Brian Berta When this film was screened at the "Cannes Film Festival" in 1960, it was booed by members of the audience (Antonioni and Vitti even fled the theater). According to film critic and film professor Gene Youngblood, people booed during long sequences where, supposedly, nothing happened to further the film's plot. I understand why it had a rough start, because it's very easy to miss its deeper meaning. However, after looking up a couple essays, I now understand why it's as popular as it is.After a woman named Anna disappears while on a boating trip, her boyfriend, Sandro, attempts to find her. Once they make it back to the city, however, he soon forgets about her and falls in love with Claudia, one of her friends.I think the film's purpose is to have you ask the question: Why would Anna run away? This film uses the actions of the characters to answer this question. Shortly after she disappears, Sandro begins forcing himself on Claudia as they search for her on the island. At first, she shies away from his advances, but when they make it back to the city, she begins to fall in love with him as well, betraying her friend. Throughout the film, their relationship continues to grow to a point where Claudia confesses that she's afraid of Anna returning, because if she does, Sandro might return to her. She then finds Sandro making love to another woman in a hotel. These two scenes show the themes of this film at their finest as it shows how unfaithful both of them are to Anna. I also feel like the film's purpose isn't solely to show why Anna ran away, but also to create a recreation of their relationship since the ending shows Sandro cheating on Claudia as well as Anna. Then, you have the final scene where the two characters, presumably, realize why Anna left as they cry together on a bench.I've seen quite a few people bring up this interpretation, but I feel like there are a few other details which are also important to the film. The first scene happens shortly after they first notice Anna disappear. Once that happens, Sandro says that type of behavior is typical. This hints that Anna tried running away several times in the past. Another vital scene is while Claudia walks in the streets alone, every single man stares at her as she walks by. This could indicate that another reason why Anna ran away was because she hated the society she lived in as well as her friends. Also relative to Anna disliking her friends, when Claudia meets up with her boating friends in Palermo, nobody seems to take Anna's disappearance seriously except Claudia. This is all the more reason to believe that Anna disliked her friends. The most important detail, however, is Sandro's disaffection caused by his failure to maintain his career as an architect. How this affects him is shown in the scene where he spills ink on a students' architectural drawing. This is also shown when Claudia runs into a paint store to hide when she mistakes a woman walking by Sandro to be Anna. Once Sandro walks inside, he stops her from buying a can of paint, highlighting his disaffection towards architecture.I've seen a lot of people praise the cinematography. However, I'm mixed on the way it was shot. I loved the part of the film which took place on the island as it felt like a barren landscape. Not only did this make for some visually striking scenes such as Claudia observing the sun rising as she stepped out of a shack, but it also seemed foreboding and unrelenting. There was the constant feeling that if one of them were to step over a hill, they would be confronted by an endless array of rocks, lowering the chances that they'd be able to locate Anna. Once they got off the island, however, this feeling was gone and the cinematography lost a lot of the power it had during the first hour. There are probably good reasons for why not to have the rest of the film take place on the island, but the scenery is so good, I can't help but feel an absence from the film in terms of its visuals. There were a few instances where we would see barren landscapes outside of a city, but these shots didn't give me the same atmospheric feeling I felt in the first hour because the characters weren't particularly in the middle of them like they were while they stayed on the island. Despite the visual shortcomings of the latter parts of the film (the visuals may grow on me in the future though), I still appreciated the several stunning shots cinematographer Aldo Scavarda was able to capture on the island.In conclusion, this was a really good movie. Partly due to the visual aspect, it may not quite reach perfection for me, but I completely understand why it often makes "Best films of all time" lists since it's unique in the way of its deeper meaning. I can see my opinion of it increasing if I give it another viewing a few years down the road.

disinterested_spectator Are people as weird in foreign countries as the movies that are made in those countries? If so, I am sure glad I live in America. "L'Avventura" would still have been a weird foreign film even if it had been shorter, but at least it would have been a better movie because there would have been less of it.A bunch of people get on a boat and end up on a small volcanic island. After they walk around for a while, they decide to leave and discover that Anna is missing. They search everywhere, but she is gone. There is only one possibility: she drowned and her body drifted out to sea with the tide. Of course, we can still wonder if it was an accident, suicide, or murder. But one thing is certain: she didn't just vanish into thin air.Wait a minute! What am I saying? This is a weird foreign film by Michelangelo Antonioni. When you enter the theater to watch one of these movies, you have to check your reason and common sense at the door, or it will just get in the way of experiencing existential wonder, if that's what you're into. So, of course she might just have vanished into thin air or teleported off the island or was abducted by aliens or whatever.In any event, Anna's friend, Claudia, and Anna's boyfriend, Sandro, don't have much reason and common sense either, because they leave the island and start looking for Anna. I mean, they actually think she might be wandering around Italy, visiting museums, staying at a hotel, or anything that someone might do who wasn't last seen on a small island with no way off except by boat.They recognize that she might have drowned, but that doesn't stop them from knocking off a quick piece, because though they just met, yet they are wildly in love with each other and just have to have some right in the middle of an open field. Of course, that doesn't stop Sandro from knocking off a quick piece the next day with some woman on the couch in the hotel lobby. When Claudia catches him, he cries. He shed not one tear for Anna, but this is different. No problem, because Claudia still loves him.And Anna? You mean you're still wondering what happened to her? What do you think this is, an American movie?

