Michelangelo Antonioni

Cast · Writer · Director

Born

September 29, 1912 · Ferrara, Emilia-Romagna, Italy

Died

July 30, 2007

"A film that can be described in words is not really a film." Michelangelo Antonioni was an outstanding Italian filmmaker and writer. He participated in the neorealist movement, but unlike Rossellini or Fellini, he explored the social dramas of the bourgeoisie, portraying the loneliness of his characters. He attended the Centro Experimental de Cine for three months, and soon after, he began to write reviews in magazines such as "Cinema". His first film as a director was Story of a Love Affair (1950), which served as an introduction to his career. Years later, in Le amiche (1955), he began to trace his characteristic style. Antonioni used long shots and a contemplative rhythm to emphasize the emotional emptiness and incommunicability of his characters. From 1943 until almost the end of his life, he carried out an extensive film career, with notable successes such as The Night (1961), where he describes the mental separation of a bourgeois couple, Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau; The Eclipse (1962) starring Monica Vitti, with whom he was linked for several years; or The Passenger (1975) with Jack Nicholson. One of his most famous works is Blow Up (1966), based on a story by Cortazar, which won him the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. With the arrival of color, he experienced a creative block, and a health problem ended up taking him away from the industry, but his influence endures, and his work continues to be the object of study and admiration in the field of cinema.