Michelangelo Antonioni

Michelangelo Antonioni (born September 29, 1912 in Ferrara, Italy) is widely seen as the greatest Italian film director after Federico Fellini.

Style

Ingmar Bergman once remarked that he admired some of Antonioni's films for their detached and sometimes dreamlike quality. His films tend to have very spare plots and dialogue, and much of the screen time is spent lingering on certain settings--such as the ten-minute continuous take in The Passenger, or the many scenes in La Notte which show the female character simply wandering the city silently observing other people. Though his films are full of visual beauty, and are perfectly calculated to capture the alienation of the characters, the spare, slow-moving style by which this is accomplished is off-putting to some viewers.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~