Blow UP 1966

Action minded Architectural Association Types, such as Koolhaas and Tschumi hoped to deliver architecture as a tool for radical social and political reinvention by using it to nourish unexpected events, with film providing an alluring model. Passolini shooting hand held on the streets. Nemec documenting the Russian invasion of  Czechoslovakia, Godard and Marker, Russ Myers, montage, jump cuts, sex, violence, real life, stars-film was cool as shit. It is no coincidence that Michelangelo Antonioni opened Blow Up with a car full of Architectural Association students/hippies carousing through London on their way to Alison and Peter Smithson’s radical new building for The Economist. 

Jeff Kipnis. Perfect Acts of Architecture

The main plot is about Thomas (David Hemmings), a professional photographer of great popularity, progressive and Apollonian, who lives immersed in his chores as an artist on top of his game, he ends up being in a strange way involved in a murder. On the other hand, the fact that it is an enlargement of a photograph that he discovers is perhaps the most interesting part of the whole plot. We see a Thomas who, after having photographed a couple in Maryon Park on a seemingly calm morning, he is fascinated by the curiosity that lovers produce him. A restlessness that, like Thomas it will also be awaken in the viewer. We do not know what there is in the environment that smells rotten, but we know that there is something that unbalances reality, and as Thomas goes undressing the this mess, it is when we realize that there is some mastery in the film particularly in this part of the story.

What is it that our eye sees or actually invents, what is the reality that the retina stores? How many filters are needed before reality is finally observed by the human eye? What possibilities does a fragmented image of reality provide in support of the memory of a particular fact, as an affirmation that the objective is the extension of an eye? as if it were a store of memories in which the lack of vivid continuity, characteristic of a frozen image is not enough but it is capable of spraying some type of reality, helping to create optical deceptions that support universal theories about human psychology and their interpersonal ways of communicating, capable of being grasped even by a small focus of an open diaphragm. Because, no matter how deeply hidden something is, in order to give meaning to any search, we have to rely on something.

What we know for sure is that, although Blow Up begins taking imprecise steps, showing off in order to show, wandering without an apparent sense, it is at that moment when it seems that it ends up becoming aware of itself and its objective, suddenly equipping itself of an interest that, although it arrives late, it stays for a while, giving us, among others, the scene of the park, in which the photography is so majestic that it reinforces the mystery to the plot.

Thomas may be a hero, maybe a villain or maybe it's simply a matter of finding a reward for the emptiness surrounding his hedonistic life, but the point is that this mysterious aura seems to be a product of himself, as Julio Cortázar said in the story Las Babas del Diablo (belonging to the book Las Armas Secretas):  “It is curious that the scene had a disturbing aura. I thought that I had to do that myself, and that my picture, if I took it out, that would restore things to its foolish truth.“ ---The story that Blow up is based on, in any case doesn’t obscure the film, because the master of timing, as how Cortázar is sometimes referred to, knows how to measure the words, balancing it drop by drop to stimulate the reader’s expectation without slowing down the story leading to the reader’s yawning.

That is why Antonioni uses ornaments that contextualize the main plot, make it credible and, incidentally, illustrate what came to be called the “swinging” London, a term coined by Time magazine in 1966 that was taken as reference by the popular pirate radio station Swinging Radio England. It is therefore, because of this context, on which of the sidewalks of London flourished in culture, fashion and 'intellectuality' in equal parts, without all this our photographer would have no reason to be.

It was a very fertile time for hedonism, experimentation, psychedelia, drugs, the avant-garde in all areas of art, where music groups such as The Beatles, The Who, The Kinks and many other groups that were part of the so-called British Invasion in 1963 after the release by Capitol Records of the single “I want to hold your hand” by The Beatles, which made possible their entry into the charts of the American music scene, where the new trends were called out by Queen Magazine, as well as the pop-art of Richard Hamilton, famous for the use of discarded photographs of Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol. Fashion photographers like Richard Avedon, not to mention the revolution that marked the entry to the fashion market, Mary Quant's invention, the miniskirt. A success that turned King Cross neighborhood into Chelsea (which was where the Quant boutique called 'Bazaar' was founded) at the core of London fashion.

