MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI and TONINO GUERRA’S ‘L’AVVENTURA’ “What I’m doing is ugly…”

 © 2021 James Clark

 

    There is a supposition, in mature film feature production, that the director calls the shots because he or she knows passionately what needs to be disclosed. Michelangelo Antonioni, an icon for many, has handsomely benefitted from the rather feudal strictures whereby a mere screenwriter becomes a dime a dozen, and all the couth comes to the likes of Antonioni. Well and good, if the boss man delivers. I certainly imagined that Antonioni had delivered. Now, I don’t.

After a very tardy study, I’ve realized that Antonioni’s films of the 50’s (which I barely noticed), were sentimental melodramas, precisely what a patrician/ aesthete with an influential father could manage, for a middling career. (Moreover, in a trump card, he often came to construct a suicide hand. Take that, cruel world!) That was why Ingmar Bergman loathed him. But he missed the brilliance to come. A film like Il Grido (1957), does have much to offer. But it’s not what we can’t do without. We began to find Antonioni films to be necessary only after Tonino Guerra became part (a very big part) of the picture.

Guerra’s family emerged as illiterate farmers. He, himself, chose poetry over farming. During the War, while Antonioni dabbled with rebellious leaflets and became arrested for it and quickly released by his father; Guerra, also, a rhetorical enemy of fascism, spent two years in a German jail for it. The ensuing involvement, as you might imagine, was not friendly. Not friendly, but productive.  (There are documents to indicate that they seldom had a day without a flaming and protracted blow-up. Antonioni unready to grow up; and Guerra ready to delight.) The genius of Antonioni being actually the genius of Guerra, not simply in dialogue, but even more critically, the marshalling and pacing of manifestation.

  

The scenario, then, would be a sort of dog’s breakfast, stringing along for more than a dozen  bewitching films. The marvel, then, so long coming and rarely to be captured, must be something else than simply human function. What Guerra, the poet, would be intent about (and the heart of his craft) is a manifestation of the cosmos itself.

Let’s start with the suicide of rich Anna, in fact, the brightest light to behold here, which  scarcely includes  a scintilla of hope. Dispensing of personal accomplishment, Anna can open a door that needs to be opened. Anna’s theme-song (along with the opening credits), a jagged shard of 50’s low-rent guitar, brings upon us a rare moment of pathos in a film suffocation with bathos. (Guerra on the tonality, not losing a second to rock.) At the moment of her outset of a cruise in the Mediterranean, her father remarks, “Isn’t it customary to wear a sailor’s cap with the yacht’s name on it?”/ “No, Father, it isn’t…” Far from a rube, though, her father is a long-time diplomat, who can see in his métier of thirty years never telling the truth. Nevertheless, the conservative’s complaint that she fails to stay at home with him frequently, spells much trouble. “I should have grown used to it by now.” (This being a very mundane experience; but in the roiling of Anna’s hidden extremity the mundane has nowhere to live.) The villa they sort of enjoy, in the clutches of heavy construction, can be also seen as a vantage point for a strikingly beautiful neoclassical church about a mile away in the direction of a crude, gravel alley. A treasure they never perceive, amidst the sentimental woes. Thus the heart of this film has announced itself, an announcement you don’t get from Antonioni. Here you get it from Guerra. The reason which L’Avventura has its stature.

    Catching a lift from Anna’s chauffeur, there is Claudia, a non-patrician and Anna’s best-friend, finding her as part of the campaign to distance the opulence. That Anna’s independence is far from complete, is soon displayed in catching up Sandro, her fiancé. On reaching his flat, she has a mind to make love with him. When questioned about leaving Claudia in the street, she replies, “Let her wait!” (Low rent, anyway you want it.) She had, in fact, in reaching Sandro’s place, resolved to scuttle the event. But he noticed her in the square, from his flat, ruining her resolve. A troubled ballet. A failed and deadly misstep. Anna’s rudeness coming up very short.

You could say that Antonioni had covered the regular scenario. But he didn’t. The furious dash in Sandro’s sport’s car—buffeted by the convertible’s exposure—lends a form of verve; but it’s too preoccupied with the destination. For a second time that morning, Claudia allows her hand at the window to engage the motion somewhat uncovering startlement beyond her ken. The first such whimsy occurred as she entered Anna’s chauffeur for the trip toward the sea. As the hired man opened her door, the military hat gave a salute, and, from our perspective, she had a micro-second view, lined up in  perfect symmetry, bemusing, even eerie. Of course, no one notices. Only Anna is privy to show substantive needs. And she fails to find means to sustain her courage and wit.

