Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni was an Italian film director considered to be one of the most influential filmmakers of the twentieth century. His modernist filmmaking has inspired generations of film directors from Francis Ford Coppola to Wong Kar-Wai.
Fast Facts
- Born: September 29, 1912
- Spouse: Enrica Fico
- Career spanned more than 60 years
- 1950: First full-length feature film, Cronaca di un amore
- 1960: First international success, L'avventura
- 1985: Suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed and unable to speak
- 1995: Oscar for lifetime achievement -25 films and several screenplays
- Died: July 30, 2007 - the same day as Ingmar Bergman
Early Life
Born in northern Italy to a family of landowners, Antonioni was inspired by music and drawing at a young age. He began his artistic endeavors by playing the violin and as he approached his teens discovered the movies. After studying economics at the University of Bologna, Antonioni began writing for a local newspaper as a film journalist in 1935. By 1940 he moved out of the countryside and into Rome where he wrote for a film magazine called Cinema. Unfortunately he was fired after only working there a few months. From this career low he decided to study film at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia.
Early Films
Antonioni began shooting short films in the 1940s that had a neorealist style. He used ordinary people and explored their circumstances. By 1950 he made his first feature film Cronaca di un Amore which moved from the neorealist into a more fictional narrative of the middle class. In his films that followed he went further to break out of his country and explore other places, but it was in Le Amiche that his style and voice would radically impact the face of cinema.
Antonioni Style
Antonioni presented a new style of filmmaking using frequent long takes and a much slower pacing. He would also incorporate disconnected events which shifted the momentum of the story. Antonioni uses this style in L'avventura, La notte and L'eclisse and even allows this radical feel to seep into his English language films Blowup and The Passenger.
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