Michelangelo Antonioni: Italian neorealism’s revolutionary artist
Arising from one of the most personal and intimate cinematic uprisings, Michelangelo Antonioni became one of the few pioneers of post-war Italian neorealism to reach beyond the borders of the movement and thrive across the globe. A film journalist long before his triumphs behind the camera, Antonioni helped spark the creative revolution that was neorealism, joining other rebellious screenwriters like Luchino Visconti and Vittorio de Sica before taking his distinctive filmmaking mode overseas.
Indeed, Antonioni wasn’t your typical Italian neorealist like Visconti or de Sica, instilling his own works with an ambiguity and intrigue towards wandering characters exploring empty landscapes, while maintaining a focus on the kind of minimalism that made the movement iconic. Such, no doubt, came as a result of his own childhood, whereby his working-class parents gave him the freedom to discover the world for himself, forging an unrestricted creative style in the process where he found a curious passion for drawing endless facades of houses, streets, alleyways and charming gates.
Growing up in Ferrara in the north of Italy, it wasn’t until 1940 that he relocated to Rome, finding a job as a film editor for the arts and culture magazine Cinema, which was edited by Vittorio Mussolini, the son of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Staying a matter of mere months, Antonioni found it difficult not to lock horns with the hierarchy of the publication, fostering a feeling of political discontent among the writers that would later blossom the formative artists of the neorealism movement.
Just like his early childhood years, it wasn’t until Antonioni was liberated from the restrictions of the magazine and allowed his own freedom that he flourished as a creative, co-writing A Pilot Returns, a film that was made in collaboration with the Italian Air Force, with Roberto Rossellini in 1942. While very much a propaganda movie used to promote patriotism and positivity within the country, films of this ilk gave credibility to Antonioni, who would later find himself on the other end of his own WWII drama, being drafted into the army where he later narrowly avoided death as part of the Italian resistance.
By 1945, when the war came to a close, neorealism was already in full swing, with Luchino Visconti releasing Ossessione in 1943 and Antonioni’s former collaborator Rossellini directing Rome, Open City laying the groundwork for the coming decade of artistic innovation. Antonioni, too, had his eyes wide open, releasing his very first short film with 1947’s Gente del Po, a documentary that concerned the people of the titular river during the tumultuous years of war. Shot back in 1943 but side-lined thanks to the development of WWII, Antonioni later called the film his “own brand of neorealism,” kickstarting a career that would never stay within the guidelines of one definitive style.
The documentary was followed by seven further short films before he released his very first feature film, Cronaca di un amore, in 1950. Yet, ever the contrarian, Antonioni’s film wasn’t quite in the spirit of the popular neorealist style, with his film focusing on middle-class lovers whose relationship turns to tragedy rather than the struggle of Italy’s working class while working with professional actors to make a more traditional crime drama. Such set the tone for his later works, too, with I vinti, La signora senza camelie and Le amiche each departing from convention while gaining widespread critical acclaim.
Focusing on despairing characters who drift through landscapes while attempting to connect with the world around them, the movies of Antonioni began to be closely associated with existentialist ideals, preferring deep, dark musings on life’s invisible order. This personal style collided with neorealism in 1957 with the release of Il Grido, which translates into The Cry, one of the movement’s many masterworks, telling the story of a mechanic who is abandoned by his lover so chooses to search for some sort of meaning in the hills of the Po Valley.
As God’s lonely man wandering the hills, Steve Cochran’s Aldo meets various people during his reflective odyssey who he uses as sounding boards to make sense of his own life. Depicting a man whose inner turmoil is turning him into an empty husk, Antonioni’s classic spoke to the total alienation of a whole generation of working-class Italians working to redefine themselves and their values following the horrors of WWII.
Yet, as pivotal as Antonioni was to the formation and development of neorealism in the 1950s, it was, arguably, his work in the following decade that would make him such an icon of Italian cinema. Doubling down on his commitment to open narratives exploring desolate souls, Antonioni created his ‘Trilogy on Modernity and its Discontents’, which began with the striking 1960 film L’avventura, continued with the moody 1961 release La Notte and closed with 1962’s L’Eclisse, a critical piece of cinema that dissected the director’s qualms with contemporary life.
Breeding wearisome existentialism throughout each of these three films, Antonioni’s trilogy is definitive of his own desire to break away from creative constraints, presenting the contemporary form with a dynamic cinematic vision that spoke to the anxiety that pervaded Europe following the final years of WWII.
Just years later, his work would be celebrated on a global stage, with 1964’s Il Deserto Rosso, his first colour film, earning the esteemed Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. A bleak drama about a woman trying to cope with the burden of her own existence, the film typified Antonioni’s style to date, being a meandering beauty that tackled life’s complexities from all angles. In an essay penned for Film Culture at the time, he stated: “I have never thought of labelling what for me was always considered a necessity, i.e., to observe…I detest films that have a ‘message’. I simply try to tell, or, more precisely, show, certain vicissitudes that take place, then hope they will hold the viewer’s interest no matter how much bitterness they may reveal”.
As Antonioni was made known to the global cinema community, he took his artistry to their doorstep, striking a deal with MGM to release three English language films that would give him more financial freedom to enact his most peculiar creative desires, with 1966’s British-made Blow-Up being his first creation. Despite appearing more narratively focused on the surface, telling the story of a fashion photographer who mistakenly captures a murder, Antonioni’s film was just as existential and avante-garde as his previous features, with the film becoming steadily more enigmatic in spite of the protagonist’s increasing investigation.
A similar conclusion can be drawn from 1970’s Zabriskie Point and 1975’s The Passenger which completed his mainstream trilogy of films, with both features following characters attempting to decipher the world around them by first trying to define their own selves. As if a protagonist in his own movie, The Passenger would mark one of his final successes, with Antonioni sauntering into the metaphorical wilderness in the late 20th century having done his part to expand the dynamism of European cinema.
Yet, just like such pioneering greats as Ingmar Bergman, Jean-Luc Godard, and Andrzej Wajda, Antonioni’s legacy pervades cinema to this very day, striking a chord with fellow European artists like Wim Wenders and Michael Haneke, as well as American creatives Sofia Coppola and Robert Eggers. Exploring the complexity of the human mind through the structure of neorealism, Antonioni took the art movement and transformed it into a new kind of cinematic language where life, loss, identity and purpose were perpetually questioned.
Chasing the Real: Italian Neorealism is at BFI Southbank from May 1st – June 30th, with selected films also available to watch on BFI Player
Rome, Open City is re-released by the BFI in selected cinemas from May 17th.