Review of L'Avventura (1960) by Richard D — 12 Feb 2018

I just watched this film for the third or fourth time, and 2 moments struck me as very important. Early in the film, before Anna disappears, she tells her fiance Sandro that she loves him, but while he's been away, she also realized that she's perfectly happy without him.

Later, when Anna has disappeared and Sandro is with Claudia, he talks to her about his work. They are looking at huge Gothic cathedral, and he tells her how buildings of rich importance used to be built with the intention that they last for centuries.

Now they aren't even intended to last a decade, so rather than try and build things, he makes a fortune providing estimates on other people's projects. The characters in this movie inhabit a world where the traditional values no longer apply, but they have been unable to forge any replacements, so they act out the hollow shell of old roles and spend their time seeking sex and entertainment.

Similarly, this film sets itself up as a traditional meaningful narrative, setting up a key character and then just letting her vanish. The remaining characters act out the shell of a plot, trying to find her, but just drift off into the shell of a romantic plot.

I think it's a brilliant and rare example of a film's themes being expressed not just in it's plot but in the very form the film takes.