Zabriskie Point (1970, Antonioni)

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Zabriskie Point (1970, Antonioni): A Scene by Scene Analysis of a Troubled Masterpiece Offscreen
Zabriskie Point (1970,

Antonioni): A Scene by
Scene Analysis of a
Troubled Masterpiece
by Donato Totaro
(5289 words)
Volume 14, Issue 4 / April 2010
22 minutes
With its 40th anniversary just around the corner, a reassessment of Zabriskie
Point within Antonionis body of work is long overdue. Zabriskie Point was the
middle of three films Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni made for MGM:
Blow-Up (1966) being the first and The Passenger (1975) the third. Of the
three American films each have had their own idiosyncratic mini-history and
cultish associations. Zabriskie Point is the one which did the poorest at the
box-office (a mere $900,000 during its brief theatrical run on a budget of 7
million dollars, compared to the art house success of Blow-Up) and suffered
the most severe critical backlash. Even avid Antonioni supporters, like
Seymour Chatman, found fault with it at many levels (its overall premise, the
abandonment of the political, the acting, etc.). Many of the negative
comments arose from a misconception: that Antonionis intention was to make
a political film about the American Counterculture. Antonioni was on record
several times denying this, and arguing that he was interested in isolating two
characters, one who was directly involved in the student demonstrations
http://offscreen.com/view/zabriskie_point_1970
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(Mark) and one who became indirectly involved through her association with
the other, Daria. Still, it is hard to absolve Antonioni of all guilt for designing
a film which, at least on the surface, would appear to be about politics.
I think that this film is about what two people feel. It is an interior film. Of
course, a character always has a background (Antonioni, 305).
This background can have two senses. The obvious one being the pulse of
the late 1960s Civil Rights Movement as expressed by the student
demonstrations against (among other things) the Vietnam War. A less obvious
sense of background and the one which I will stress as being the true focus
of interest for Antonioni is the actual physical landscape and urban
architecture of Los Angeles and the Death Valley desert. For anyone who
knows Antonionis past masterpieces this would not come as a surprise. If all
great directors could be reduced to one major contribution to cinematic
language, for Antonioni it would be his uncanny ability to wed character
emotion to landscape. In my scene specific analysis of Zabriskie Point I will
pay special attention to this aspect and attempt to contextualize the film within
his earlier works, and to other allusions the film evokes for me.
In his great Italian films Antonioni dealt almost exclusively with the class he
knew best, his own, the Italian middle class. I find it strangely ironic that a 57
year old, middle-class Italian art director consciously or not was seen (by
some US critics) as a spokesperson and defender of the American
Counterculture! If there is any weight given to the negative criticism leveled at
Zabriskie Point it is largely because Antonioni was dealing with a class he
knew very little about (working class), [2] a generation far removed from his
own, in a country (the United States) he knew little about. But in whatever
country Antonioni worked (and he worked in many, China, England, Italy,
Central Africa, Spain, Germany) he knew how to express character interiority
through physical geography. This is something he could not forget,
regardless of where he was working.
Antonioni was the sort of director who thought long and hard about how
technical issues would impact on style, form and meaning. Ill highlight an
example using the aesthetic choices he formed around the use of camera lens
type. In his first set of feature films (Cronica du un amore, 1950, La signora
senza camelie, 1953, I Vinti, 1953, Le amiche, 1955, Il Grido, 1957)
Antonioni used the wide angle lens exclusively. The wide angle lens
(approximately 50mm with a 35mm camera) has the technical qualities of
opening up the field of vision, expanding space and providing a greater
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depth of field. In his middle, mature period, where he made his most famous
films, the alienation trilogy (LAvventura, 1960, La Notte, 1961, LEclisse,
1962) he began to incorporate a telephoto lens (roughly 100mm with a
35mm camera) with a wide angle aesthetic. The technical qualities of the
telephoto lens tends toward a closing of the field of vision, a compression of
space, and a reduction in depth of field.
Il deserto rosso (1964) marked an important moment in Antonionis stylistic
development because it was his first color film but also his first film to use the
telephoto lens exclusively; and it was his most abstract film. His decision to go
with the telephoto lens was no doubt related to this latter fact, since the
particular properties of the telephoto lens flattening the frame, throwing
portions of the frame out of focus is conducive to abstraction: forcing the
audience to look for things other than subject/representational, such as form,
line, color, texture, and shape, rendering a painterly quality to Il deserto
rosso. Antonioni resorted to a mixed lens style for Blow-up but returned to the
telephoto aesthetic for Zabriskie Point.
What is interesting is that by the late 60s the telephoto lens was associated
with a certain aesthetic: the cinema vrit, cinema direct, observational
documentary/TV. The zoom lens which brought the viewer into an objective
view of different characters, panning from one to another, zooming in/out,
became a signifier for a certain newly formed (compared to earlier
documentary) truth factor. Antonioni played with this aesthetic convention
by using it at the outset of the film, but then abandoning it for the more
painterly quality (something which no doubt shaped the critical confusion
over the films lack of political continuity). What follows is a scene by scene
breakdown [2] highlighting the two central critical areas I have introduced in
my opening: the importance of landscape/architecture and the aesthetics of
the telephoto lens.
Scene 1: Student Meeting (000-850) [3]
If I had wanted to do a picture about student dissent, I would have
continued the direction I took at the opening with the student-meeting
sequence (Antonioni, 94).
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Antonioni begins the deception right from the first scene of the film,
introducing the students in a typical vrit style, panning and zooming from
face to face, cutting quickly, but with the very next scene announces a shift
away from vrit realism to an abstract expressionism, which becomes
blatant if the opening is compared with the ending. The cinema vrit style of
this opening sequence will soon be abandoned for a more poetic and
surrealist style. I would add that this style, with its foreshortened, fragmented
space, underscores the divisions within the group rather than the sense of
unity that would be expected at a student meeting with goals of collective
action. The implosion of the vrit style is subtly announced in moments of
illogical spatial editing, such as when continuous dialogue is matched with
successive elliptical shots of Mark (Mark Frechette), starting with a zip pan
from a perturbed looking Mark, to Mark smoking a cigarette, to Mark
rubbing a pack of yellow matches against his mouth. So much for temporal
and spatial realism.
Mark ends the meeting for both him and us with his rhetorical interjection,
Im willing to die too, but not out of boredom, as he makes his dramatic exit
from any sense of collectivity. Marks distaste for meetings and talk seems
shared by Antonioni, as there is just about more dialogue in this scene than in
the rest of the film combined!
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Thats exactly what is on Marks mind