The dominant aesthetic, as the character of Thomas shows, was the mod image, fitted jackets with three buttons, striking colors, fashion designers such as John Stephen or Ossie Clarck. We only need to observe how every one of the models that Thomas, with that arrogant air of a professional photographer, directs with superiority, forces to straighten their posture to highlight the fabrics, the body of the garments and the importance they had in the 'hipness' of the moment, how to show it, how to wear it and, above all, how to create fascination and beauty. Some models will have to succumb to the charms of the protagonist in favor of fame on the catwalks.

Interesting and unprecedented is the fact that the Yardbirds - later Led Zeppelin with Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton at the front - will star in the film with their song Stroll On, a rewrite of Train Kept on Rollin’ to which they changed the title and lyrics and featuring a young Jeff Beck who ends up smashing his guitar in a psychedelic distortion attack. The same distortion, although closer to American rhythm & blues of the time, by which Herbert Hancock, greatly influenced by his close collaboration with Miles Davis, composes a great soundtrack, he called the music score diegetic (about presenting an interior view of the world.  Thanks to the sensuality of the Austrian model/actress Verushka, the film immerses us in the first minutes in a photo shoot that could well be a sexual act, with its resulting visual zenith.

A show for the senses in which Antonioni's taste for the sensuality of his characters is revealed, as shown in other more successful titles such as his trilogy L'avventura (1960), La note ( 1961) and The Eclipse (L'eclisse 1962) or The Red Desert (Il Deserto Rosso, 1964), where his fetish actress Monica Vitti reappears making a brutal speech about fear. A round film that shelters in itself, like Blow up, the visual concupiscence of Carlo di Palma as director of photography.

Although the film contains great scenes to remember, like the tennis game of the 'clowns'. Antonioni himself confessed, after the premiere, that he would need to make another film to be able to explain with precision the meaning of Blow Up. It is not enough to suggest analysis, it is necessary to suggest stimulating the spectator to introduce himself, to be hooked by the plot so that the audience ends up being interested in this game of self-knowledge about the gaze and the target of the gaze, about the emptiness and the human uprooting, about the incapacity of people to deal with an environment that they distrust and that, above all, they do not understand. The director already explains it in an interview: “Our drama is the growing lack of communication and the inability to conceive authentic feelings; this particular problem dominates all my characters.”

Nevertheless, this film had a great repercussion, filmmakers like Francis F. Coppola confessed to having been inspired by it. In his case to write the script of his film The Conversation (1974), in the case of Mel Brooks in High Anxiety (1977), a driver makes so many enlargements of a photograph in which the killer appears until he has one the size of a wall. In others, as in the Indian film Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983), its director Kundan Shah, making identical use of the plot of Blow Up, conveniently decides to call the park where the murder occurs “Antonioni Park”.

In the main competition section of the Cannes Film Festival, Blowup won the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film, the festival's highest honor.

Direction: Michelangelo Antonioni.

Country: United Kingdom and Italy.

Year: 1966.

Duration: 108 min.

Cast: David Hemmings, Vanesa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, Peter Bowles, Jane Birkin, Gillian Hills, John Castle, Verushka.

Script: Tonino Guerra & Michelangelo Antonioni, based on the story by Julio Cortázar “Las Babas del Diablo”, from the book Las Armas Secretas, 1959.

Production: Carlo Ponti.

Executive production: Pierre Rouve

Artistic direction: Saetón Gorton.

Photography: Carlo di Palma.

Assembly: Frank Clarke.

Sound: Robin Gregory.

Costumes: Jocelyn Rickards.

Makeup and hairdressing: Paul Rabiger and Stephanie Kaye.

Music: Herbert Hancock.

 Producer: Bridge Films.

Distributor: MGM.

Locations: Maryon Park, Plaza of the Economist Building, Stockwell Road, Regent Street, Heddon street.

Rear Window 1954

Alfred Hitchcock once said: "If you do not experience a delicious terror when you watch Rear Window, then pinch yourself ... You may be dead."

"Rear Window" was one of Hitchcock's favorite films, as it has been for the audiences as well as critics since it was released by Paramount Pictures in 1954. For the director it represented the extraordinary opportunity of having a whole film seen from the point of view of a character. As for the audience, it gave him the opportunity to do something that many would have wanted: To be the "voyeur" and spy on your neighbors.

