Antonioni In Color

Blow-Up – 7:30pm
Using mid-sixties swingin’ London as its simultaneously dazzling and desolate stage, Antonioni’s first English language film was a box office smash: its mixture of au courant fashion and music, genre trappings, envelope-pushing luridness (rumours buzzed that you could see flashes of pubic hair in the ménage à trois scene featuring a young Jane Birkin), and arthouse modernity were just right for a new emerging audience — one “open-minded” enough (i.e. stoned) to love his enigmatic and dense imagery.  In short, it was sexy, cool, and a real mind-blower.  In the ingenious plot (inspiring both Argento’s Deep Red and De Palma’s Blow Out), David Hemmings plays Thomas, a high-profile fashion photographer who fills his days with snapping preening dollybirds and yawningly wandering the city, until his misanthropic ennui is shaken when he believes he may have accidentally photographed a murder.  With music from Herbie Hancock and the Yardbirds (who appear in one of the film’s more surreal satirical moments), sumptuous photography by Carlo di Palma and a continuing mastery of color (the grass of the film’s pivotal park was painted to achieve the right shade of green), Blow-Up stands as Antonioni’s biggest crossover commercial success.
Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966, 35mm, 110 min.

The Passenger – 9:45pm
Amongst the vast red bleakness of hellish Saharan Africa, the grey architectural wonders of Barcelona and the lush greens of London, Antonioni’s trademark visual mastery of exploring man’s emotional relationship to his environment is expanded to a global scale in The Passenger. In the director’s final flirtation with Hollywood, Jack Nicholson plays a weary journalist who swaps identities with a freshly-deceased arms dealer in order to escape the inner hell of his previous life — without care as to the hairy consequences such a move creates. Dropping all vestiges of his “ultimate movie star” persona, Nicholson loses himself completely in a perfectly rendered feature-length slo-mo scream of despair, as he bounces from country to country, acquiring the beautiful Maria Schneider (Last Tango In Paris) as an erstwhile companion along the way to his impeccably-photographed oblivion. Reducing suspense to a minimum, while employing sly, almost-subliminal editing and architectural camera moves (including the finale: one of cinema’s great extending tracking shots), Antonioni has crafted a curious and satisfying take on the “international political thriller”, transforming a typical genre exercise into a subdued, sublime travelogue of existential crisis.
Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975, 35mm, 126 min.

Watch the trailer for “Blow-Up”!

Watch the trailer for “The Passenger”!

Red Desert – 7:30pm
Michelangelo Antonioni’s panoramas of contemporary alienation were decade-defining artistic events, and Red Desert, his first color film, is perhaps his most epochal. This provocative look at the spiritual desolation of the technological age — about a disaffected woman, brilliantly portrayed by Antonioni muse Monica Vitti, wandering through a bleak industrial landscape beset by power plants and environmental toxins, and tentatively flirting with her husband’s coworker, played by Richard Harris — continues to keep viewers spellbound. With one startling, painterly composition after another, Red Desert creates a nearly apocalyptic image of its time, and confirms Antonioni as cinema’s preeminent poet of the modern age.
Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964, 35mm, 120 min.

The Passenger – 9:45pm
Amongst the vast red bleakness of hellish Saharan Africa, the grey architectural wonders of Barcelona and the lush greens of London, Antonioni’s trademark visual mastery of exploring man’s emotional relationship to his environment is expanded to a global scale in The Passenger. In the director’s final flirtation with Hollywood, Jack Nicholson plays a weary journalist who swaps identities with a freshly-deceased arms dealer in order to escape the inner hell of his previous life — without care as to the hairy consequences such a move creates. Dropping all vestiges of his “ultimate movie star” persona, Nicholson loses himself completely in a perfectly rendered feature-length slo-mo scream of despair, as he bounces from country to country, acquiring the beautiful Maria Schneider (Last Tango In Paris) as an erstwhile companion along the way to his impeccably-photographed oblivion. Reducing suspense to a minimum, while employing sly, almost-subliminal editing and architectural camera moves (including the finale: one of cinema’s great extending tracking shots), Antonioni has crafted a curious and satisfying take on the “international political thriller”, transforming a typical genre exercise into a subdued, sublime travelogue of existential crisis.
Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975, 35mm, 126 min.