Christopher Culver L'AVVENTURA was director Michaelangelo Antonioni's first international hit, winning the Special Jury Prize at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. Here a small group of rich Italian socialites takes a boat out to a volcanic island. Anna (Lea Massari) quarrels with her fiancée Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), and subsequently goes missing. The police are brought in and divers scour the waters, but Anna never turns up. One would expect the film to develop as a whodunit, either revealing Anna to still be alive or putting the finger on the person responsible for her disappearance.Instead, Anna never shows up, and the film goes off in a rather different direction. Anna's friend Claudia (Monica Vitti) is suddenly promoted from a background character to the very centre of the picture, with her interaction with Sandro driving the action. While the film lacks a traditional plot, and indoor scenes tend to be brief arguments between lovers, the main part of the film is held together with a series of long shots of landscapes. Appreciating Antonioni's style requires some work, but as in the lengthy late works of composers Morton Feldman or Toru Takemitsu, eventually the rewards come. The scenes of the ocean while the party is on the volcanic island are beautifully constructed and will have stayed with me after the film ends. Furthermore, becoming comfortable with L'AVVENTURA makes one all the more ready for Antonioni's later films, which further develop this theme of human beings unable to connect with each other or the changing world around them.Antonioni's casting of Monica Vitti was brilliant, for in a film that requires the female protagonist to stand as a witness to everything going on around her, Vitti's statuesque beauty is just the ticket. Esmeralda Ruspoli plays a ditzy young lady well, adding a touch of humour to what otherwise would have been a deathly serious film. And though the plot is untraditional, and the existential themes take a backseat to the composition, I'd say there is some closure, with Sandro's inner self stripped naked by the end.One further aspect of the film that I've only recently come to appreciate is its sort of exploration of Southern Italian culture. Antonioni was from Emilia-Romagna in the north of Italy, and his wealthy characters in the film come from Rome. The setting highlights the substantial divisions that exist within a supposedly unified country, as the south is significantly less prosperous, its people are of shorter stature, and of course Monica Vitti gets a lot of staring and wolf-whistles due to the south's culture of machismo. If you speak Italian, you can see how Antonioni uses the substantial difference between Italian dialect as another instance of people failing to communicate with each other.

ferrell Wow! Okay. Wow! If I had been in the audience at the first showing in Cannes, I would have felt I was amongst kindred souls.Great reputations don't impress me. I have to see it myself. I have given it the benefit of the doubt by bothering to read several of the comments here. I'm glad there are those of you that got something special out of this film. A good editor with a sharp knife could have improved this film considerably. Even that would still not be enough for me.Certainly the cinematography was beautiful. I just returned from a trip to Sicily and that was the initial motivations for viewing this film. It turns out that even that was not enough for me.I don't mind that Antonioni's motivation for doing the film was to explore the delicacy of human relations. I do mind that he disguised his purpose for so long. Okay, I get it that Anna brings it on herself to encourage Sandro's wandering eye. But Claudia's motivation is a mystery to me. Antonioni spends too little time motivating Claudia. Even the kiss on he boat is not nearly enough. Sandro didn't appear to be THAT good a kisser. Where Antonioni DID spend his time was largely wasted. The interminable search for Anna on the island. In real life real characters would certainly search thoroughly. But we don't have to see ALL of it. Other directors and editors have discovered ways to shorten the screen time and still give us the impression that a serious and thorough search was made. And Claudia's "running down the hall" scene ... hello? What about abandoned town of Noto scene? The deeper meaning was lost on me. If this is a part of the "new" language and "new" images everyone is talking about, well, I just don't like it. I spent 30 years in the movie biz and if I learned one thing, it's that screen time costs money. If it doesn't have a direct bearing on the plot, don't put it in. Again, if Antonioni is just breaking this rule to give us a new way at looking at movies, I don't like it.It's okay if it's not important to Antonioni as to what happens to Anna. But I feel that it is unfair for him to expect us to pay to see his movie and not tell us. We are regular folks and have a regular curiosity. But by the time this ponderous epic was finally at an end, I really didn't care either.And as to the ending, this really didn't do the women's movement any favors, did it? Like the "battered woman syndrome", she takes him back almost immediately. Bummer.I will give it another look. So many have said you need at least two viewings. Many have also said that it helps considerablu to read what critics have said in order to completely understand it. This is just wrong on so many levels. If a film can't stand on its own, it's just poorly done. I have seen many films that I have gotten more out of each time I see them, but they were always films that were worth re-watching after a first viewing. I can't say that for me this is one of them.I gave it a 6 for the cinematography.