Alfred Hitchcock's film "Rear Window" is a Universal Classic, featuring James Stewart and Grace Kelly as protagonists, accompanied by Wendell Carey, Thelma Ritter and Raymond Burr. Produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, the screenplay belongs to John Michael Hayes, based on Cornell Woolrich's short story "It Had To Be Murder." Robert Burks was the director of photography.

The argument is very simple: An immobilized man (James Stewart) watches his neighbors through the back window of his apartment to pass the time. He feels fascinated by one of the departments in particular, until he slowly realizes that his owner has killed his wife. What follows is how the protagonist convinces the other tenants that there has been a murder, and then tries to have the killer caught, but not before he attempts to kill again. However, in the hands of "The master", a simple story line becomes a humorous and macabre tale able to play with the emotions of the viewer with only the camera movement.

Hitchcock has always been a "voyeur", his camera is the audience’s eyes. With "Rear Window" he exploits a weakness of ours, which is to find out what the neighbor does ... and the problems that this can cause.

The idea for the film came from different sources, especially the infamous case of Patrick Mahon. In this case the murderer dismembered the body of a girl and threw it piece by piece from the window of a train, except the head, which he burned in his fireplace. Hitchcock assigned the task of writing the script to John Michael Hayes, a former radio writer. The director was so pleased with the finished script that Hayes would write three of his following films: "To Catch a Thief", "The Trouble with Harry” and “The Man Who Knew Too Much”.

Hitchcock also knew who he wanted for his leading man: James Stewart who had worked with him on "The Rope" and felt that Jimmy could be perfect to play Jeff, the photographer confined in a wheelchair who is convinced that a murder has been committed in his apartment building. Hitchcock also casted Grace Kelly to play Lisa Freemont, Jeff's girlfriend and "legs". Completing the cast are Wendell Corey as Tom, Jeff's partner in the war and now a detective; Thelma Ritter as Stella, Jeff's nurse, and Raymond Burr, who plays Lars Thorwald, the accused of murder.

The film was shot entirely on set 18 of Paramount Studios. The monumental decoration was 100 feet wide, 200 feet long and 30 feet high, with structures that raised five and six floors. It was the result of months of planning and construction. There were 31 apartments, with most of the action taking place in eight fully furnished rooms, plus a maze of fire escapes, terraces, an alley, a street and the back of the city.

It took more than a thousand arcs of giant lights to illuminate the set from above, while more than two thousand varieties of small lamps were used to have supplementary light. In fact, "Rear Window" was so meticulously planned and calculated before starting the shoot itself, that only a few hundred feet of film with disposable shots were discarded at the end. For their movements, the actors playing Stewart's neighbors received their instructions and directions through a shortwave radio with hidden microphones.

Actually, Hitchcock found himself filming two movies, one with sound and the other silent. The most elaborate shot was a long shot that had to show the whole set at the beginning of the film. The camera had to be raised high above the courtyard of the building, go from one window to the other until, eventually; it stopped at Stewart's apartment. There, Hitchcock made the camera run down his sweaty face until he was seen in the wheelchair, grabbed a thermometer, slid down the casted leg, collected a group of magazines and a shattered camera and then moved to the wall to show a picture taken at the Indianapolis circuit.

This suggested that Stewart's character was a bold photographer who had broken his leg when taking the picture that was on the wall. It also established most of the elements that subsequently developed into the action. There is a constant identification between the character of Stewart and the audience-everything he sees is also seen by the spectator, everyone is exposed to the dangerous potential of "voyeurism." The audience is involved from the beginning given the fact that the credits are projected over closed shutters that a will open one after the other. Then, the viewer is led to identify with Stewart when he identifies with the suspect he is spying on. Enjoying his leisure and wanting to find adventure, he is snooping in a less innocent situation than the viewer watching a movie. And, naturally, the viewer feels as frustrated as Stewart whenever the facts do not justify his deductions.

Everyone likes to know what is happening around them. In "Rear Window", James Stewart has an insatiable curiosity; so much so, that at the end of the film not only has his other leg broken, but it also almost manages to get himself killed. With a camera you can get into someone's personal life and invade their privacy. However, Hitchcock always felt that in reality he was never being an intruder in what he photographed. Instead he thought that his function was to illuminate a situation and then let everyone draw their own conclusions from what they saw.

