For nearly thirty-minutesyou have the feeling that you
stepped into the wrong film,
you feel that somebody hasstopped time and you prayfor something to change. Andit does. After thirty-minutesof total Sixties you dive intoan ocean of symbolism anda space where your thoughts
have become a film.
The director leads you insidehis thoughts and makes you participate in a very weird ten-nis game between two mimics,with you following an invisibletennis ball. The director wasItalian Michelangelo Antonioni,
the film Blow-Up, his first film
in English back in 1966, and the place was London, England.Sad as it sounds, I found outabout Antonioni’s death whilereading something about Ing-
mar Bergman who died the
day before and the only thingI could think of was… the endof cinema. I know most of youhave a smile now, but I do be-long to a different era: I missFellini, Visonti, and Fassbind-er. I miss these long Atheniansummer nights after seen ThePassenger and the long hourswe spent with my friends ana-lysing every single scene, everymove, every word.
We would try to find all the hid-
den symbolisms and meaning. Nothing wrong with the newdirectors, I really like Taran-tino, Leigh, Wenders and Fears but … I never needed daysunder the moonlight to think about what they were trying totell me, or, even better, what Ifelt, what came out of me while
watching any of their films.
That was precisely the beauty
of Antonioni’s films for me
- what he brought out of me.For a long time I found it dif-
ficult to explain even to Asa
why I cannot really enjoy cin-ema anymore and why I prefer
to watch a stupid film just for
entertainment than watch any
of the more ‘serious’ films. It is
like the modern directors like tochew everything and try to putit in my brain ready, while An-tonioni let me free.He let me think, judge, decidewhat I want to chew and whatnot. The scene of the two mim-
ics in Blow-Up is really food for
the brain, the photographer’s
battle to find the hidden secret
inside the photos he is enlarg-ing again and again not beingable to see the mystery of our life, it is all the things happen-ing all the time around us andwe never notice.Antonioni is part of today’s ‘se-rious’ cinema, with Europeandirectors Wenders, Angelopou-los, Kaurismaki and Kusturicaoften adopting his long shottechniques with scenes that
sometimes count to five even
ten minutes. The last scene inThe Passenger, the scene of theassassination, lasts a full eightminutes. Slowly it makes youfeel like you are the hunter andthe victim at the same time andit gives you all the time to feelit.Michelangelo Antonioni, bornSeptember 29th, 1912, died July
30th, 2007, was an Italian film
director born in Ferrara, often
considered as the most influen-
tial director to modern cinema.In 1996, he was awarded theLifetime Achievement Acad-emy Award presented to him byJack Nicholson, star of Anto-
nioni’s film, The Passenger.In the next few days all the me-
dia around the word will men-tion the man and his work, theonly thing I can say is please
if you can see any of his films,
I’m sure it will be good food for thinking and dreaming.
Cinema Antonioni
By Thanos Kalamidas
the e-magazine2nd August 2007
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