This film by Michelangelo Antonioni was hailed by Sight & Sound magazine as the second greatest film of all time.
When it was screened at Cannes, it was jeered and booed by a hostile audience before critics saved it with plaudits.
I'm with the hostile audience.
The synopsis of the film is roughly; Some rich people go on a cruise off the coast of Sicily. During a trip to a volcanic island, one of them goes missing. The missing woman's fiancee and he best friend get together back on Sicily whilst searching for her. He then cheats on the best friend with a local whore, but she forgives him. Fini. No really, that's it.
It's shot around the coast of Sicily, but it's so oppressively lit that it could be the coast of Scotland. It just looks rather chilly.
Heavily melodramatic, everything (bar Monica Vitti) is poorly lit, at 145 minutes it's a good hour too long and from what little happens, nothing is resolved.
NOT a film to see before you die. Big bag of nothing.
One of the odder scenes, where Vitti is left alone in a town piazza and is stared at by a lot of men who, seemingly, have never seen a woman before. This scene, like the rest of the film, is there with no consequence.
No comments:
Post a Comment