Rear Window is one of the most memorable Hitchcock’s films. After the credits, the camera slowly approaches the window and makes a first superficial tour of the community's patio that ends with a close-up of Jeff (James Stewart), asleep and sweaty, following an insert of the thermometer indicating that the temperature is, in fact, very high, and without a single word, Hitchcock has already given us a lot of data about the character, as well as about the community in which he lives ".

Architects love this film in particular and it has been analyzed under different lenses in studios and seminars. The film certainly discusses issues of voyeurism; however other topics like architectural section, event structure, the problem of front and back. -There is no apartment building in NYC that has that middle courtyard, so the problem of a second façade comes into the game.

Synopsis

For seven weeks, magazine photographer L. B. Jeffries, whom everyone calls Jeff (James Stewart), has been confined to a wheelchair during a New York heat wave. His leg and hips are immobilized in a cast because of the accident he suffered when the wheel of a racing car he was photographing was released from the car.

To pass the time in his Greenwich Village apartment, Jeff likes to watch what his neighbors do. It is an extremely humid summer, so the blinds, which would normally hide the view of the other tenants' private lives, are rarely lowered.

During his constant gaze, he learns several things, including that marriage is not something he wants to venture on anytime soon, especially now that he feels pressured by his girlfriend, Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly), a sophisticated editor of a fashion magazine. When it comes to the neighbors, it seems that either they are emotionally unstable or tragically confused when choosing a partner: There's Miss Lonely Hearts, an eager spinster of men who has candlelight dinners with an imaginary lover; there is also a middle-aged couple without children who turn their love into a small dog, and also a couple of newlyweds who spend the day making love behind the curtains. Miss Torso is a curvaceous dancer who practices her exercises in her underwear, much to the delight of her neighbors.

Then we also find the eccentric mature artist who is completely dedicated to a new sculpture, while a frustrated music composer tries to find inspiration in alcohol. And then there's Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), a traveling salesman who sells jewelry, who constantly has heated arguments with his handicapped wife.

Jeff's boredom makes him crave some excitement: "At this moment I'd love to have a problem," he tells Stella (Thelma Ritter), an ingenious nurse who comes to give him a massage every day. However, he does not have to wait long to see his wishes fulfilled, since that same night Jeff hears a horrifying scream and sees Thorwald making several trips carrying an aluminum suitcase.

Armed with binoculars and a powerful camera, Jeff watches Thorwald clean the suitcase, wash the walls of his bathroom and wrap a saw and a kitchen knife in newspaper. Jeff begins to suspect that the salesman has murdered his wife, chopped up her body and then disposed of her in the little garden part of apartment’s courtyard. But his evidence is too unsustainable to convince his girlfriend Lisa and Tom (Wendell Corey), his comrade-in-arms during the war and now a detective in the homicide section. Jeff's suspicions increase when he watches the little dog sniffing in the garden.

It also intrigues him to see Thorwald rummaging through his wife's bag and jewelry. Lisa deduces that if the woman has gone on a trip, which is quite possible and this would explain her absence. She would have to take the wedding ring with her so she decides to do a little detective work; shortly after  the small dog is found strangled, and all the neighbors have a horrified reaction confronting the fact.

All except Thorwald, who sits alone in his dark apartment. Finally, convinced by Jeff's insistence that a crime has been committed, Lisa and Nurse Stella become the photographer’s legs.

Stella begins to dig in the garden, while Lisa goes to the suspect’s apartment during his absence, trying to find some clues. But she is surprised by Thorwald, who is about to kill her if it wasn’t for the police intervention, Jeff is the one that calls them in complete desperation -; Lisa is taken to jail on charges of attempted theft, but not before she can make Jeff understand that she has found the wedding ring - the necessary evidence -; but the killer has seen where the girl was beckoning at, and that's how he starts to harass Jeff. At Jeff's apartment, Thorwald confronts him and also tries to kill him.

