Antonioni: Remarks on Technique

I wanted to write about some remarkable similarities between certain recurring techniques that I've noticed in my still rather limited viewing of Antonioni. 

First is a shot of two principle characters, facing away, showing only their backs. 

The Passenger (left), L'Avventura (right)

Both of these shots occur prior to the characters featured within undergo some kind of identity switch; in fact, that identity switch (whether it is the literal attempted identity theft of The Passenger, or the switch constructed relationally by a common lover in L'Avventura) comes to be the dialectical driving force of both films. Here, the physical similarity that is made possible by viewing the person only from behind - with none of the individuating power of the face - foreshadows the interchangeability that will soon become the central theme. Even more remarkably similar is the way that up until these scenes, both films take us on something of a false trajectory - The Passenger with it's journalistic forays into the desert to locate a guerrilla faction, L'Avventura with it's visually stunning pleasure cruise - from which we find ourselves stripped away to chase something else altogether: these scenes introduce a new, unforeseen turn in the events within which we're just beginning to feel at home. There's probably a lot more to say about interchangeability and authenticity and identity etc., but my purpose with these posts is to provide small jumping off points, especially ones that begin with distinctive cinematic choreography. The rest will be up to you, or us if we ever get to talking about these films over the phone (or in person!).

Second, briefly, I wanted to point out the method of the camera being 'left outside':

The Passenger (left), La Notte (right)

In both of these shots, the principle characters have a moment of privacy with a minor character who is in some sense abetting their flight (but from what?). The effect is simple enough (especially felt in La Notte): we immediately feel excluded. It is, if you consider it, a rare occurrence for the viewer to be less informed than the characters. Typically, the camera restricts itself to what is significant with in the awareness of the characters, or it draws away to let the viewer in on larger perspective than the characters possess (in The Passenger, the first time the perspective and epistemic situation of the main character is left behind is a good quarter of the way into the film - and as such it immediately stands out - as the camera breaks away to show that he is unknowingly being followed/observed). So it is all the more remarkable when the opposite effect is encountered - the viewer is excluded - or, more precisely, he is included enough to know that he is being excluded. In both cases, this exclusion reflects, and intensifies, the impenetrable interiority of the characters, who, in both cases, are running from something - and that something more than what they themselves profess. Both scenes also show the characters experiencing a rare ease, as though they are not only momentarily escaping their pursuant, but also escaping the gaze of the viewer and his prying need to understand. Indeed, what remains for the viewer is to watch and speculate, and listen, on the one hand, to the sound of the gondola machinery, and, the pouring rain, on the other. As such, the viewer too gets to escape, momentarily, from the logocentric tendencies of the main narrative, and enjoy a sonic ambiance that is in stark contrast to the broad swaths of silence so often employed by Antonioni. 

Finally, I decided to insert what I took to be the most visually striking sequence from The Passenger (except, of course, for the ending sequence!). 

One thing that is unfortunate about color film is that it loses so much of the beauty of contrast found in black and white. This sequence plays with lighting contrast by capturing a drive with a line of trees between the car and the sun - an dizzying aesthetic effect that I believe has been underutilized in movies (I can only remember seeing it in Conspiracy Theory, which, I suppose, has a couple of interesting points of contact with this movie). Either way, this scene stands out in contrast not only to the bleaker landscapes that bookend this story, but it also stands out in my experience of Antonioni, who is known for static, architectural cinematography - characters stepping out of the walls like so many bas-relief. Yet here in the middle of this flight is this most visually striking, dynamic scene; here, like the characters, the eye can lose itself, we can forget what's gone before and what is surely to come, and we feel the only freedom attainable in this freedom seeking journey, namely, the freedom of an overpowering aesthetic experience.  And after all, if you've seen enough movies centered around an ill-fated chase (whether we find ourselves with the chasers or the chased), it is only these moments of momentary and fleeting freedom that can redeem the undertaking - something may, after all, come to its fulfillment, its ripeness, before it reaches its actual end. And it may reach that fulfillment without itself knowing that this is it. It reminds us, we too always chasing, thinking the journey will go on forever, that our beauty days, our freedom days, our redemptive days, may be a thing of the past. Perhaps it would have been good of Jack to ask, on this cruise, whether this is as good as it gets.