Follow Anna, the seer, as she tries to be decisive. Instead of going directly to Sandro’s flat, she goes for a coffee. “I’m thirsty,” she maintains, to a skeptical Claudia. The latter adds, “While a man you haven’t seen in a month has been waiting for you?” The deeper woman tells the side-kick, “I’d happily give up seeing him today.” But immediately she allows to let diplomacy overrun her valid, though heretical, needs. She argues, “It’s torture being apart. It’s difficult keeping a relationship going with one person here and the other there… But it’s convenient.” (His flashy car in the background.) “Because you can imagine whatever you like.” (Digging an even deeper hole.) “Whereas when somebody’s right in front of you, that’s all you get. Let’s go back. C’mon!” (A joy she doesn’t need, at all.)

    They make the boat, but it isn’t going anywhere. Going somewhere is not a cinch. A show comes on, but it becomes a farce. Anna, continuing her self-destruction, creates pandemonium by claiming she saw a shark while swimming. Soon, she sort of proudly, reports to Claudia, “You know, the whole shark thing was a lie.” (A failure of toughness.) More disappointment, in the form of Patria, the owner of the yacht, endlessly dabbling with gig-saw puzzles. (This being one of Antonioni’s soft ironies. Another being “adultery,” in the form of Patricia’s having a “lover” who fondles her breasts for her. One of the many cliches loaded down here, needing a true touch to make all the difference.)

The party embarks upon a rocky island. Apples are whimsically distributed. Anna and Sandro climb to a vantage point. There consists of two perils. She tells the dispensable, “I got used to being without you.” He replies, “It’s the usual awkwardness. It will go away.” He on-screen, while she maintains, “It’s a little more this time.” He, with voice-over, and no idea how she feels, rattles off, “It’ll take a little longer to go away, then.” There’s Sandro and the open sky—a sky meaning nothing to him, and an Anna having lost her nascent poetry. Therefore, she declares, “Well I think we should talk about. Or do you think we won’t be able to understand each other?”/ “We’ll have time to talk. We’re getting married. What’s longer than a lifetime?” She walks away. She sits on a rock face, distant, morose. She argues, “In that case, getting married would mean nothing. Aren’t we already acting like we’re married?” She looks away. He asks, “Why are we arguing… talking? Believe me, Anna, words are more and more pointless. They create misunderstanding.” (As if he owns the authority of silence.) “I care for you, Anna. Isn’t that enough?” (His bid to kiss her, misses.)/ “No, it isn’t enough. I’d like to spend more time alone.” (He grabs her arm.) He maintains, “But you just had a month!”/ “More time!” she shouts. “Two months, a year, three years!” She gets up to leave. “I know it’s absurd,” the moment of the “absurdity;” weighing on her, and never to be weighing on him. “I’m distraught. The idea of losing you makes me want to die… And yet, I don’t feel you anymore…” (This anatomy of Anna’s hopeless feelings stands on a brink whereby another unlikely warrior, Claudia,  must open her heart to the struggle, a struggle to make the heavens radiate.) “He shoots back: “Even yesterday, at my place? You didn’t feel me?”/ Cut to her, embarrassed; and her feeble, punk incoherence: “You always have to dirty everything.” (His fake smile.) He leans back on a large, flat rock, and she watches. He covers his face. Fade to black. Her presence disappears.

Here from our perspective, the narrative also fades to black. Goodbye to Antonioni, we must insist. The world of Tonino Guerra is all we need to complete a saga with a future. (Later on, a dying Andrei Tarkovsky would also be in need from Guerra, to complete the film, Nostalgia [1983].)

    Right at that outset, there is remarkable wit and force and magic. The island which they had chosen to enjoy happened to be, for many, no doubt, a deadly hazard of steep, deep, sharp edges, volatile slippage, and stiff gales. The far from Olympians attacking this pitfall bring it off with no trouble. Where they found such range of performance is a true mystery. (Don’t tell me Antonioni, the bedroom and furniture specialist, pulled this  together.) A little gift of what some can do. Soon the “soft” vacationers are caught up, at various intensities, in seeking Anna, who won’t be found. But what will be seen (if not noticed) is breathtaking abundance of forces being somehow elicited by one, like Claudia, now, whose prowess could touch off at least a modicum.

