L'Avventura (1961)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Such a frustrating disappointment

Just what I expected

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

If you have never seen the luminous Italian actress Monica Vitti in a film, you simply must rent this one. Imagine Faith Hill with a Neapolitan profile, a Catholic (as opposed to Protestant) guilt complex and an earthy, almost boyish exuberance. L'Avventura, translated in English to mean The Adventure, is the story of a woman (Vitti) who joins her best friend, her best friend's lover, and a gaggle of wealthy Italians on a boat trip near Sicily. The best friend mysteriously disappears during an excursion to a barren island in the Mediterranean. The remainder of the film involves Vitti's search for her friend, as clues point to the possibility that she left the island on a boat and is spotted, via missing-persons and newspaper reports, here and there on the mainland. Vitti is intermittently joined by the misplaced woman's lover (Gabriele Frezetti), with whom she falls in love against her better judgment.L'Avventura and La Dolce Vita were released in the same year and have similar themes: they both focus on the emptiness of the very wealthy and a fruitless search for sensual pleasure. Antonioni's film captures the milieu with a unique style, oddly framed camera angles, full depth of focus in every shot, a meandering pace and virtually no music. The film does not have a plot in the conventional sense, and to me seemed like two stories in one. Essentially, it is the study of a woman drowning in an emotionally bankrupt social strata. Lonely, gentle readers will no doubt see their own emotional bankruptcy reflected in this brilliant Italian masterpiece.

When this film was screened at the "Cannes Film Festival" in 1960, it was booed by members of the audience (Antonioni and Vitti even fled the theater). According to film critic and film professor Gene Youngblood, people booed during long sequences where, supposedly, nothing happened to further the film's plot. I understand why it had a rough start, because it's very easy to miss its deeper meaning. However, after looking up a couple essays, I now understand why it's as popular as it is.After a woman named Anna disappears while on a boating trip, her boyfriend, Sandro, attempts to find her. Once they make it back to the city, however, he soon forgets about her and falls in love with Claudia, one of her friends.I think the film's purpose is to have you ask the question: Why would Anna run away? This film uses the actions of the characters to answer this question. Shortly after she disappears, Sandro begins forcing himself on Claudia as they search for her on the island. At first, she shies away from his advances, but when they make it back to the city, she begins to fall in love with him as well, betraying her friend. Throughout the film, their relationship continues to grow to a point where Claudia confesses that she's afraid of Anna returning, because if she does, Sandro might return to her. She then finds Sandro making love to another woman in a hotel. These two scenes show the themes of this film at their finest as it shows how unfaithful both of them are to Anna. I also feel like the film's purpose isn't solely to show why Anna ran away, but also to create a recreation of their relationship since the ending shows Sandro cheating on Claudia as well as Anna. Then, you have the final scene where the two characters, presumably, realize why Anna left as they cry together on a bench.I've seen quite a few people bring up this interpretation, but I feel like there are a few other details which are also important to the film. The first scene happens shortly after they first notice Anna disappear. Once that happens, Sandro says that type of behavior is typical. This hints that Anna tried running away several times in the past. Another vital scene is while Claudia walks in the streets alone, every single man stares at her as she walks by. This could indicate that another reason why Anna ran away was because she hated the society she lived in as well as her friends. Also relative to Anna disliking her friends, when Claudia meets up with her boating friends in Palermo, nobody seems to take Anna's disappearance seriously except Claudia. This is all the more reason to believe that Anna disliked her friends. The most important detail, however, is Sandro's disaffection caused by his failure to maintain his career as an architect. How this affects him is shown in the scene where he spills ink on a students' architectural drawing. This is also shown when Claudia runs into a paint store to hide when she mistakes a woman walking by Sandro to be Anna. Once Sandro walks inside, he stops her from buying a can of paint, highlighting his disaffection towards architecture.I've seen a lot of people praise the cinematography. However, I'm mixed on the way it was shot. I loved the part of the film which took place on the island as it felt like a barren landscape. Not only did this make for some visually striking scenes such as Claudia observing the sun rising as she stepped out of a shack, but it also seemed foreboding and unrelenting. There was the constant feeling that if one of them were to step over a hill, they would be confronted by an endless array of rocks, lowering the chances that they'd be able to locate Anna. Once they got off the island, however, this feeling was gone and the cinematography lost a lot of the power it had during the first hour. There are probably good reasons for why not to have the rest of the film take place on the island, but the scenery is so good, I can't help but feel an absence from the film in terms of its visuals. There were a few instances where we would see barren landscapes outside of a city, but these shots didn't give me the same atmospheric feeling I felt in the first hour because the characters weren't particularly in the middle of them like they were while they stayed on the island. Despite the visual shortcomings of the latter parts of the film (the visuals may grow on me in the future though), I still appreciated the several stunning shots cinematographer Aldo Scavarda was able to capture on the island.In conclusion, this was a really good movie. Partly due to the visual aspect, it may not quite reach perfection for me, but I completely understand why it often makes "Best films of all time" lists since it's unique in the way of its deeper meaning. I can see my opinion of it increasing if I give it another viewing a few years down the road.

