations of the thoughts and longings of every woman and man. The sense of aggression seething beneath the surface is palpable; though there is not a single scene of violence or brutality, the film crackles with the possibility of it. Anna's 'shark' is our first indication of this violence; her disappearance brings to mind endless visions of heads dashed on jagged rocks. Yet the contortions of characters in the act of lust or despair do not conform to this idea; from the opening scene of Anna and Sandro engaged in disinterested lovemaking (Anna is more concerned with Claudia being aware that they are having sex than with the actual act) it is clear that tenderness in this film takes rather the form of adulation of the body, of the simple act of conquest, rather than anything approaching affection. Later Sandro will return the favour, kissing Anna passionately while Claudia watches, pushing her aside when he knows they are alone; minutes later, she will be gone. Later another character, Giulia (Dominique Blanchar), is seduced by a seventeen year-old painter, falling into a sensual dance with him even as Claudia looks listlessly on. Sex, the seeking of it, becomes the new mystery. Anna falls by the wayside. Yet we never see sex; like Bunuel, Antonioni allows our minds to fill in the blanks in forms of fetishization; stockinged legs, figure-hugging dresses, the flick of a tongue; these are Antonioni's outlets of desire. These subdued glances of hungry infatuation become intrinsically bound up with the apathy of each character toward the world around them; what else can they do but what they must? The film's conclusion illustrates this inevitability, as I shall study in the final point. When everything is done, one must move onto the next thing. Desire is fleeting, entropic, burning itself out before it even begins; fuelled by a moment, a crisis, the glimpse of flesh, it cannot be sustained, just as the memory of Anna is gone before it is accepted. Like Severine in Bunuel's Belle de Jour, perhaps a return to the primordial violence and danger of sexuality is all that can save them; the expensive prostitute who seduces Sandro intentionally rips her skirt to attract male attention; hers is a dangerous game, one that Claudia could never dream of, yet one that would draw her out of her listlessness.
So Deleuze said of Antonioni. The characters are formed in this exactingly broken flow of time and experience; Antonioni is concerned with what occurs when everything has happened, when the main thrust of the narrative is finalized; what happens when when the mystery has been solved, or has proven to be unimportant? How do these people continue when they have forgotten what brought them together in the first place? The inevitable conclusion comes when Sandro finds another woman; like Anna, Claudia 'disappears' in the conscience of this man who simply seeks to pass the time in masturbatory self-interest. We see this when he ruins a fellow artist's portrait; destruction for destruction's sake. The byproduct of his position in society is his abject narcissism; he is often portrayed as foolish, too stupid to take anything seriously, or perceive the gravity of situations. Hence, even as he searches for his fiancee, he lusts after her best friend. Claudia, on the other hand, could be called an innocent, but only in comparison to the other characters; she is as trapped in the web of self-involved actions as every other character, but she finds it in her heart to believe at least that Sandro loves her, or somehow cares enough to respect her. It is also only Claudia who keeps Anna in mind, when even we, the audience, may have forgotten or ceased to care; her relationship with Sandro, and her belief in his love, stems from the fact that he will not defile the memory of their time on the island. By the end of the film, she becomes convinced that Anna has reappeared, seeking perhaps revenge. Again, Antonioni hints of a conclusion; Anna returning, or even a vision of Anna on the part of one of the characters, would have been the finale of choice for a lesser director, concerned with a lesser purpose; as it is, Antonioni leaves us in his cruel limbo. The film is one of the only I can think of which 'winds down' to almost a standstill, so that by its end there is nothing but the jagged edges of these characters, and the ineradicable display of nature; Sandro weeping on the bench, Claudia standing behind him, unsure whether to pity this contemptible figure, Mount Etna in the background, another island. How we are supposed to feel is never explained; how you feel is part of your experience of the film. You may be bored to fucking tears by this point; if so you may have understood the film more genuinely than anybody.
Some random observations:
Antonioni has stated that the film is is intended to be a 'detective story back-to-front', but also said that there was never any intention to reveal what happened to Anna; the focus is firmly on Monica Vitti's Claudia throughout. However, there are several theories; the shark, the boat (a boat engine is heard twice while the characters search the island; once seemingly for the old man, once unexplained); the smugglers; or death, either by suicide or pure accident.
This is part one of a loose trilogy, along with Le Notte and L'Eclisse. Much like Bergman's 'Faith' films (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light and The Silence), Antonioni never intended it as a trilogy, but, due to the thematic links, cinematic historians have labelled it such. Gene Youngblood stated that they are a "unified statement about the malady of the emotional life in contemporary times."