Scene 2: Introducing Daria (850-1000)
In this brief scene we are introduced to Daria (Daria Halprin) and Lee Allen
(Rod Taylor), head of a land development company called the Sunny Dunes
(the enemy) in the lobby of an imposing modern business complex.
Scene 3: Billboards (1000-1340)
This scene begins with a series of languid pans across large city billboards
filling the frame completely with images of (mainly) farming. The scene then
picks up Mark and his friend Marty driving in a pickup truck, but the vrit
style camera is misaligned with (non-diegetic?) industrial sounds reminiscent
of the factory sounds from Il deserto rosso. The function of the scene is to veer
the viewer away from the pseudo-political opening to what Antonioni is
interested in: abstraction (while at the same time signaling Marks alienation
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from the collective). The telephoto lens is used to create vertiginous

movement, fragmenting the space between Mark, his truck, and the
billboards. (The scene is also reminiscent of the tunnel ride in Solaris.) We
learn that Mark has a sister, Alice, seen driving by in a sports car. Mark
drops his friend off to join a picket line in front of the universitys
administration building.
Scene 4: Civil Disobedience at the Police Station (1340-1700)
The physical separation of the police and the citizens (students, professors)
by a grated fence symbolizes the police as a class apart from the main
protagonists of the film. The police have nothing in common with the students,
going about their job with indifference and lacking any sense of humanness
or humor (a joke with the punch line Carl Marx washes over them). The
scene returns briefly to the vrit style of the opening.
Scene 4: Buying a Gun (1700-1820)
Mark and another student enter a gun shop. Their request to buy some guns
right away for self-defense is at first met with some resistance by the clerk
(You can pick them up in four or five days). A simple verbal appeal to
keeping their women safe in their borderline neighborhood melts away
any gun restriction laws, and the clerk eagerly sells them a 38 caliber hand
gun. As they are leaving the store a second clerk gives them a tip: One other
thing about the law. You can protect your house. If you shoot him in your
backyard be sure to drag him into the house. The scene, strangely enough,
reminds me of a similar scene in the 1974 exploitation film The Candy
Snatchers (Guerdon Trueblood). In both scenes young protagonists with
violence in mind enter a gun shop; their request to purchase a gun is first met
with mild resistance, but then they are willingly accommodated, and even
given advice on how to stay within the letter of the law.
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Scene 5: Sunny Dunes Promo (1820- 2040)
This brief scene depicts a group of business men in a boardroom watching

