Paying homage, and in memory of the high priest of Italian cinema, who passed away this month, LACEFilms, as part of its monthly cinematic visitations is screening Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1960 La Avventura.
Riled and rejected as long drawn, soporific, pretentious and trashed by the crowd at Cannes, the film, considered a masterpiece, thanks to small band of critics, went on to become box-office success. It not only got Antonioni, festival’s Grand Jury Prize, besides rehabilitating L’Avventura and securing its place as a postwar cinema classics. The first of a trilogy, followed by La notte and L’eclisse, the film, is famous for its slow paced and careful composition and unusual narrative structure and shot on-location under very trying financial and physical conditions.
The film’s deceptively facile storyline spotlights on a group of upper-class Italians who head out on a boat tour of the deserted volcanic Aeolian islands in the Mediterranean. When they are about to leave the island, they find Anna, has gone missing.
Her boyfriend Sandro, and friend Claudia, try to trace her. While looking for her, Claudia and Sandro develop an intimacy. When they get back to land, they continue the search while proceeding to become lovers, and all but forget Anna.
A penetrating character study, L’Avventura, which positioned Antonioni as an international talent, is a stinging examination of spiritual alienation, many meanings of love and self-discovery found along the voyage through morally decadent world of idle rich. One of second wave of provincial neo-realist Italian directors (like Federico Fellini) following in the footsteps of predecessors like Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio de Sica and Luchino Visconti, the master auteur, who gave memorable movies, sums up L’Avventura as: Nothing appears as it should in a world where nothing is certain. The only thing certain is the existence of a secret violence that makes everything uncertain.
Screening at Suchitra, Banashankari II Stage, Sunday 11 am. Call 9900146487 (Prashant Pandit) or 26711785.