Unable to move from his wheelchair, Jeff's only defense is to use his camera and blinds Thorwald with the flash light. Just at the moment when Thorwald has managed to catch Jeff, the police arrive and shoot the crazed assassin, but not before Jeff has fallen through the window. Although he now has both legs broken, Jeff feels happy, cared for and accompanied by Lisa.

Cast

James Stewart as L.B. "Jeff" Jefferies

Grace Kelly as Lisa Carol Fremont

Wendell Corey as NYPD Det. Lt. Thomas "Tom" J. Doyle

Thelma Ritter as Stella

Raymond Burr as Lars Thorwald

Judith Evelyn as Miss Lonelyhearts

Ross Bagdasarian as the songwriter

Georgine Darcy as Miss Torso

Frank Cady and Sara Berner as the husband and wife, living above the Thorwalds, with their dog

Jesslyn Fax as "Miss Hearing Aid"

Rand Harper and Havis Davenport as Newlyweds

Irene Winston as Mrs. Anna Thorwald

ted, Lisa and Nurse Stella become the photographer’s legs.

L'Avventura 1960

In order to contextualize the importance of Antonioni and L’Avventura, I would refer to Martin Scocerse’s list of favorite films. Without a doubt, Martin Scorsese is one of the most recognized directors in the history of cinema. Films like Taxi Driver, Casino or The Wolf of Wall Street, the New York filmmaker has more than enough work to create his own list of the best films ever. Invited to elaborate on this privileged ranking, Scorsese quoted great classics such as Paisà (Comrade) by Roberto Rosselli (1946). Another Italian classic is the work of Michelangelo Antonioni, undoubtedly, one of Scorsese's favorite filmmakers. In regards to L’Avventura he said; "It's hard to think of a film that has a more powerful understanding of the way people are linked to the world around them, because of what they see, touch, taste and hear," and concludes "visually, sensually, thematically, dramatically, in all senses, is one of the great works of cinema".

Michelangelo Antonioni, L’Avventura is one of the key milestones of the cinematographic modernity, in addition to the international fame and of its director, Michelangelo Antonioni, especially at the root of the enormous scandal that surrounded this masterpiece. When it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, the film was heavily booed and attacked mercilessly. It was because of this failure that a series of critics and it was the filmmakers with an affinity to this new cinematographic wave who demanded a second showing, in which it received a Special Prize of the Jury "for its new cinematographic language and the beauty of its images", from here on cinema had a new masterpiece. 

It seems to me that the central theme, which Antonioni decided to discuss through this film, is human relationships and their lack of communication. The director emphasizes the construction of the characters and their dialogues. We can appreciate the way in which, in several sequences, the characters Claudia (Monica Vitti) and Sandro (Gabriel Ferzetti) are completely silent, while they walk through a room, or the exteriors of the great white island. At other times, within a completely superficial dialogue, we can have another level of reading, below which the real feelings of the characters are hidden; those who cannot communicate.

In this film, the narrative construction is a very attractive point. L’Avventura begins with some bourgeois characters that make a trip on a yacht. After hours of travel, the crew stops on a small uninhabited island, where some disembark, among them our protagonist trio: Anna, Claudia and Sandro. Anna and Sandro are in a relationship, although she is very dissatisfied with her partner, as her friend Claudia will later prove in the film. During her stay on the island, Anna disappears; it is here where we find an interesting moment, because a few minutes (considering that it is a long movie), the main character disappears. This moment in the film reminded me a bit of Psycho from Htichcock, a film in which something similar happens, the protagonist disappears after thirty minutes of film. The film from that moment on is about absence of the presence creating the metaphysical complexity of the narrative.

ey milestones of the cinematographic modernity, in addition to the international fame and of its director, Michelangelo Antonioni, especially at the root of the enormous scandal that surrounded this masterpiece. When it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, the film was heavily booed and attacked mercilessly. It was because of this failure that a series of critics and it was the filmmakers with an affinity to this new cinematographic wave who demanded a second showing, in which it received a Special Prize of the Jury "for its new cinematographic language and the beauty of its images", from here on cinema had a new masterpiece.