Very soon, at the island of trouble, Claudia has become the next Anna, more the next skeptic, a skeptic not nearly as intense and resolved as Anna. What she does manage to accomplish, though, is to live within her means. She understands that the advances Anna had displayed (badly, of course), could be bettered if shared, not solitary. This being, though, a large gamble, a large hazard. At large, for the hunt, a double waterspout, close to the island. Spirits lifted, spirits dashed. Mindfulness, responsibilities—how far can they reach? One of the spoiled middle-aged women, perhaps insensitively, blurts out, “This island is so beautiful, isn’t?” But can one temper grief without being stupid in that moment? (Antonioni seeing an easy shot, of course. But has Guerra had a mind to expand the drama? We’ll encounter many such foibles within this atmospheric force.) The call, “Anna!” rings amidst the boundlessness of space. Another version of Anna’s theme-song. Could such a loss retain such some perspective? In a few days, Anna is all but forgotten. If she were more coherent, would she be more loved? Or if she were more coherent, would she be even more a pariah? A pyramid cloud hovering over Anna’s departure. (Never a glimpse, from the smarts.) While most of the vacationers prepare to carry on to the deep South, and more diversion, Claudia, Sandro, and the spouse with the happy outlook determine to cover more possibilities. They break into a fisherman’s hut for the night, and when he turns up, he shows us how the world goes round. Making no notice of the break-in, he must, it seems, cover all the photos on the wall, in detail. To him, those on the wall are giants. Does modesty live anywhere? He tells the tourists about his missing figure, a sheep. “I looked for it all day, and only at nightfall I heard bleating.” This elicits Claudia to race out into a pouring rain. After a bit of sleep, she opens the door. It’s sunrise and the sky’s power tells us to wake up to a bestowal. She doesn’t. The force of the beauty involves Guerra finding his sheep.

    It’s a long day and a short life. Here’s the rest of much of what transpired. Here’s the portal. Sandro reports, “Nothing, nothing…” Melodrama time. Anna’s dad arrives in a noisy catamaran. Claudia brings two of the lost woman’s books from the yacht. The dad is optimistic. He notes, Tender is the Night and the Bible. “This is a good sign. I think someone who reads the Bible wouldn’t do anything rash, because it means they believe in God.” But Anna’s approach to the Bible would be far from her father’s. The “rashness” of Anna would be her strength. That “rashness,” however, that carelessness, would be her undoing. In this matter, you either do it right or play the clown.

Claudia and Sandro, also exponents of fantasy, could somewhat convince themselves that Anna would be lurking in the same Southern Italian milieu where the next party would convene. Their so-call “hunt” does nothing but solidify their opportunities to become the next questioning Anna and the next form of Sandro-weakling. A preamble of their decampment (involving a cartoon poster at a station stop), finds them needing to ridicule a conversation between a working-class couple, in the train. Their sense of superiority oozes hostility. But that becomes a minor slip, when measured against the elements they carelessly (low rent, actually) ignore. The track runs along the sea, with ivory surf and crashing statement. They might have been an outing of the blind. That crash has become, by way of Claudia’s erstwhile foggy sensibility, part of a new world in the making, with its rocketing and soothing seas. Two different worlds. Antonioni. Guerra. The surf was a bust. But she’ll have many more kicks of the can. At a courtyard of a Southern multi-millionaire’s, the talk is, “When you’re past 50, My Darling, you only feel cold.” But beyond the compound, stunning tropical foliage upon steep cliffs, leaves an impact that never registers upon the property. But someone has lighted it, someone like Claudia—stunned and game and with a largely hidden understanding that poison needs an antidote. Still at the palace, someone needles Patricia, “Why don’t you sell this villa to a lovely clinic for nervous disorders?” (One of Antonioni’s ideas, no doubt, with much to spare with a Guerra topspin!) “Nervous disorders,” having reached epidemic proportions, somewhere back, tens of thousands of years. Anna knew what she was up against. Claudia doesn’t. But her ignorance could be a ramp to construction. Also, at that tropical treasure, is the woman with problematic discretion pertaining to death and other matters. She finds on the premises, someone’s seventeen year old boy, racking up a great number of paintings in the mode of women’s nudes. “Just imagine, he paints! Even Titian started that way!” She asks, “How do you feel when painting?” And she receives the answer, “A shiver!” Much sidebar occurs, including Claudia brought in to act as a chaperone; and then firing her for doing that. But what Guerra wants to show is that a shiver, even in a stupid context, might count. Antonioni knows nothing about that phase of the vehicle. ( But you can be sure that much venom was struck in placing that action.) Antonioni, as from the beginning of his career, stands pat with melodramatic plights. There is a gigantic gulf between humanistic effort and primal effort. It won’t do to palm off the uncanny as fast walking.

