Matialth
Good concept, poorly executed.
Console
best movie i've ever seen.
invaderJim
This movie is a masterpiece, certainly, but as admirable as it is for its technical mastery and genre inversion, it somehow fails to entertain. This should not discourage anyone from watching it, they should simply know what they are getting into from the outset. More than anything, this is an experiment of film: testing new possibilities for the medium (a trend that Antonioni would follow in the next two installments in this trilogy, La Notte and L'Eclisse) and new methods of emotional manipulation. The first thing to notice is the camera- work and direction style. It is a truly beautiful film, jumping from extreme close-ups characterized by frenetic movement to wide overhead shots of an island or city in which one or two distant figures can be viewed etching out their paths like ants in the sand. It often distracts from the underlying story, especially in the later parts of the movie when the story itself has almost seemed to vanish along with the missing girl who acts as the focal point of the film, if it can be said to have one. The story itself offers some severe challenges to the audience. The first thirty minutes are devoted to establishing the mystery involved in the disappearance of Anna, the best friend of one of the film's protagonists and lover of the second. In a departure from the traditions of the genre, however, this mystery does not lead to a criminal conspiracy or hard-boiled investigation, but is instead followed by a series of the most mundane events imaginable. This is not to say that the lives of the two protagonists do not turn upside down, merely that this upheaval is internal rather than dependent upon external circumstances. As their half-hearted attempts to locate Anna lead them nowhere, Claudia and Sandro find themselves committing a more profound betrayal than if they had abandoned Anna to die outright: moving on with their lives. Rather than serving as the primary driver of the film, the mystery is covered up like an untreated wound festering just beneath the surface and infecting everything around it. Eventually the two characters reach a point in which the reappearance of Anna would no longer be the solution to a problem, but would in fact be the culmination of one. The final scene is striking in its ambiguity. Are we witnessing redemption, or the final stages of the fall from grace? Even the music seems to be unable to decide.
Lee Eisenberg
"L'avventura" is the start of Michaelangelo Antonioni's unofficial trilogy about modernity and its discontents. That Anna's (Lea Massari) disappearance never gets solved highlights an important point: things do not always have a purpose. Sometimes, things just happen. It is amid this cynical outlook on life that Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti) and Claudia (Monica Vitti) start up a relationship. Alienated by a world filled with excesses, they find only each other.I can't help but wonder if "L'avventura" influenced Terry Gilliam's movies. A frequent theme in his movies is the desire to escape our overly commercialized society (as seen in "Time Bandits" and "Brazil"). Whether or not it did, this is an undeniable masterpiece. Like Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni took Italian cinema in a direction that would ensure the production of some of the greatest movies. This is one that you should see.
cmccann-2
When L'avventura premiered at Cannes in 1960, it polarized audiences and immediately established director Michelangelo Antonioni as an exciting new force on the art-house circuit. The film concerns the disappearance of the character Anna during a Mediterranean boating trip, and the subsequent romance of her fiancée Sandro and best friend Claudia. Though initially L'avventura appears to be a mystery, the lack of resolve regarding Anna's disappearance makes the film function more as an art- house drama about the existential ennui of the leisure class. Though certain scenes drag on, the film as a whole holds up well and lives up to its stature as one of the key texts of 1950s/60s European art-house cinema.When a group of upper-class friends go on vacation in the Mediterranean, a young woman named Anna (Lea Masari) disappears during a stop at an island. Anna's husband-to-be Sandro (Gabriel Ferzetti) and close friend Claudia (Monica Vitti) subsequently lead a search initiative and become lovers. Like a shark attack Anna fakes before her disappearance, Sandro and Claudia's affair is merely performed as a means to escape the ennui of their luxurious lives, to rekindle a lost feeling of excitement. The film ends with Claudia catching Sandro with another woman; their "adventure" over, the characters are left to continue their monotonous existence.The pacing can be slow, and many scenes linger on for extended periods of time, becoming longueurs which test the viewer's patience. However, both the acting and script-writing are well-executed in that they come across seamless and never pop out at you in a cringe-worthy way. The film's greatest strength lies in the camera-work of Antonioni and cinematographer Aldo Scavanda. There's a painterly level of composition to many of the shots, for example the way Antonioni's camera pans right to a rule of thirds shot of the search party cross-armed against the island backdrop, upset at not having found Anna - Antonioni is very good at conveying narrative on a purely visual level.In summary, L'avventura is an important text in 60's art-house cinema and still worth revisiting for modern movie goers. From the 70's movie brats to Sofia Coppola, directors attempting to tell stories of wide-screen alienation have drawn heavily from Antonioni, and this is probably one of the director's most famous films. It may at times be tedious, but one can't deny its artistry and the driving truth of its themes, nor its role in influencing a generation of filmmakers.8/10
Max-keefey
L'avventura is Antonioni's towering achievement. This film brought a new way of making a film entirely. But, I wouldn't say this is a film for everyone to see for simple pleasure. While most cinephiles will love it to death, others will not be able to grasp everything that the film is doing. And for those who don't understand this film, it is easy to beat it down with their stupid reasons. While this film is clearly gorgeous, the way the story is told allows the film to emphasize how insanely gorgeous it is. This is easiest to notice in the beginning of the film, when they are on the boat. The story is laid out all in this sequence, but it actually wouldn't take as long as it did if another Antonioni didn't write/direct it. All the shots the progress the story are done in a short amount of time than how much time Antonioni allows us to dwell in the moment. Which, is where people find it boring. Which sounds very understandable, but not everyone realizes how literate Antonioni is just when he is moving the camera from place to place. I'm not saying that the film is meant to take place in your head by doing this, but Antonioni makes us realize how much is actually going on, even when nothing is going on. Not everyone is going to love this technique, but at the Cannes film festival it was given an award for creating a new language and for it's astonishing visuals. Which, I think is enough to say that this is an outstanding achievement no matter what people think of it. It is much like "Citizen Kane", in a way. The uneducated viewer may (not always) find it boring and doesn't care much for anything else in the film, but the more you know about film the more you come to adore the film. I'm not saying this film is equal to "Citizen Kane", but I would rank it at the level of "Citizen Kane" of Italian cinema.