One thing that is extremely interesting about the film, is that Antonioni was a part of Italian Neo-realism, having worked as a screenwriter, among other things, for directors of the stature of Roberto Rosellini. But, unlike the neorealist style where the important thing is to film on the streets, not to use sets, as well as to focus on the less "favored" classes of the country; Antonioni focuses his gaze and speech on the Italian bourgeois class, making a cruel portrait and a critique to this well-to-do class, the characters are boring, empty, hypocritical and amoral.

This film was very popular at the time, because it was a work of unusual transgression, one could almost say revolutionary. Perhaps modernity was so obvious to the common spectator then, but still today remains one of those films that has both that praise and detract this film as a work of art. L’Avventura completely escaped the most elementary bases of film narrative by showing a brutally sincere portrait of human relationships and their lack of communication. Antonioni narrative style is clearly portrayed in the other two films related to L’Avventura, the so-called "Trilogy of non-communication”; La Notte (1961) and The Eclipse (1962).

All of them will search every smallest corner of the tiny island but eventually give up. When the police arrive, they continue with the search, also investigating along the waters of the rocky areas in case she had decided to commit suicide, but there is no sign of Anna. It is impossible that Anna, alive or dead, could remain on the island, so Claudia and Sandro decide to continue looking for her on the mainland.

Following the analysis of the narrative construction of L’Avventura, the fact is that we never learned what actually happens with Anna. This is an excuse to unleash the main plot, just as Hitchcock did with Psycho. After the disappearance, Claudia and Sandro begin to look for their friend. But behind this, there is a hidden feeling that the two characters never express (a resource that works for Antonioni to emphasize lack of communication), and that is that they begin to have a romantic adventure and, simultaneously, carry out the search for the lost friend.

What becomes more controversial of the film even today is the fact that at no time is explained to us what has happened to Anna. Antonioni does not care what happened to her character, but the consequences of her disappearance, because while Sandro and Claudia seek for Anna they end up falling in love. Therefore, what was supposed to be the central conflict of the film fades away until it disappears in favor of what Antonioni really wants to show us: the strange relationship between Sandro and Claudia, the fact that they live a romance while they are looking for this woman. Who are they really betraying? In a scene that takes place in the final stretch of the film, Sandro goes away from Claudia to make an inquiry and when he returns she is terrified because she was afraid that he had found Anna. She herself recognizes that she has gone from fearing for her friend's life to being afraid that she is still alive. This sick contradiction is one of the bases of the film.

Another controversial point is Antonioni's fulminating portrait of the well-to-do and idle bourgeoisie; he would also attack in his next film, La Notte. In particular, the initial scenes of the yacht trip are especially cruel. All the characters are presented as boring, empty and even pathetic. One of the couples, Giulia and Corrado, is especially shocking because absolutely all their dialogues end up in an insult from him towards her ("The weather has gotten worse" "Please, do not be so didactic, I see that the weather has worsened ";" Formerly, the Aeolian Islands were volcanoes "" When we came here 12 years ago, you made exactly the same comment "). In the middle of Anna's frantic search, Giulia suddenly talks to Claudia at a certain moment about how badly her husband treats her, as if she was not aware of the seriousness of Anna's disappearance. Later, Giulia cheats on her husband with a young painter, but before giving herself to him she makes sure that Claudia sees her, as if she wants to compensate for the ridicule she has suffered before. It seems that she is cheating on him more for revenge than for a real desire. In fact, all the characters give off an amorality that is really annoying. They have no problem whatsoever committing adultery among them and in fact this is what Claudia and Sandro do, with the difference that they seem to really want each other while the rest do it almost out of boredom.

It is remarkable the way that Antonioni has to show us the existential void and the lack of communication that surrounds these characters. The film begins with a conversation between Anna and her father in which that lack is clear, but it is something that runs throughout the film and affects even Claudia and Sandro. Although they are sincerely wishing, at all times there is something underlying that gives us to understand that not everything works as well as it should, that the characters are not completely united and there is still something that separates them. Maybe Anna's ghost? Or, Claudia and Sandro are simply destined to understand each other as little in the future as Anna and Sandro did?

