The Architecture of Vision: Writings and Interviews on Cinema

by Michelangelo Antonioni, Carlo di Carlo (Preface), Marga Cottina-Jones (Preface)

“A filmmaker is a man like any other; and yet his life is not the same. . . . This is, I think, a special way of being in contact with reality.” Or so says Michelangelo Antonioni, the legendary filmmaker behind the stark landscapes and social alienation of Blow-Up and L’Avventura , who here reveals his idiosyncratic relationship with reality in The Architecture of Vision .

Through autobiographical sketches, theoretical essays, interviews, and conversations with such luminaries as Jean-Luc Godard and Alberto Moravia, this compelling volume explores the director’s unique brand of narrative-defying cinema as well as the motivations and anxieties of the man behind the camera.

“ The Architecture of Vision provides a filmmaker’s absorbing reflections and insights on his career. . . . Antonioni’s comments . . . deepen and humanize a sometimes cerebral book.”— Publishers Weekly
 
“[Antonioni’s] erudition is astonishing . . . few of his peers can match his verbal articulateness.”— Film Quarterly
 
“This valuable resource offers entrée to material difficult to gain access to under other circumstances.”— Library Journal

Genres: Film, Italy, Nonfiction, Media Tie In, Art

430 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1996

About the author

People noted Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni for such existential dramas as l'Avventura (1960) and Blow-up (1966).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michela...

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating insight into the mind of one of the great film makers.
The interviews in particular were of great interest.
If I could only pick one Italian then its a tough call between Fellini and Antonioni.
Both were geniuses.

[Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

I skipped about ten pages on Story of a Love Affair, a six-page Vanquished magazine writing, and twenty-five pages on The Passenger (as I haven't revisited it recently and won't at any point soon); for all current intents, I'm done.

This book unites Antonioni's defenses/essays of his films with interviews from the 1950s-80s to certain success if some of the content is ultimately redundant. There are numerous editorial oversights, but I think those flaws are eclipsed by intriguing philosophizing and Antonioni's ideas for films that unfortunately never came to fruition. I'm currently developing a screenplay (or at least I'm trying to), and on more than a few occasions, I documented his advice. The thirteen pages of "My Experience" and "Making a Film is My Way of Life" are probably just as enlightening as any screenwriting-prep book.

Since I discovered Antonioni on my own, I've had a tenuous relationship with him. Italian cinema of the late 1950s-60s period is extraordinarily dense even if it seems to give off this accessible first impression. Where I might suggest the average person check out one of Fellini's zany carnivalesque offerings, Antonioni's work, on the other hand, doesn't garner much appeal outside the intellectualist cinema circle. Modern viewers of more casual cinema call him "pretentious," but that strikes me as a misnomer when they probably mean "elitist." (Okay, sure, haha). Critics don't understand that Antonioni was never looking for exact, conventional resolves; his entire purpose is to abstract. He's more interested in studying interior contradictions of humanity. In the "Gaze and the Story" introduction, Giorgio Tinazzi writes that Antonioni's method of storytelling "gives expression to zones of thought and consciousness that have little space in conventional narrative. They are moments of experience which are recovered." Yes, his is a cinema of moments, which generally grow increasingly visual with each successive film. Essentially, Antonioni is trusting an inner intuitive voice/image to construct the rhythm of a movie rather than pure logic. Perhaps this is why there are many nagging questions about behaviors and fates of certain characters. I suppose there is still part of me that views his approach as irresponsible, but I've come to focus on the value of his psychological contemplations- articulations of life's uncertainties, characters transformed by their environments/on-screen space, societal immorality. Antonioni occupies an interesting niche realm where his films aren't necessarily avant-garde, but they don't feel linear either. I think once one becomes accustomed to the director's way of deconstructing cinematic rules, it's hard to identify the value in the golden age of Hollywood constructs. All those glamorizing façades are now exposed.

This book should really articulate any vague notions one may have had about Antonioni after encountering a couple of his films- that he operates with a rigid philosophy unique to the moving image; his thoughts on cinéma vérité (pg. 178) are the narrator (pg. 75) are particularly resonant. But for me, as someone who's spent a lot of time analyzing movies (among other mediums) over the years, most meaningful is his belief that "without criticism, art would lose its strongest supporter." With someone like Antonioni, who has been met with extreme initial criticism by those who have gone on to become his advocates, this is most affecting. Not everyone will feel this way, but the director is suggesting, in his own way, that we all get a little closer to cinema itself through its study to promote understanding.