promotional video on a new housing development by Sunny Dune Land
Development company. The scene veers toward satire, as Antonioni cuts
between the all-male board members and the miniature model reproductions
of the sterile housing community. The scene cuts to shots of Lee Allen driving
to the meeting. On the car radio is a report on student unrest at a university
campus. Tellingly, neither Lee nor the person driving with him seem to take
any heed of the report.
Scene 6: Preparing for Action (2040-2130)
The sound of the radio report bridges a transition to Mark and a few other
students listening to the same report in a shabby apartment, as they are
seemingly preparing to take some type of violent action. We see Mark place
a gun between his pant leg before he leaves. As Mark drives off the shot cuts
to Lees car arriving at the Sunny Dunes Development headquarters.
Scene 7: Sunny Dune Headquarters (2130-2240)
Lee arrives to join the meeting.
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Scene 8: Daria on the Road (2240-2315)

This scene opens with an aerial shot of the vast LA highway and surrounding
desert landscape. It cuts to Daria in her car stopping for directions on her
road map. We learn in the next scene that she is driving to meet Lee at his
Phoenix area desert estate for a business meeting.
Scene 9: Lees Faustian Empire (2315-2540)
This is the first scene to feature Lee in his environment, his office, and
Antonioni overwhelms the human with the interior/exterior juxtapositions. We
are alienated from Lee through the way Antonioni shoots him in his office
space, recalling Jacques Tati (Playtime) in its harsh, sterile, inhuman
modernity. A shot of Lees secretary frames her to the extreme right of the
frame, recalling similar out of balance framing from La Notte.
An unusual (for Antonioni) low angle from below Lees desk frames his crotch
area in the middle of the frame against a modern building seen in the
background through the large window, a playful phallic joke at the
patriarchal nature of the Sunny Dunes empire. Lee crosses his legs to form a
powerful diagonal line right to left from the telephone intercom under the
desk, his legs, and the building seen through the window. The US flag at the
top of the flag pole blowing in the wind caps off the dialectical association of
the powerful (big business/Government) and the powerless (the
students/Counterculture). The connection between Lee/Sunny Dunes
Development and the US Government is extended to the Law with the striking
edit to the next scene: an extreme close-up of a police officer in full riot gear.
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Scene 10: Restoring Order (2540-3000)
The mask, which only exposes the officers eyes, renders a sense of
anonymity to the police, as they proceed to break up the huge crowd of
student demonstrators on the university grounds. William Arrowsmith in his
excellent book on Antonioni notes that Antonioni differentiates between the
police at work, as a group collective, where they behave violently, and when
they are out of uniform, and in a more relaxed and playful state. The
anonymity of their uniforms, with their faces hidden behind their masks and
riot gear, allows them to behave anti-socially, for the good of social order
(p. 138). The vrit style returns to depict injured and bleeding students being
led away on stretchers. The tension escalates. Tear gas bombs are thrown
into the school, forcing students to exit. A black man runs out of the building.
The innocent gesture of tucking his shirt into his pants is interpreted as a move
for a gun and the young man is shot dead by the police. The following
sequence of edits to Mark reacting to the shooting by going for his gun and a
police officer being shot makes it clear to the viewer that the bullet that felled
the officer did not come from Marks gun. Mark runs off, but his fate has been
sealed.
Scene 11: Taking to the Air (3000-3800)
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In a fascinating bit of Antonioni-esque environmental subjectivity we see