Despite the risk involved in carrying out such an abstract film in its content, Antonioni does a tremendous job of direction that makes L’ Avventura an absolutely fascinating film. His obsession with landscapes, not only natural but also urban, is evident here: the planes of the island and the sea, the buildings of the towns visited by the protagonists and even the characters themselves. Antonioni pampers each frame making his work look especially beautiful and evocative, something that would lead to its maximum expression in the last minutes of The Eclipse, in which it completely leaves aside the plot to show a succession of almost abstract planes of a city. Few directors have been able to work as well as he does the form the objects when placing them on a plane.

Some of these landscapes become so abstract that they even look like nightmarish images, like the empty town or the square where Claudia is suddenly harassed by men who look at her maliciously. Like the disappearance of Anna, there are elements that have no rational explanation, but this serves to increase the unhealthy climate of tension that the characters live.

Perhaps one of the aspects that I liked the least was the ending, in which Claudia finds Sandro with another woman and he, scared, gets covered in the womb of the female, while Claudia leaves. Finally they are on the roof of the hotel and Sandro cries, causing Claudia to put her hand on his head as a symbol of forgiveness. It seems to me that, in this end, the reactions are not very credible, something mechanical and implausible; above all, it is difficult for me to believe and understand Sandro's final cry, as well as Claudia's forgiveness. However I think that this also defines very well the theme of the film; despite of the deceit, the weeping and other issues that we could appreciate, both characters remain silent, without giving an explanation of their actions and feelings, which emphasizes and summarizes very well the lack of communication that the director wanted to present.

In this plane is reflected all the non-communication that surrounds the two, their inability to solve their problems verbally; their condemnation to love and at the same time hurt each other as the rest of the characters in the film. This problem has seldom been exposed so beautifully and simply, something that has such a dramatic meaning: the ineffectiveness of human relationships and the inability not to harm the people we love most. Under that apparent visual beauty, L’Avventura hides one of the most visceral and disenchanted portrayals of human relationships in contemporary society.

Cast:

Claudia (Monica Vitti)

 Anna (Léa Massari),

Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti)

Release date: June 29, 1960 (USA)

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni

Cinematography: Aldo Scavarda

Screenplay: Michelangelo Antonioni, Tonino Guerra, Elio Bartolini

Antonioni and Monica Vitti during the filming of L'Avventura

Band of Outsiders 1964

This is a film about three characters: Odile (Ana Karina), a rather naïve young girl, lives with her aunt in a house on the outskirts of Paris and attends a course to learn English, there she meets his two companions: Arthur (Claude Brasseur) and Franz (Sami Frey). Actually the two men are full-fledged criminals who will take advantage of Odile's confidence and convince her to steal from her old aunt's house.

With Band of Outsiders we could write several pages about the avant-garde and the cinematographic aspects found in one of the most important films of the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague)  of which Godard is one of the main players. Conceived as a very personal review of American film noir, Band of Outsiders (Bande à part 1964) is surely his freest film and the one that contains the most moments of authentic "film joy" of Godard's entire filmography. In fact, it seems that the director had the need to radically change the record after the tough film Contempt ( Le Mépris 1963) when addressing this story of cops and thieves (the script part of the pulp novel  "Fools' Gold" by Dolores Hitchens ). This film is a cinematic game full of scenes, dialogues and images that run in the form of digressions to the police plot and focus on the triangle formed by  its three protagonists: the candid Odile, the opportunist Arthur and the introverted Franz. These relations whose evolution Godard is allowed to preview in the vertiginous assembly in parallel to the visuals of the initial credits (something practically impossible to perceive in a first viewing), this is the first of the many games within the film.

For the spectators who are getting involved in the film, we can mention some phrases chosen at random that could frame the film: 3 weeks ago. A lot of money. English classes. A house by the river. A romantic girl.  Through the voice-over, Godard continues playing with the idea of chance and the banality of the plot, the story of the relationship between the three characters. Arthur, sure of himself, starts his strategy of seduction towards the "romantic Odile", before the helpless look of Franz (who discovers with disappointed how Odile refuses again and again his cigarettes and immediately will accept those from Arthur). As Godard tells us: "Now we could digress and talk about the feelings of Odile, Franz and Arthur, however everything is already clear enough. So let the images speak and close the parentheses. "