Of all the directors in the Italian Neorealism movement, there isn't one quite as transformative over the entirety of his career than Michelangelo Antonioni. Through the span of two decades, he goes from using the soap-opera conventions of "Story of a Love Affair" to the rule breaking, Godard-esque, posh, hipster phenomenon of "Blow-Up". It's a long a vibrant career for one of the world's most cherished filmmakers. The films he made in between, however, think about the troubles of the human couple, and our inability to make rational decisions all the time when it comes to love and lust. "La Notte" and "Red Desert" both experiment the complexities of the human experience, through relationships and betrayals of relationships. Of the films leading up to "Blow-Up", one in particular is hailed as the best example of his curiosity of the unstable human character, and that it is the picture, "L'Avventura". Considering the genre of romance, this I would assume is the "Lawrence of Arabia" of said genre. It's an epic take on a frighteningly realistic idea that we all may or may not have considered when in a rocky relationship. The question is, is infidelity really worth it, when no one is looking? "L'Avventura" opens with the establishment of Sandro and Anna, a couple in a stage of deterioration. They try so hard to put the passion back into their relationship, but they just hate each other. The scene when Sandro visits Anna in her room, the negative chemistry between the two is simply brilliant. Anna kisses his lips, when she really wants to bite his face off. You can see the hatred between them building with every moment. As a way to spice things up, they take a yacht trip with another couple off the coast of Sicily, to visit the towering islands that make up the coast. This is one of the moments where I fell in love with the movie the most. Antonioni uses the entire space of the frame absolutely tremendously. As the yacht approached the island of Basiluzzo, it just leaves you in awe. The calm ocean flowing as the yacht approaches a huge mass of land, which seemed separated from all of human life. When it comes to location scouting, Antonioni couldn't have attempted to find a better one. This is one the most beautiful environments ever captured on cinema. In essence, the first hour of the movie on the island captures the spirit of the characters. You get the feeling of isolation, anger, fear and uncertainty, especially in the scenes where the couples search for Anna when she goes missing. When Claudia runs out to the cliff during the stormy evening, and screams Anna's name in desperation, we all feel the same way. The rain just pours down on the spiky rocks as everyone begins to lose their sense of reason as to where Anna is. What is arguably even more haunting than the environment of the first hour of the picture, is of course the relationship that buds between Claudia and Sandro for the rest of the picture. It's truly a shocking turn of events. Without even second guessing himself, he moves on to another women after spending the night searching for his wife with her. All bets are off, it seems, with finding and rekindling his love for Anna. Antonioni is telling us that love can change on the flip of a dime. Once we lose track of what we have, we have no problem moving on to the next lover we can find. The fragility of relationships, as Antonioni has it, is very dire. The end of the movie is what moved me the most, and seemed frightening to so many people when the film was released. Out of the clear blue, in the night after a lavish party, Anna returns to reconcile and make love with Sandro. When Claudia runs away, visibly upset, Sandro follows her outside. They meet at the edge, atop a building, as Sandro weeps, for he now love Claudia, but now knows that Anna being alive will haunt him forever. Claudio comforts him, and the film ends. It's a shocking end. Antonioni frames it an astounding way, as he follows the characters around the environment as they collapse under the heap of temptation and desperation. The music even builds to a screeching finale. The whole movie ends more like a thriller, and less like a romantic-drama, which was such a unique creative choice for Antonioni. This ending in particular is what separates "L'Avventura" from any other movie in its genre. It stuns you with its sexiness, and blindsides you at the end for falling into its trap. "L'Avventura" is a haunting romantic-thriller, and an excellent Antonioni film that exemplifies his incredible gift at storytelling. Nothing is ever subtle in any of his films, and that's what I enjoy most about them. They hit you hard, when you are least expecting it. Even if you don't know it at first, and I certainly didn't, "L'Avventura" is going to stick with me.

When L'avventura premiered at Cannes in 1960, it polarized audiences and immediately established director Michelangelo Antonioni as an exciting new force on the art-house circuit. The film concerns the disappearance of the character Anna during a Mediterranean boating trip, and the subsequent romance of her fiancée Sandro and best friend Claudia. Though initially L'avventura appears to be a mystery, the lack of resolve regarding Anna's disappearance makes the film function more as an art- house drama about the existential ennui of the leisure class. Though certain scenes drag on, the film as a whole holds up well and lives up to its stature as one of the key texts of 1950s/60s European art-house cinema.When a group of upper-class friends go on vacation in the Mediterranean, a young woman named Anna (Lea Masari) disappears during a stop at an island. Anna's husband-to-be Sandro (Gabriel Ferzetti) and close friend Claudia (Monica Vitti) subsequently lead a search initiative and become lovers. Like a shark attack Anna fakes before her disappearance, Sandro and Claudia's affair is merely performed as a means to escape the ennui of their luxurious lives, to rekindle a lost feeling of excitement. The film ends with Claudia catching Sandro with another woman; their "adventure" over, the characters are left to continue their monotonous existence.The pacing can be slow, and many scenes linger on for extended periods of time, becoming longueurs which test the viewer's patience. However, both the acting and script-writing are well-executed in that they come across seamless and never pop out at you in a cringe-worthy way. The film's greatest strength lies in the camera-work of Antonioni and cinematographer Aldo Scavanda. There's a painterly level of composition to many of the shots, for example the way Antonioni's camera pans right to a rule of thirds shot of the search party cross-armed against the island backdrop, upset at not having found Anna - Antonioni is very good at conveying narrative on a purely visual level.In summary, L'avventura is an important text in 60's art-house cinema and still worth revisiting for modern movie goers. From the 70's movie brats to Sofia Coppola, directors attempting to tell stories of wide-screen alienation have drawn heavily from Antonioni, and this is probably one of the director's most famous films. It may at times be tedious, but one can't deny its artistry and the driving truth of its themes, nor its role in influencing a generation of filmmakers.8/10