Mark seated on a city bus, his head bowed. The image has a green hue, shot
with a green filter. The source of this green hue is uncertain at first. The scene
cuts to a closer shot of Mark and we notice that he is wearing tinted
sunglasses. Are they tinted green? He disembarks and we notice that the bus
windows are tinted green. Mark goes into a deli to call his friend Marty. A
couple of older blue collar workers eating at the counter reflect the theme of
generational tension in their silent, mutual disapproval of Mark. Marks
request for a sandwich handout is turned down by the cook. Mark leaves the
deli and quietly walks into a hangar area and hijacks a small plane, a
gesture which relates to other Antonioni films in the use of flight as a form of
temporary escape (see the Leclisse clip from the Bloom essay in this issue).
The plane has the words Lilly 7 written on its side, and sports a pink and
beige color pattern that foreshadows the tone and texture of the desert.
When he gets high into the air Antonioni resorts for the first time to freeflowing, guitar rock music which captures Marks euphoric state, while
typifying the music of his generation. In what can only be described as a
sublime edit, the shot of Mark in the cockpit, the music blaring loudly, gives
way abruptly to aural silence and an in-flight aerial camera movement
descending toward the sand dunes. The camera continues to descend and
picks up Daria driving along the highway in a retro 1950s Buick coup. Softer
rock music emanating from her car radio becomes audible as the camera
nears her vehicle. The ethereal movement of the camera, the soft music, and
the pinkish desert sand (nature) introduces the feminine (Daria).
Scene 12: The Roadside Caf (3800-4500)
The scene cuts to Lee at his office receiving a phone call from Daria, who has
stopped at a desolate roadside caf. The scene crosscuts between them, as
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Lee tries to locate her on a map to guide her to his Phoenix estate. Daria
makes small talk with the locals including a old washed up boxer and the
bartender. The bartender tells her that the man she is working for is going to
kill the area. The implication being that big corporations come in and lay the
past to waste. The sense of a place forgotten by time is present throughout
this scene: the washed up boxer and comatose man in the diner; the
homeless children, the upturned car, the smashed up piano; the stairs leading
up to a porch with no home. The bartender laments a group of problem
children that were transferred from Los Angeles to his town. This sets up a
strange altercation between Daria and a horde of scavenger children outside
the diner, a scene which has always struck me as an echo of the scene from
Welles The Trial where Anthony Perkins Josef K. character is chased by an
aggressive posse of children (only here the scene has a sexual undertone, as
one of the kids asks Daria, Can we have a piece of ass). Daria runs away
from the attacking children and drives off to safety. As her car rushes out of
frame the camera remains on the diner and tracks /zooms-in to the sad
image of an old man (the one pictured in the photo above) sitting alone at the
counter with his beer and cigarette, a plaintive country song playing on the
soundtrack (shades of Edward Hopper).
The Trial
Zabriskie Point
To add to Arrowsmiths earlier point about the police collective, a similar
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dynamic occurs in this strange scene where Daria is attacked by a group of

scavenger-like children outside the diner. Individually the children are
passive; as a group they threaten.
Scene 13: Cat and Mouse Game (4500-5500)
As the film nears its midway point we get the meeting of the two central
protagonists, Daria and Mark, in the desert. A playful game of chicken
ensues between Marks plane and Darias car (foreplay?). Mark tosses down
a red t-shirt, eventually lands his plane and they meet. When asked where
she is heading Daria replies Phoenix, the name of the bird that rises from
the ashes and gets reborn, foreshadowing her political awakening at the
films end. The scene also opens on the bird-like shadow of Marks plane on
the road (and later the plane is painted like, to quote Mark, a prehistoric
bird with its genitals hanging out). When she asks Mark if he really stole the
plane he replies, I needed to get off the ground. They drive off together.
Scene 14: Zabriskie Point (5500-7500)
Well, as an author I claim the right to delirium, if for no other reason than
todays delirium might be tomorrows truth (Antonioni, 96).
Mark and Daria sit on a rock edge overlooking the desert expanse. As they
make small talk, the camera dollies around them in a 180 degree circular
arc, a gesture which may have influenced another great Death Valley desert
film, Gus Van Sants Gerry, where the camera dollies a full 360 degree
around Casey Afleck.
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A casual line reveals Darias apolitical nature, which sets up her