And the images certainly speak, show, suggest and play; Arthur caressing Odile's cheek, Odile putting on Franz's hat, Franz and Arthur reading news of robberies and crimes in the press, the three characters successively exchanging their position (and the relationship between them) around the coffee table. And, of course, the already legendary sequence with Arthur, Franz and Odile dancing in synchronized choreography one of the wonderful musical themes of Michel Legrand (sequence quoted by Tarantino, fervent admirer of this film, in Pulp Fiction). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1MKUJN7vUk  Also American director Hal Hartley uses this scene as reference for his film” Surviving desire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y4ATS5RTeg

After the sequence in the cafe, Franz and Arthur play flipping a coin up in the air and bet who will stay with Odile: "Arthur chose face. Odile screamed "heads" when she picks up the coin that had come out tails. Franz drives away sad and lonely, with feverish eyes "while Arthur continues his game of seduction. In the subway ("Arthur and Odile descended to the center of the earth"), Odile sings J'entends, j'entends, a song by Jean Ferrat from a poem by Louis Aragon, in one of the most beautiful sequences of the film: the images of the metro and the streets of Paris, its travelers, passers-by and beggars, dialogue with the poem of Aragon to take us to the plane of Franz, sleeping alone, which Godard sets against the plane of Arthur and Odile in bed.

Once Arthur, impelled by his sinister family (plotting to betray Franz), decides to put his plan into action, Franz begins to open up with Odile: asking her to decide between him and Franz to flee after the robbery (they would go north, to "the land of Jack London: a new digression, with Franz telling the story on camera), giving her the book of the novel that makes him think about her as well as reading to her a fragment of the novel. On her way to the house, Odile looks at the Louvre, Franz explains that he once read that an American had taken 9 minutes 45 seconds to visit the museum. So, while they wait for the night to fall and be able to commit the robbery (all according to Arthur, and referring to the tradition of bad B movies, they decide to do the same). The brief but magnificent sequence of Franz, Arthur and Odile running through the galleries of the Louvre is another of the playfully magical moments of the film. This memorable scene was directly referenced by Bernardo Bertolucci in his film “The Dreamers” 2003, the story of another love triangle.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4MV1NLejQ0

The scene lasts less than 40 seconds but has become an icon of world cinema. In fact, the whole movie is full of poetry made. This is mentioned in the special DVD launched by the the criterion collection, it has references of Paris in Cinq jours (Pierre Colombier-Nicolas Rimsky); in it Godard invented a character named Jimmie Johnson, an American from California who toured the entire museum in 9 minutes with 45 seconds. At the end of the scene, Godard's voice reports that Arthur, Franz and Odile broke the record by two seconds.

The scene can be interpreted in different ways. There will be some critics who commented that Godard simply presents the shots, without establishing any logical relationship with the whole film.. Jean Luc Godard, being an important figure of the transgressive avant-garde group "The French New Wave" (Nouvelle Vague), expressed his ideology and the conception of his time in an open manner. In the scene, the friends run in the opposite direction to the circulation of the assistants, and they mock the security guard when he tries to stop them in their run. The image could have all the burden of freedom young people dismissed in those years, a desire for a different world.

This will be the last moment of play between the three characters: the plan must be executed and, after a failed first attempt, in which Odile begins to be aware of the true feelings of Franz and Arthur towards her, the theft is consummated and Arthur finally exposes his treason pretending to hide most of the loot. When Franz and Odile return to the house (like the hero of a legendary novel, Franz has a dark premonition), they witness the shooting between Arthur and his uncle, in which both of them die, Arthur's last thought before dying was Odile's face.

The game is over. The shy Franz has finally gotten the love of the candid Odile and both flee "to the warm countries" on board a ship (in a wonderful tribute to Chaplin’s The Immigrant) in search of new adventures. Godard makes an ironic promise, he will see it in one of his next films, this time in Cinemascope and Tecnicolor called “Pierrot Le Fout”

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Original Title: Bande à part /

Year: 1964 / Country: France / Production Company: Columbia Films / Duration: 95 min. / Format: B / N - 1.37: 1

Screenplay: Jean-Luc Godard / Photography: Raoul Coutard / Music: Michel Legrand

Cast: Anna Karina, Claude Brasseur, Sami Frey, Louisa Colpeyn, Chantal Darget, Ernest Menzer

Release date: 07/29/1964 (Locarno Film Festival)