The architecture of vision : writings and interviews on cinema /

In the last 25 years Antonioni has been all but forgotten in cinema studies, unjustly and to the detriment of the discipline. From L'Avventura (1960) to Blow-Up (1966) he had no peer in the articulation of contemporary anomie and in subtlety and resonance of style. Now, at 84 and seriously afflicted in his movement and speech, he has directed a new feature film, Beyond the Clouds, in collaboration with German director Wim Wenders. His films have been reissued; some are especially well served on laser disc. This collection of Antonioni's own words is the first English edition of a six-volume French collection of his works. The section "My Cinema" comprises six articles on cinema and two meaty transcripts of his remarks to Rome film students. The second section collects his comments on his specific films, from Love in the City (1953) to The Oberwald Mystery (1980). The remaining two-thirds of the book presents interviews of Antonioni, 11 on cinema in general and 19 on his films. Antonioni speaks and writes sensitively, clearly, allusively, wittily. As a writer on his own work he has no equal since Eisenstein. This book is an illuminating delight. It is also the perfect text for a course on Antonioni's films, than which there is nothing better for teaching students to see and to think. This is not just an excellent book, it is a welcome act of justice. All academic collections. M. Yacowar University of Calgary

Editors di Carlo and Tinazzi collect 51 essays and interviews by Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni (b. 1912), the recipient of an honorary Oscar at the 1995 Academy Awards. Somewhat comparable in scope to François Truffaut's classic Hitchcock (1983) and, more recently, Peter Bogdanovich's This Is Orson Welles (1992), The Architecture of Vision provides a filmmaker's absorbing reflections and insights on his career. Both the essays and the much longer section of interviews (most translated into English for the first time) succeed best at taking generalizations about Antonioni‘his introspective realism, his early fondness for long takes, his later innovations with color, his exploration of modernist "spiritual aridity" and "moral coldness"‘and refining them rather than explaining their background and origin. Hence, the book will appeal most to readers already familiar with Antonioni's films (L'avventura, Blow-Up, Zabriskie Point, The Passenger) and with Italian cinema. The director sees the social neorealism of films like De Sica's Bicycle Thief as necessary for their postwar era but crafts for his own works a more psychological approach: "to see what remained inside the individual" after all the war and the upheavals that followed. Though some repetition inevitably appears, Antonioni's comments about his partly improvisational methods of shooting, his failure to ride the financial success of Blow-Up to even greater fame and his literary influences (Conrad chief among them) deepen and humanize a sometimes cerebral book. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

This partial translation of a six-volume French work on director Antonioni, who won a Lifetime Achievement OscarR in 1995, collects articles by and about Antonioni in Italian and French journals, the overwhelming majority of which have never been available in English. The pieces are divided into four sections, the first two offering Antonioni's own writings and the last two offering texts of interviews by important critics and journalists. The essays are arranged chronologically in each section, helping the reader to trace the development of Antonioni's unique cinematic vision. There is some repetition, as interviewers tend to ask the same questions. But for any English-speaking scholar interested in the creator of such international masterpieces as L'avventura, Blow Up, and Red Desert, this valuable resource offers entree to material difficult to gain access to under other circumstances. Highly recommended for film collections.‘Marianne Cawley, Enoch Pratt Free Lib., Baltimore (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A collection of interviews and essays, many of them never before available in English, from one of the most important postwar Italian filmmakers. Antonioni's cinema is ``a world of images, not of words,'' but this volume, published in Italy two years ago, is chockablock with the filmmaker's words. Ironically, Antonioni had seldom written on films before he started making them. As a result, virtually all of the material in this book is about his own films and filmmaking experience. He has said, ``Writing for me is a deepening of the gaze,'' but he's generally been one of those filmmakers who is reluctant to talk or write about his work. Given the intensely visual nature of his film poetry and the cryptic, elliptical dialogue that accompanies it, it is surprising how concise and analytical he is in the many interviews included in this volume. The book is divided into four sections: ``My Cinema,'' a series of general discussions of Antonioni's aesthetic ideas; ``My Films,'' short pieces on individual films, including all of his best-known work (Blow Up, L'Avventura, Red Desert, Zabriskie Point, among others); ``Interviews'' and ``Interviews on My Films,'' which cover his career and specific works, respectively. Unfortunately, the pieces and interviews on individual films often call for a readership with an intimate knowledge of the movie in question, and for the nonspecialist may be a hard slog. Antonioni is ruthlessly candid, a brilliant talker, and an interesting writer. Although it is the fans of his cinema that will profit most from this collection, any serious student of film should give it a look.