conversion/political awakening at the end:
Mark: Hear any news about the strike?
Daria: No, I prefer music.
They eventually make their way down below and begin to make love. Jerry
Garcias soulful solo blues guitar wraps itself around the scene like aural
dust. Just like Garcias improvisational music, Antonioni begins to improvise
on reality. Phantom couples (played by members of Joe Chaikins Open
Theatre) begin to appear everywhere around Mark and Daria, play fighting,
rolling in the sand, blending themselves into the landscape (aided by the
flattening, compressing lens). This bizarre scene is the one that perhaps most
baffled viewers and critics, when in fact it contains the most direct thematic
link to his earlier works and functions as a soulful antidote to the central
negative dynamic portrayed in his alienation tetralogy: sick eros.
In his famous alienation tetralogy ( LAvventura, La Notte, LEclisse, Il Deserto
Rosso) Antonioni depicted the Italian middle class as emotionally and
spiritually vacant. Antonioni characterized this modern, post-war Italian
society as suffering from what he called sick eros (sex that is used to fill an
emotional/spiritual void). He explained this interesting concept in a statement
at the 1960 Cannes festival following the horrendous reception of
LAvventura:
Why do you think eroticism is so prevalent today in our literature, our
theatrical shows, and elsewhere? It is a symptom of the emotional
sickness of our times. But this preoccupation with eroticism would not
become obsessive if Eros was healthy, that is, if it were kept within
human proportions. But Eros is sick; man is uneasy, something is
bothering him. And whenever something bothers him, man reacts, but
he reacts badly, only on erotic impulse, and he is unhappy. The
tragedy in LAvventura stems directly from an erotic impulse of this
type: unhappy, miserable, futile. To be critically aware of the
vulgarity and the futility of such an overwhelming erotic impulse, as is
the case with the protagonist in LAvventura, is not enough or serves
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no purpose. And here we witness the crumbling of a myth, which

proclaims it is enough for us to know, to be critically conscious of
ourselves, to analyze ourselves, in all our complexities and in every
facet of our personality. The fact that matters is that such an
examination is not enough. It is only a preliminary step. Every day,
every emotional encounter gives rise to a new adventure. For even
though we know that the ancient codes of morality are decrepit and
no longer tenable, we persist, with a sense of perversity that I would
only ironically define as pathetic, in remaining loyal to them. Thus, the
moral man who has no fear of the scientific unknown is today afraid
of the moral unknown. Starting out from this point of fear and
frustration, his adventure can only end in a stalemate (Michelangelo
Antonioni, 33-34).
One of the Countercultures most symbolic anti-establishment gestures was a
return to a Romanticist notion of free and natural love and sexual liberation.
To return to a question many critics were probably asking back in 1970
what affinity did Antonioni have with the American Counterculture?
undoubtedly Antonioni saw the energized sexuality associated with youth
and the 1960s free sex mantra as an antidote to sick eros. And what
better to drive the scene than the music of Jerry Garcia, the leader of the
band most strongly identified with the 1960s/early 70s free sex, The
Grateful Dead.
Scene 15: The Red Desert (7500-8000)
Daria and Mark return to the road, but spot a state trooper parked on the
road ahead. Mark, wanted for the stolen plane, and perhaps murder, hides
behind one of two bright red portable toilets that appear stranded in the
desert (an homage to Il deserto rosso/??Red Desert?? ?) while Daria talks to
the state trooper. Mark takes his gun out and aims it at the trooper from
behind the stall, but luckily the situation is diffused as the trooper leaves the
scene. The encounter with the state trooper in the middle of nowhere has
echoes to Marion Cranes similar encounter in Psycho (only here Daria is
outside her car). Mark decides to return the plane back to the air strip. Like
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Marion Crane who decides to return the stolen money, only to be killed in the
process, Mark will eventually be shot dead by overzealous policemen in the
process of returning the borrowed plane. (Psycho also opens with a title
card that situates the action in Phoenix.)
Scene 16: The Bird Soars Again (8000-9345)
Daria and Mark paint the plane a psychedelic mess of colorful slogans and
pop art graffiti in preparation for its rightful return. The scene intercuts
between Daria driving to her destination in Phoenix and Mark soaring
overhead toward the hangar, where a fleet of police officers await. As soon
as he lands the plane he is chased by police cars. The police fire rounds
before giving any warnings. The police approach the plane and find Marks
inert body slouched over the steering wheel.
Scene 17: The Rebirth (9345-9500)
If I had to sum up my impressions of America, I would list these: waste,

