Review of L'Avventura (1960) by Christopher C — 25 Nov 2007

L'AVVENTURA was director Michaelangelo Antonioni's first international hit, winning the Special Jury Prize at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. Here a small of rich Italian socialites takes a boat out to a volcanic island. Anna (Lea Massari) quarrels with her fiancee Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), and subsequently goes missing. The police are brought in and divers scour the waters, but Anna never turns up. One would expect the film to develop as a whodunit, either revealing Anna to still be alive or putting the finger on the person responsible for her disappearance.

Instead, Anna never shows up, and the film goes off in an immensely surprising direction. Anna's friend Claudia (Monica Vitti) is suddenly promoted from a background character to the very centre of the picture, with her interaction with Sandro driving the picture. While the film lacks a traditional plot, and in door scenes tend to be brief arguments between lovers, the main part of the film is held together with a series of long shots of landscapes. Appreciating Antonioni's style requires some work, but as in the lengthy late works of composers Morton Feldman or Toru Takemitsu, eventually the rewards come. The scenes of the ocean while the party is on the volcanic island are beautifully constructed and will have stayed with me after the film ends. Furthermore, becoming comfortable with L'AVVENTURA makes one all the more ready for Antonioni's later and longer film THE PASSENGER, which I think his masterpiece.

Antonioni's casting of Monica Vitti was brilliant, for in a film that requires the female protagonist to stand as a witness to everything going on around her, Vitti's statuesque beauty is just the ticket. Esmeralda Ruspoli plays a ditzy young lady well, adding a touch of humour to what otherwise would have been a deathly serious film. And though the plot is untraditional, and the existential themes take a backseat to the composition, I'd say there is some closure, with Sandro's inner self stripped naked by the end.