L' Avventura [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni Michelangelo Antonioni

Overview

The recipient of a special jury prize after being booed and mocked at the Cannes Film Festival, L'avventura quickly became one of the most significant yet polarizing European movies of the 1960s. Director Michelangelo Antonioni explores the emptiness and alienation of modern life as both the subject and the langorous style of his movies. In this film, a dissipated group of Italian aristocrats vacations on a remote island, where one of them, Anna (Lea Massari), disappears. Her lover Sandro (Gabrielle Ferzetti) conducts a search, together with her best friend Claudia (frequent Antonioni lead Monica Vitti). Eventually they give up the search, and we never discover why or how she disappeared. Meanwhile, Sandro and Claudia have fallen in love, but even this ardor proves desultory: by film's end, the lovers stand on opposite sides of the beach, staring blankly into the horizon. The recipient of a special jury prize after being booed and mocked at the Cannes Film Festival, L'avventura quickly became one of the most significant yet polarizing European movies of the 1960s. Director Michelangelo Antonioni explores the emptiness and alienation of modern life as both the subject and the langorous style of his movies. Here, as in La notte and L'eclisse, Antonioni is interested less in developing a logical story than in exploring states of feeling and breakdowns in human connection. Long a fixture of "ten best film" lists, L'avventura is also a must-see for viewers interested in artistic compositions that fully exploit a movie's space, color, and movement.

Product Details

Release Date:	09/04/2014
UPC:	0715515123716
Original Release:	1960
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W, Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	2:23:00
Sales rank:	9,474

Special Features

Audio commentary featuring film historian Gene Youngblood Olivier Assayas on "L'Avventura," an analysis of the film in three parts Antonioni: documents and testimonials, a fifty-eight-minute documentary by Gianfranco Mingozzi from 1966 Writings by director Michelangelo Antonioni, read by actor Jack Nicholson, plus Nicholson's personal recollections of the director. Trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Monica Vitti	Claudia
Gabriele Ferzetti	Sandro
Lea Massari	Anna
Dominique Blanchar	Giulia
James Addams	Corrado
Renzo Ricci	Anna's Father
Esmeralda Ruspoli	Princess Patrizia
Lelio Luttazzi	Raimondo
Dorothy De Poliolo	Gloria Perkins
Giovanni Petrucci	Young Prince Geoffredo
Angela Tommasi di Lampedusa	Actor
Enrico Bologna	Actor
Giovanni Danesi	Actor
Renato Pinciroli	Actor
Vincenzo Tranchina	Actor
Franco Cimino	Actor
Rita Mole	Actor
Giovanni Fusco	Composer

Technical Credits

Michelangelo Antonioni

Elio Bartolini

Tonino Guerra

Michelangelo Antonioni	Director,Screenwriter
Amato Pennasilico	Producer
Elio Bartolini	Screenwriter
Luciano Perugia	Producer
Tonino Guerra	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

Catcalls greeted its Cannes Film Festival premiere, but filmmakers and critics recognized the artistic importance of Michelangelo Antonioni's experiments with psychologizing film narrative, and L'avventura (1960) was awarded a special Jury Prize. Abandoning the kind of cause-and-effect plot line that might be expected in a film about the search for a missing woman, Antonioni instead sought to examine the barren inner lives of the postwar rich; the "adventure" is in the encounters between characters as they attempt and fail to make emotional connections. Limiting the audience's knowledge of Anna's disappearance to what Sandro and Claudia learn, and depicting screen actions in real time, Antonioni turns viewing the film into a direct experience of the initial excitement over the search and the waning of involvement as the effort becomes fruitless. Antonioni's carefully controlled deep focus widescreen compositions further communicate the characters' existential ennui and psychic disconnection from each other in evocatively barren environments. Bolstered by the Cannes experience, L'avventura became Antonioni's first worldwide success; released within a year of Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) and Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1959), L'avventura helped announce a vital new era in international art cinema.

All Movie Guide - Lucia Bozzola