L’Avventura

Michelangelo Antonioni invented a new film grammar with this masterwork. An iconic piece of challenging 1960s cinema and a gripping narrative on its own terms, L’Avventura concerns the enigmatic disappearance of a young woman during a yachting trip off the coast of Sicily, and the search taken up by her disaffected lover (Gabriele Ferzetti) and best friend (Monica Vitti, in her breakout role). Antonioni’s controversial international sensation is a gorgeously shot tale of modern ennui and spiritual isolation.

“It’s difficult to think of a film that has a more powerful understanding of the way that people are bound to the world around them, by what they see and touch and taste and hear. I realize that L’Avventura is supposed to be about characters who are ‘alienated’ from their surroundings, but that word has been used so often to describe this film and Antonioni’s films in general that it more or less shuts down thought. In fact, I see it, more than ever, as a movie about people in spiritual distress: their spiritual signals are disrupted, which is why they see the world around them as hostile and unforgiving. Visually, sensually, thematically, dramatically, in every way, it’s one of the great works of cinema.” —Martin Scorsese, Criterion.com

Film Details

Country: Italy
Language: Italian
Year: 1960
Running time: 143 min
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Producer: Amato Pennasilico
Writers: Michelangelo Antonioni, Elio Bartolini, Tonino Guerra
Cinematographer: Aldo Scavarda
Editor: Eraldo Da Roma
Music: Giovanni Fusco
With: Gabriele Ferzetti, Monica Vitti, Lea Massari, Dominique Blanchar
Print Source: Janus Films

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