Out of the blue, there is Claudia and Sandro combusting to coitus. They’re close to a rural train track, and she calls out, “Mine. Mine. Mine…” Back to fast walking. The explosion of the fast train nearly has something with real impact. In a step forward for the new dash, she tells him, “What I’m doing is ugly…”

    Antonioni’s proclivities always having a sentimental, melodramatic twist, there is double twist along this narrative. Sandro complains, “I’ve never met a woman like you who needs to see everything clearly.” (Claudio with the mantle of Anna.) They climb up a church steeple (as in Hitchcock’s Vertigo). Melodrama unhelpful. But then she, in her vigor, emphasizes her gusto by pulling on a bell rope. The sounding is a start; and, then someone on another church top replies. The sharp report calls upon a desperate beauty. The sound is clear. But in using it as a game the powers of the peals dissipate. Instead of attending to the sounds of the skies and then leave carefully, Sandro is driven to his career, particularly the architecture of the church. “Such imagination” (both irony and valid). “Such movement”  (retreat and advance). “I used to have ideas, you know.”/ “Why did you stop?”/ (Money talks.) “It isn’t easy to admit that a red floor suits a room, when you think exactly the opposite, but the lady wants it red. So I give estimates…” (Are the ranges of red so stupid?) Fallible Claudio maintains, with no justification, “You could make beautiful things.” More of the lazy: “Who needs beautiful things nowadays? How long will they last? But then they built for the ages…” Changing the subject, the idea-man asks, “Shall we get married?”/ “Not yet, anyway,” is the sentimentalist-reflector’s stand. Her stand is not a thing of beauty. “I don’t know… Why can’t things be less complicated? I’d like to be clear-headed. I’d like to have clear ideas.” (Or is it mundane ideas?)

Just before going single at a supper-club connected to their Five-Star hotel (Claudio weighted down from the convolutedness), Sandro amends his apologia as to his priorities. He quietly chides her for lacking  staying awake. “You should learn to shake off sleep. I learned as a boy I never slept, and I had friends who slept even less. Whoever went to bed first had to pay a fine.” (There is much to learn in this brag, surely designed by Guerra and surely in face of a clash coming from Antonioni, the patrician. Sandro the patrician. Claudio laden to exhaustion. Where does this go?) The land of sleep, with its mysteries, its dynamics, its departure from fat cats. And yet she soon wakens into sleeplessness, counting sheep and perusing a glossy magazine with a model surprisingly carrying some frisson, but not to Claudio that night.  She finds the night owl romancing a hooker. After that initial shock, magnanimity prevails, as far as it can.

There was, as a parting shot for that night of bliss, a bit of what will never change. “You know I wanted to be a diplomat, like Anna’s father,” (the recurrent liar). “It’s strange but I never saw myself in a rented room, a man of genius. Instead, I have two houses, in Rome and Milan. As for genius, it’s a habit I never picked up.” (Guerra’s touch, not Antonioni’s.) Clear-seeing Claudio thinks to argue the point, some other day.

With Anna’s facsimile short of impact, let’s try how far you get, in shards. As with Anna, with  her antagonists and possible inspirations, hoping  to break out, we have now again, for Claudio, the underwhelming Sandro. Is this a dead-end; or do the outrages steep some fires. Sandro, noticing a student sketching an ancient doorway (a door of depth), but somewhat away from his task, tips over the ink of the one hoping to work with a vengeance. He brags of his street-fighting and marches away within a procession of the church. Earlier, Claudio had lip-synced by way of a pop song on a truck in the street, coming into her bedroom . Her performance is ecstatic. But she does not hold firm the beautiful, passionate, craziness of her action. She notices that Sandro is not a fan. He then attempts to assault her. On getting (somewhat) free, she tells him, “I feel as though I don’t know you.”

    Imagining that Claudio’s passion—as weak as it is—had somehow elicited the likes of this: harsh sun off the fisherman’s home; the metropolitan heights of stone being a curtain of drama; a field of small waves, looking like shells.

Even more evasive, there are the forces one deploys, at their fingertips, to help steer a vehicle and overcome its treacherous enemies and troubling acolytes. Poet, Tonino Guerra, and only Tonino Guerra has endowed this film as a true classic. Is it hard to understand? It certainly is. One’s presence, it seems, is plural. We are mortal;  but indispensable for creativity. The ways of Anna and Claudio undertake such a change. There are, happily, several such “Antonioni” gifts on track, by which to somewhat clear the darkness. On tap, La Notte.