Chronicle of Disappearance – The Films of Michelangelo Antonioni

Michelangelo Antonioni's (1912–2007) answer to the question posed in an interview in 1978 – what he would have done in a world without films – was short and concise: "Films!" Even if cinema could look back on a history of close to fifty years when Antonioni started with his first film GENTE DEL PO (1943–47), the "architect of modern cinema" and the "perfecter of forms" innovated, shaped and transformed cinema like few other directors have. With his movies, he redefined the possibilities of filmic narration, the representation of cinematic time and pictorial composition, thus challenging, irritating, polarizing, and enthusing the audience and critics alike. His films always focus on psychologically unstable protagonists (played by Italian, French and later American movie stars such as Monica Vitti, Lucia Bosè, Jeanne Moreau, Alain Delon, Marcello Mastroianni, or Jack Nicholson) and their fragile emotional states. Lonesome and alienated, they move about in labyrinthine, empty cities and architectural landscapes. In a cool and subtle manner, at times distanced, Antonioni stages their inability to enter into relationships – they lose themselves before they get a chance to find each other.