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection of interviews with Michelangelo Antonioni and the director’s own brief writings was issued in Italian in the early 1990s, and then in English translation. While there are a couple of bits regarding Antonioni’s early films, the vast majority of the material here deals with the mature filmmaker, from L'avventura up to Identificazione di una donna (while Antonioni kinda, sorta shot a final effort in the 1990s, his poor health by that point had effectively curtailed his public career).

While at over 400 pages this book initially promised to be a rich and ample look at Antonioni’s career, ultimately I found it to be disappointing. The interviews are softball ones from mainstream newspapers and magazines. Antonioni doesn't go into much depth on anything, whether his own films or those of other filmmakers. Much of the trivia – like the Chinese government’s attempts to ban screenings of Chung Kuo and how the intricate last shot of The Passenger was made – I had already learned from other books on 20th-century cinema. Ultimately, I was left with the feeling that Antonioni’s films exist quite in themselves, and the director was unable to provide any additional remarks that could help one get more out of them.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've always considered Antonioni as quite a cerebral filmmaker, so I was prepared for very irritated and incomprehensible interviews. However, he comes across as very sincere, committed to the art of filmmaking, and more important, to the art of telling a story. He genuinely loved his craft, loved finding new ways to manipulate color and shot, and felt very deeply about the modern and post-modern settings in which he found himself. I don't think you have to see any of his films to enjoy the book, though if you have seen any, his interviews shed some light on his process without diminishing any of the magic.

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this while (mostly re-) watching Antonioni's films from L'Aventura through The Passenger, charting the period from 1960 to 1974 when he was at the cutting edge of film (and contemporary culture as a whole). The Architecture of Vision is a bit of a hodge podge, collecting interviews, short writings and whatever other sources of Antonioni's perspective the editors could locate. The result is more than a bit repetitious; there are paragraphs that repeat almost verbatim, but that's the artifact of the genre. While there's no single piece you can point to as definitive of Antonioni's aesthetics, the book still amounts to a fairly coherent statement. The key ideas, which recur even as Antonioni moves from the existential parables of L'Aventura, La Notte and L'Eclisse (with its amazing last ten minutes or so, which point to something very different) to the global explorations of Blow-Up, Zabriskie Point and The Passenger, are improvisation and discovery. It's not that Antonioni doesn't plan--there are ways in which he's obsessive about making the decisions on camera angle, lens, etc. But he's always open to lyrical discovery. His scripts are more jazz charts than plans and it's fascinating to hear him speak about the strange dynamics this creates with his actors. On the one hand, he says he prefers untrained performers, and in Zabriskie Point that pays off in a big way. But he also worked very well with Vanessa Redgrave, Monica Vitti and Jack Nicholson, all of whom had very strong ideas of what they were doing.

Best read in tandem with the films, but it ranks with Bergman's Images as a first-hand account of the most important era of film history.

[Jeremy Hung · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The history of cinema is made by films, not by the words of their directors."

[James F · Rating 3 out of 5]

A volume in a series of works by Antonioni, one of my favorite directors, this consists of articles written by him for various film journals, and interviews with him, both on cinema in general and on his own films. While artists, including directors, are not always articulate about their own works, Antonioni is an exception; although somewhat repetitive, these selections are interesting and shed light on what he was attempting in his films.

Unfortunately, this is very poorly proofread book, almost as bad as some of the print on demand titles, which is outrageous for an academic publisher like University of Chicago Press.

[Djll · Rating 3 out of 5]

Antonioni's work is some of my absolute favorite, but I'm having a tough time with this book. It doesn't connect for me. I put it away a few years ago and recently took it up again, but the man's voice doesn't come through well in print. Surely translation noise plays a part, but also I'd say that the High Modernist theories that the (often French) movie critics throw at Mr. Antonioni sound lightweight and pretentious today. There's so much agonized talk given over to the survival of dead causes like Italian Neorealism. There's very little poetry and too much dry theory in this book.

The man's film work is still durably strong, and I doubt I'll ever tire of it.

[Tiah Keever · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've only read some of it so far, assignments for a class, but I like reading interviews with directors/actors/musicians,etc that I am fond of. Antonioni is cagey and amusing, and a brilliant director so it is nice to read what he has said about his work and whatnot over the years.

[William West]

Some beautifully written passages. Antonioni addicts such as myself should pick it up.