Blow-Up director Antonioni dies

Blow-Up is the only film of his I am familiar with. It was good back when, but I find it hard to sit through now.

It is busy in cinematic heaven, for yesterday veteran French actor Michel Serrault passed away too.

BBC article

A foreign film trifecta of obits.

Antonioni's "L'Aventura" was his most experimental, innovative film and was booed at its premier in Cannes. However, it won the Jury Prize! He accomplished with the transitory love affairs among the Italian rich what Kubrick accomplished with time and space in "2001." There's little dialogue -- an engimatic and metaphysical trip of the mind in imaginative cinematic perspectives. I can never get the scene out of my mind where the ominous and dehumanized machinery of the train rolls pass the virtually deserted streets of the town. Life passing its characters up who are left facing the daily banalities of their vacant social lives with love pitched insignificantly off a trestle.

Bergman and Antonioni are gone. Their work will be with us forever.
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Ingmar Bergman dead - A lifetime
achievement in film.
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Ingmar Bergman has died, aged 89.
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In Sweden, Ingmar Bergman's position as a filmmaker is paradoxical. On the one hand he is hailed, canonized, and on the other hand his work is constantly being called into question, dismissed as being too complicated, too private, too theatrical. Abroad the picture is more uniform: his name is simply seen as synonymous with Swedish film.
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http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2007/07/30/bergman-obit.html
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Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni dies at 94
July 31, 2007
Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, whose depiction of alienation made him a symbol of art-house cinema with movies such as Blow-Up and L'Avventura, has died, officials and news reports said Tuesday. He was 94.
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The ANSA news agency said Antonioni died at his home on Monday evening.
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"With Antonioni dies not only one of the greatest directors, but also a master of modernity," Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni said in a statement.
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Antonioni depicted alienation in the modern world through sparse dialogue and long takes. Along with Federico Fellini, he helped turn post-war Italian film away from the Neorealism movement and toward a personal cinema of imagination.
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http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2007/07/31/antonioni-obit.html

Antonioni is sometimes hard to grasp. At least for me (Zabriskie Point, Blow Up). But I loved two of his movies. I think "Il Grido" is a great tipically desolate, compelling Antonioni film, and "Professione: Reporter" is not only deep, but very entertaining in a strange way.

For me, Ingmar Bergman was among the very best directors. He never made a film that was the least bit shallow; they all made us think for a long time after.
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The Seventh Seal is my choice, could see it again and again. I cannot imagine that film in colour.
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Antonioni was hard work and concentration for me, but all his films were superior.

"Wild Strawberries" is my favorite with "The Seventh Seal" a close second.

I only saw Scenes from a Marriage, but read and read and read about Bergman. Saw Blow Up and that's all by Antonioni. I know, I know, whatta a derelict.

I'm going to have to up Netflix from 2x a month to unlimited...

(tangent - have Umberto D on my desk right now, waiting for the mood....)

Fb, I'm always interested in your not-always-famous-in-the-US picks...

I still find Blowup interesting, but sadly Zabriskie Point seems rather dated these days. (Well, to me, anyway. Others may disagree.) Years ago I saw Antonioni's Red Desert & couldn't quite fathom what exactly it was all about, but I just read this ..... & now I know! :wink: :

http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/26/reddesert.html