Like Flies

Like flies, dammit.  Bergman, Antonioni.  Hang in there, Resnais.  Keep your head down, Godard.

As it happens I've been having a private Antonioni festival this week. L'Aventura and La Notte and tonight L'Eclisse was planned.  I haven't seen any of them since I was 16 or 17 and went to the movies to discover what was what, how things were, the way of the world.   I used to leave the cinema (the Academy, an essential component of watching those movies) excited, filled in and filled up with the complexity of being human that they showed me.

I rather feared that seeing them again at 60 would reveal their and my pretention and waffle.  But they're stunning (so, as like as not, I'm as pretentious and waffly now as I was then).  The photography holds you riveted to the screen; every shot thought about and beautiful.  The pace is extraordinary.  The movements of each character carrying the film along.  And the way of the world seems pretty much the way the world is.

I was often depressed at that time (the clinical, suicidal variety) but coming out of those sometimes grim movies always gave me a sense of excitement about what usually sent me into the dark.  All those difficulties, problems between human beings, their foolishness, the pointlessness, the making do, and the filmmakers refusal to provide easy resolutions, seemed to me moving and often funny, instead of intolerable.  And, to my relief, I watched the first two Antonioni movies this week with the same result, drawn back into how interesting people are.  I forget sometimes.

Comments

[Sue]

Serendipity -- that first two blogs I read today remind me of two treasured memories from freshman year (1969) -- Gary Synder's Turtle Island and the films of Antonioni. I think a revisit is in order.

[David Nix]

As always, I enjoy your comments. I haven't gone back to re-view Antonioni's films since college film society days (late 60s). Pretension and waffle is pretty much the way I remember them, but I was probably old (or shallow) before my time. Fellini has always been so much more fun!