innocence, vastness, poverty (Antonioni, 92).
The scene cuts back to the desert. A radio report coming from Darias offscreen car says that Mark was shot by an unidentified cop when their
attempts to pull him over failed, but we know the facts to be different. We feel
his death as a useless loss. Like Aldo from Il Grido, Mark leaves the social
collective only to die upon his return. The only positive his death will serve is
to reawaken Daria, who does not utter a single word after the death of
Mark. Her path to Lees Phoenix area desert estate is telling, a symbolic
visualization of her rebirth. She stops off at a green, cacti filled space to
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meditate (what she went there for in the first place). Mournful country blues
guitar music accompanies one of the most beautiful moments in the film.
Struck by the news of Marks death, a dejected Daria stands by her car
looking out aimlessly. The camera frames her from behind, the telephoto lens
separating her from the trees and greenery in the background. She sways her
body gingerly from left to right, in harmony with the blowing foliage, as if to
suggest her political sway (9330-9400).
After the thirty second long take, she turns away quickly and, with a look of
new found determination, takes to the road. Daria finally arrives at Lees
desert estate to join him for a business meeting. She enters the home by way
of the back, going through a portal, past a swimming pool, through a womblike granite tunnel which has conveniently a small waterfall. She stops to
look up at the waterfall and is overwhelmed by emotion. She begins to cry,
then rests her face and hands against the inner wall where the water runs
down, allowing the water to fall over her body (see frame still above).
Antonioni was never one to rely on symbolic imagery, but this scene is a clear
instance of it: purification/rebirth through water being a common symbolic
gesture (just think of Marion Crane taking a shower after the robbery, or the
shower Maria takes in Tarkovskys Mirror after confirmation that she did not
make a printing error, etc.).
Her rebirth is confirmed through her subsequent behaviour toward Lee and
his establishment home. She shows all the classic signs of being alienated
in the environment. She does not talk to Lee (compared to earlier), walks
aimlessly through the estate, is framed looking through barriers, and smiles
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when making telling eye contact with a member of the under-class, one of
Lees servants (of Native origin). The latter gesture suggests a sense of
working class empathy in Daria not evident in earlier scenes. The contact with
the maid serves as her cue to leave Lees luxurious estate.
Darias meandering walk in this scene make her a spiritual cousin to

Antonionis earlier heroines, most notably Jeanne Moreau in La Notte or
Monica Vitti in Leclisse.
Jeanne Moreau
She begins to drive away but then stops a few hundred feet from the house.
The scene cuts to the meeting between Lee and potential land buyers inside
the house. After a brief, silent fantasy image of the house exploding, a
distraught Daria places her troubled head against the car seat and then
gently caresses the red shirt which Mark gave her (the color red is symbolic
throughout the film, suggestive of danger, death, Marks anti-conformism,
and ultimately, Darias moral transformation, rather than any obvious allusion
to Communism). The gesture of Daria caressing Marks shirt recalls similar
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gestures by Claudia (Moncia Vitti) in Lavventura, where she caresses the

