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L'Avventura (1960)

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From Time Out Film Guide

Though once compared to Psycho, made the same year and also about a couple searching for a woman who mysteriously disappears after featuring heavily in the opening reel, Antonioni's film could not be more dissimilar in tone and effect. Slow, taciturn and coldly elegant in its visual evocation of alienated, isolated figures in a barren Sicilian landscape, the film concerns itself less with how and why the girl vanished from a group of bored and wealthy socialites on holiday, than with the desultory nature of the romance embarked upon by her lover and her best friend while they half-heartedly look for her. If it once seemed the ultimate in arty, intellectually chic movie-making, the film now looks all too studied and remote a portrait of emotional sterility.

Author: GA

Time Out Film Guide

User reviews of this film

Bart said...

Posted on Mar 01 2008 17:58 This is one of the worst pictures I've seen in my life!
The acting is pathetic. The actors seem to wander aimlessly into a scene, glance meaninglessly at the camera and then wander out of frame. None of them seem to have any idea about what they're doing or feeling.
The continuity is virtually nonexistent. In one scene the boat is anchored away from the island. In the next scene the boat is moored near the island with a gangway to the island. Then in the next it's anchored back off the island. In the next, it may be circling the island.
It's as if Antonioni deliberately used the worst takes he had. He could not have made a more dreadful picture if he had tried.
Gripping, electric, majestic, engrossing are not words one should associate with this picture. Amateurish, however, is a perfect fit.
I assume that a group of intellectual snobs decided this was a masterpiece and the followers just went along.

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