"Adventure" is Antonioni's sixth film. After "Adventure", he continued to film "Night" (1962) and "Eclipse" (1964) to form his "Trilogy of Human Feelings".
When "Adventure" was screened at the Cannes International Film Festival in 1960, the audience booed. They think the film is incomprehensible. The unusually slow pace, basically useless words and gestures to express their expressions, a large number of empty shots, no causal relationship and no beginning and end plot structure, all of which make the audience in Cannes and all over Europe feel boring. , Unbearable.
However, it quickly found supporters and admirers. The early 1960s was the year when European art cinema re-emerged, and the opening of art cinemas mushroomed. "Adventure" has become the most ideal show in the art theater. A group of influential critics pointed out that, compared with the first wave of European art films before 1940, new art films with "Avenger" as "avant-garde" have "undoubtedly made greater efforts in exploring the aesthetic potential of film methods." Contribution". The appearance of "Adventure" represents "the birth of a brand-new language". Traditional plot concepts and structural rules are completely abandoned, and the beauty of film art works "is no longer dependent on its rational content." "Form has an independent life." Film as an art finally keeps up with the modernization of other arts. With the support of this kind of enthusiastic eulogy, "Qing Yu" has established its important position in the history of Western film art in less than a year after its publication, and has become a talk about the history of change in film language and modern art. One of the landmark films that must be mentioned when it has an impact on the film.
The huge difference between "Adventure" and the familiar classic movies is obvious.
The first is its break with the traditional concept of plot. When the audience in Cannes applauded it, what they find most difficult to accept is that the film does not systematically and clearly explain the identity and history of the characters. In general narrative films, there is usually a presentation department from the beginning, introducing the life experience of each main character and the ins and outs of the relationship between them. Half of it happened accidentally, and I often learned a little bit about the character intermittently without any preparation in my mind. For example, it was not until Sandro and Claudia visited the church in Noto that we knew from his words that he was an architect. It was only in the second half of the film that we learned that Claudia was a girl from a poor background, but it was still unclear how she could interact with the upper class until the end of the film. Why Anna disappeared, and whether she was alive or dead in the end, the film will not explain at all about these crucial "belows". It is said that Antonioni once explained that since Sandro has fallen in love with Claudia, there is no need to care about Anna's whereabouts. In 1966, when French modernist film director Godard answered a question from a film critic, he took films such as "Adventure" as an example, and declared that he agreed that a narrative film should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. "But it doesn't have to be in this order." After "Adventure", the film "No Plot" became popular for a while, and it has been lingering since then, showing its far-reaching influence.
With the disappearance of traditional plot concepts, the characters' behavior motives tend to be blurred. Antonioni did not provide any explanation for the behavioral motives of Claudia, Anna or Sandro. We said that she was "feared" and "tired". It was just that we, as the audience, based on her eyes, expressions, gestures, and posture. the conclusion. In fact, the most faithful description of the entire content of Antonioni’s "Trilogy of Human Feelings" should be only a few sentences: so and so fell in love with so and so, or so and so fell in love with so and so, Then broke up; wait. Antonioni claimed that even he himself could not answer certain questions about his characters. What's the reason? In Antonioni's own words, this is because contemporary people live in a social environment where "God no longer exists" and "traditional moral codes are outdated". They have empty hearts and are emotionally separated from each other and cannot communicate. Antonioni, as one of the representative figures of Italian neorealism films, used to think that poverty was the main problem faced by Italy after the war, like others in his early creations, but later changed his views and regarded the loneliness of contemporary people’s hearts. The main crux of the problem. Therefore, the unfounded love and hatred and pathological sexual behaviors of the characters in his films are just the "true portrayal" of the "contemporary" image in his mind. Monica Witty, the heroine of "Adventure" must also be mentioned here. American film theorist Jay Scott believes: "As a director, Antonioni only gained more attention when he found the heroine played by Monica Witty...because her posture and demeanor seemed strange. The location is suitable for expressing the confused and boring state of mind of contemporary people in his mind. Her body is extremely soft and seems to have no self-control... She floats in Antonioni's picture frame, which is typically empty Wandering, hesitating... Staggering, not accurate.... Although Witty's face is also expressive, we can never forget her laziness and loneliness in the simple post-war Italian bauxite house. "It's no accident that Witty played the heroine in "Adventure", "Night" and "Eclipse".
The extensive use of aerial shots in "Adventure" (as well as "Night" and "Eclipse") is an important element that constitutes the unique Antonioni film language. In "Adventure", the yacht sails along the shore of a volcanic island, people search for Anna on the deserted island, Sandro and Claudia have a long time before making love on the grass outside the city...and especially the end Silent shots of the square in the city (the shots immediately reminiscent of the seven-minute empty street at the end of "Eclipse") provide examples. Antonioni said: "If there is one thing I often do, it is to point the camera at inanimate objects, rather than at people, to make things appear abstract and show how weak the human relationship is." Fellini also Said Antonioni's "The charm of the film lies in its appearance, in its deliberate work. They produce a peculiar effect... very elegant, but very indifferent."
In order to emphasize this indifference, emptiness, and loneliness atmosphere and sentiment, Antonioni rarely uses subjective shots, that is, shots taken from the perspective of a certain character. The empty city squares, streets, islands, ocean... are all coexisting with the characters in the film, which prevents the audience from resonating with the characters in the film, and on the contrary makes the director and the audience feel a sense of alienation. . Similarly, Antonioni is very stingy in the use of music and audio. In the "Trilogy of Human Feelings", long periods of silence have almost become the main "sound effect".
People who lack the appreciation of Antonioni's unique film language tend to exaggerate its symbolism, and even use a purely literary perspective to read and understand the iconic symbols of "Adventure". So, when Julia pointed to the volcanic island on the yacht and said, “This area of the archipelago used to be full of active volcanoes,” the scene was interpreted as “now the volcano has lost its vitality, just like these characters have lost its vitality.” People The search for Anna’s whereabouts on the island dragged on for a long time because Antonioni “wants to express the distance between his character and nature, the distance from the past, the distance between each other, and the distance from his own nature. How far away". Raimundo found an ancient bottle on the island and broke it by mistake. This is "implying that these characters lack the concept of historical continuity and that they have nothing to do with history." Even Claudia accepted a dress that Anna gave her. She tried on a black wig in Patricia’s room, which "symbolizes that Claudia has lost her personality" and "wishes herself Become Anna". Symbolic modern films certainly exist, but an overly imaginative interpretation can sometimes damage the abstract meaning of the film’s modeling elements. Appreciating films like "Adventure" is undoubtedly a kind of audiovisual image. The aesthetic ability of direct epiphany.
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