"Michelangelo Antonioni, cinema’s poet of postwar alienation, died yesterday at his home in Rome. He was 94. Mr. Antonioni had been in declining health since suffering a stroke in 1985.
...The Italian films that made him an international figure — “Il Grido” (“The Outcry,” 1958), “L’Avventura” (1960), “La Notte” (1961), “L’Eclisse” (“The Eclipse,” 1964) and “Red Desert” (1965) — became synonymous with emotional alienation, people left empty by material success, irredeemably isolated. Increasingly, Mr. Antonioni’s films became glacial in their detachment, self-consuming in their evocations of entropy."
So while you're at Netflix this week adding Bermgan's Persona to your queue, also add another great film: Blow Up (1966).
fuck.
ReplyDeletesomething personal hit me hard with these two dying so close together.
opencityforums.org was started by myself and friends who want to see the value of celebrated film art as well as ghettoized genre fare and put it all in the same continuum and regard.
problem is, after moving back home to virginia, a lot of the motivated, creative types i'm hanging out with are completely on board about the value of horror, action, and fantasy, but they haven't done any homework on classic international film.
its like nobody wants to bother watching it because its automatically pretentious. these guys dying makes me want to get another film night together and focus on european greats of the 50s-70s.