Watch The Criterion Collection’s “Three Reasons to see Red Desert”!

Watch the trailer for “The Passenger”!

Red Desert – 7:30pm
Michelangelo Antonioni’s panoramas of contemporary alienation were decade-defining artistic events, and Red Desert, his first color film, is perhaps his most epochal. This provocative look at the spiritual desolation of the technological age — about a disaffected woman, brilliantly portrayed by Antonioni muse Monica Vitti, wandering through a bleak industrial landscape beset by power plants and environmental toxins, and tentatively flirting with her husband’s coworker, played by Richard Harris — continues to keep viewers spellbound. With one startling, painterly composition after another, Red Desert creates a nearly apocalyptic image of its time, and confirms Antonioni as cinema’s preeminent poet of the modern age.
Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964, 35mm, 120 min.

Zabriskie Point – 9:45pm
Sobering and drug-hazed, pristine and dirty, calming and terrifying, this visually jaw-dropping mini-epic from Antonioni is a nuanced Vietnam-era essay on political action and inaction, disenfranchised youth and commodity culture — all disguised as a free-flowing road movie with nudity and exploding refrigerators. Amongst a fractured narrative that follows a college-aged boy and girl on a panoply of ideological and sexual adventures, Zabriskie Point mingles the concrete and the abstract to captivating effect, and has achieved well-deserved cult status — due in no small part to Alfio Contini’s daringly massive cinematography, and a killer soundtrack featuring Pink Floyd, Jerry Garcia, Roy Orbison and other legendary unfuckwithables. “[P]acked with wonders and marvels in every corner of the frame, and revealing profound truths about where we were and where we’re going to be, Zabriskie Point resonates much more deeply than anything we may find in Easy Rider.” — Stan Czarnecki, DVDBeaver
Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1970, 35mm, 110 min.

Watch The Criterion Collection’s “Three Reasons to see Red Desert”!

Watch the trailer for “Zabriskie Point”!

Blow-Up – 7:30pm
Using mid-sixties swingin’ London as its simultaneously dazzling and desolate stage, Antonioni’s first English language film was a box office smash: its mixture of au courant fashion and music, genre trappings, envelope-pushing luridness (rumours buzzed that you could see flashes of pubic hair in the ménage à trois scene featuring a young Jane Birkin), and arthouse modernity were just right for a new emerging audience — one “open-minded” enough (i.e. stoned) to love his enigmatic and dense imagery. In short, it was sexy, cool, and a real mind-blower. In the ingenious plot (inspiring both Argento’s Deep Red and De Palma’s Blow Out), David Hemmings plays Thomas, a high-profile fashion photographer who fills his days with snapping preening dollybirds and yawningly wandering the city, until his misanthropic ennui is shaken when he believes he may have accidentally photographed a murder. With music from Herbie Hancock and the Yardbirds (who appear in one of the film’s more surreal satirical moments), sumptuous photography by Carlo di Palma and a continuing mastery of color (the grass of the film’s pivotal park was painted to achieve the right shade of green), Blow-Up stands as Antonioni’s biggest crossover commercial success.
Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966, 35mm, 110 min.

Red Desert (brand-new 35mm print!) – 9:30pm
Michelangelo Antonioni’s panoramas of contemporary alienation were decade-defining artistic events, and Red Desert, his first color film, is perhaps his most epochal. This provocative look at the spiritual desolation of the technological age — about a disaffected woman, brilliantly portrayed by Antonioni muse Monica Vitti, wandering through a bleak industrial landscape beset by power plants and environmental toxins, and tentatively flirting with her husband’s coworker, played by Richard Harris — continues to keep viewers spellbound. With one startling, painterly composition after another, Red Desert creates a nearly apocalyptic image of its time, and confirms Antonioni as cinema’s preeminent poet of the modern age.
Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964, 35mm, 120 min.

Watch the trailer for “Blow-Up”!

Watch The Criterion Collection’s “Three Reasons to see Red Desert”!