Michelangelo Antonioni: The Investigation 1912-2007

by Seymour Chatman (Editor), Paul Duncan (Editor)

With "L'Avventura" he piqued the world's curiosity. With "La Notte and L'Eclisse", he mystified audiences and broke hearts. With "Red Desert", his first color picture, he blurred all the lines between art, cinema, and still photography. Continuing his creative explosion with "Blow-Up", "Zabriskie Point", "The Passenger", and "The Identification of a Woman", Michelangelo Antonioni cemented his reputation as the most innovative and artistic filmmaker of his generation. With a plethora of illustrations, drawn in part from Antonioni's own archives, this book explores his life and career from his earliest documentaries to his latest collaborations.Every book in "Taschen's Basic Film" series features: an introduction to the director and coverage of every film he or she directed; over 100 scenes from the movies, shots of the director at work, and film posters, with explanatory captions; rare images from around the world; informative text by acknowledged experts; and, a chronology, filmography, and bibliography.

Genres: Film, Art, Nonfiction

96 pages, Paperback

First published October 4, 1985

Reviews

[James F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much more in depth than his Michelangelo Antonioni: The Investigation which I read a couple months ago, this discusses all the films from the beginning through Identificazzione di una donna. It is particularly good at showing the similarities and differences between the films as parts of a complete oeuvre. I thought most of what he said about the films that I have seen was very insightful. The one negative was the poor quality of the photographs; he apologizes for this at the beginning of the book, but they were worse than I expected.

[Jesse · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't count how many times I've attempted this and eventually thrown up my hands in defeat... it's rather mind-boggling how so many beautiful ideas can be so dully conveyed...

[It is nice, long after I wrote the thoughts above, to have it confirmed by the perceptive critic Robert Koehler in the Fall 2011 Cineaste: "English-language cinephilia [has been] unfortunately dominated for some time by the worst of any Antonioni critical study (and yet, still, the most widely available), Seymour Chatman's consistently unhelpful and often wrongheaded Antonioni, or the Surface of the World." He recommends Sam Rohdie's Antonioni instead, which I will now have to read.]

[Raney · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quick read, would like to find something more in-depth on his work.

[Silvia Michienzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Non ho mai letto un saggio di analisi cinema così bello