dress given to her by her friend Anna, who has mysteriously disappeared,
and again later with Sandros shirt.
The focus soon shifts to Darias vivid imagining of the home being blown to
(literal) smithereens, leading to one of the most experimental conclusions of
any fiction film (perhaps matched only by Antonionis own Leclisse). The five
minute sequence is marked by Eisensteinian overlapping editing (the house
explodes over and over again), a super slow motion cinematography, [4]
and the abstract properties of the telephoto lens. Artifacts of consumer
capitalism (a fridge, a television set, furniture, food, laundry detergent,
clothes, Wonder toast bread, etc.) are transformed into kaleidoscopic colors
and forms, accompanied by a manic rock score featuring primal screams
and searing guitar solos. The final item to be exploded is the library, with
hundreds of atomized books floating toward the camera. Can Antonioni be
making a link to the opening scene (books linked to students/university) and
the explosion of the student revolution? (The use of super slow motion in this
scene no doubt influenced Dario Argentos similar use of hyper slow motion
for the end of his giallo masterpiece Four Flies on Grey Velvet, made one
year later in 1971.)
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Recalling the earlier stark edit from noise to silence, the explosion fantasy
ends on a cut to silence and a close-up of Darias smiling face. Behind her
the sky is a beautiful orange, suggesting the dawn of a new era. (An idea
echoed in the lyrics of the closing Roy Orbison song So Young: Dawn
comes up so young. Dreams begin so young.) As Daria drives off the
camera tilts up to frame a beautiful golden sunrise (a shot which has its twin in
Gerry). With such a rhetorically happy ending it is surprising that so many
American critics attacked the film for being Anti-American.
Gerry and Zabriskie Point. Can you tell them apart?

While not at the level of Antonionis greatest works, Zabriskie Point is a
fascinating continuation of Antonionis life-long interest in the mise en scene
of human beings and physical space. With the span of time, perhaps we can
finally enjoy the film for what it is rather than what it is not.
Endnotes
1 To be fair, Antonioni did deal with the working class in some of his early
documentary (Gente del Po, 1947) and, most notably, in Il Grido, 1957.
2 For the sake of completeness I have decided to include every scene in the
film, even though not each will yield productive material.
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3 The time codes are taken from the recent MGM DVD. For the sake of
neatness, in some cases the time codes were rounded out to the closest
second. Hence they are meant to be a general guideline to the films structure
and not an exact to-the-frame temporal breakdown.
4 According to James S. Williams, special cameras were used here
producing 3000 images per second (55).
Bibliography
Michelangelo Antonioni. The Architecture of Vision. ed. Carlo di Carlo,
Giorgio Tinazzi. American Edition by Marga Cottino-Jones, Marsillo
Publishers, 1994.
William Arrowsmith. Antonioni: The Poet of Images. ed. Introduction and
notes by Ted Perry. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
James S. Willaims. The Rhythms of Life: An Appreciation of Michelangelo
Antonioni, Extreme Aesthete of the Real. Film Quarterly (Fall 2008, 62:1):
46-57.
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Donato Totaro has been the editor of the online film

journal Offscreen since its inception in 1997. Totaro
received his PhD in Film & Television from the
University of Warwick (UK), is a part-time professor in
Film Studies at Concordia University (Montreal,
Canada) and a longstanding member of ACQQ (Association
qubcoise des critiques de cinma).
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Volume 14, Issue 4 / April 2010

michelangelo antonioni
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Essays
italian cinema,
20/21
6/20/2015
1997 2015 Offscreen, ISSN 1712-9559
21/21

Zabriskie Point (1970, Antonioni)

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Zabriskie Point (1970, Antonioni)

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6/20/2015

Zabriskie Point (1970,

Volume 14, Issue 4 / April 2010

Thats exactly what is on Marks mind

from the collective). The telephoto lens is used to create vertiginous

Scene 5: Sunny Dunes Promo (1820- 2040)

This brief scene depicts a group of business men in a boardroom watching

Scene 8: Daria on the Road (2240-2315)

Scene 10: Restoring Order (2540-3000)

In a fascinating bit of Antonioni-esque environmental subjectivity we see

Scene 12: The Roadside Caf (3800-4500)

dynamic occurs in this strange scene where Daria is attacked by a group of

A casual line reveals Darias apolitical nature, which sets up her

no purpose. And here we witness the crumbling of a myth, which

If I had to sum up my impressions of America, I would list these: waste,

Darias meandering walk in this scene make her a spiritual cousin to

gestures by Claudia (Moncia Vitti) in Lavventura, where she caresses the

Gerry and Zabriskie Point. Can you tell them apart?

Donato Totaro has been the editor of the online film

Volume 14, Issue 4 / April 2010

1997 2015 Offscreen, ISSN 1712-9559

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