INTRODUCTION
Released in 1960, L’Avventura was the first in a highly acclaimed trilogy of films, and the sixth feature by the Italian director, editor and screenwriter Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007) (Nowell-Smith). This film is considered a seminal piece of Modernist cinema. It is particularly regarded for its visual language, narrative structure and enigmatic concept. As is common with cinematic classics, L’Avventura was initially poorly received by the masses but richly praised by critics.
The film won several honours, one of which was the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1960. According to reports, the Cannes premiere was marred by jeering and catcalls from viewers, causing the director and lead actress to depart in despair. The next day, however, they received a letter of heartfelt appreciation from colleagues in the industry (Lyman). The film itself is full of such contradictions, particularly with regard to the behaviour of its characters whose motivations remain unclear even at the close of the film. Director Antonioni is said to have remarked that he did not wish to disclose the film’s meaning and that audiences had to work it out for themselves (Crowther).
THE PLOT
Briefly, the film revolves around three characters. They are Anna (Lea Massari), her partner Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti) and her friend Claudia (Monica Vitti). The protagonists are on a yachting trip off the coast of Sicily, and exploring a desolate island when Anna goes missing, soon after she has had a lover’s quarrel with Sandro. A search ensues, but Anna has disappeared without a trace. Before they return to the mainland, Sandro makes romantic overtures towards Claudia who is left confused at Sandro’s indifference towards the missing Anna and guilty about betraying her friend. The two continue to search for Anna, following reports of sightings of a woman answering her description, embarking on a road trip and also an affair. Claudia eventually overcomes her misgivings and agrees to marry Sandro but is disappointed to find him with a prostitute. The closing scene finds them both facing a bleak dawn in companionable despair.
A BRIEF ANALYSIS
At first, it might seem that the narrative hinges on Anna’s disappearance. However, that event is only the underpinning but not the crux of the plot. The point is not to solve a mystery, but to use the disappearance as a backdrop against which to examine and wonder at the inexplicable behaviour of the remaining characters. It serves to starkly highlight how little Sandro and Claudia are eventually moved by Anna’s absence. It underscores their spiritual emptiness and loneliness.
Contrary to what the title suggests, there is nothing exciting, or indeed adventurous, about the plot or its pace. “L’Avventura” is a wry double-entendre for it is the colloquial Italian phrase for a one-night stand. Contemporary critics have remarked that they went in expecting a mystery thriller, misled by the title, and were surprised to find that the film was nothing of the kind (Crowther). By deliberately creating and promoting such an impression, the director succeeded in further heightening the sense of confusion or even disbelief at the actions of Claudia and Sandro.
There is no happy ending and no closure, leaving the characters and viewers unsatisfied, a comment on life itself and the messy nature of reality and modern relationships. For its time, L’Avventura represented a novel way of engaging audiences by giving them food for thought instead of handing them neat resolution on a platter.
CHARACTER SKETCHES
Anna and Sandro are wealthy, jaded socialites who seem to have lost their zest for life. Anna has a dry, brooding presence and is constantly troubled. She seems strangely disconnected from the relationship that she also deeply yearns for. Her friend Claudia has an infectious, childlike enthusiasm and a lively presence while Anna refuses to be moved by the beautiful landscape or even her unresolved emotions towards Sandro. For his part, Sandro is a successful architect who has chosen to adopt professional means that are more lucrative than creatively satisfying. As artists are usually portrayed, he is also promiscuous, dissatisfied and impulsive. The disorder in his living space reflects the chaotic nature of his character. Initially, Claudia is distraught at her friend’s disappearance and seeks determinedly to solve the mystery. Eventually, however, her quest for Anna is waylaid by her developing romance with Sandro and the ensuing moral tensions. Both Anna and Claudia experience a tug of war between conflicting emotions, but in different ways.
THEMES
The Missing Conscience
One way to look at this film would be to treat Anna’s disappearance literally as the disappearance of a conscience and an exploration of what might happen under such circumstances. The stark and barren volcanic island is a visual metaphor for the characters’ alienation and disconnect. Dwarfed by the hostile landscape and engaged in a futile search for their conscience (Anna), Claudia and Sandro have lost their way and ultimately seem aimless and pathetic.
Antonioni has remarked that he was struck by the disconnect between the old and new and by the growing irrelevance of traditional morality in the postwar world (Antonioni). Claudia suffers under the baggage of just such an outmoded morality. She is torn between her loyalty to her friend and her desire for Sandro. When she dons Anna’s clothes out of necessity, this is a hint at her oncoming transformation. She begins by wearing Anna’s clothes but soon comes to take Anna’s place in Sandro’s heart. By the end of the film, she finds herself fearful of Anna’s return. She remarks that ‘forgetting pain is becoming hideously easy’. But even this observation is made with a disturbing matter-of-factness.
The other characters echo this sense of being unsettled and unsatisfied. Even the apparently stable relationships have ‘no spark’ and only ‘a faithfulness born of apathy’. Anna’s father remarks with an incongruently naive sincerity that anyone who reads the Bible would naturally refrain from rash behaviour.
However, the characters have some redeeming qualities too. Anna’s manipulative behaviour is offset by her act of kindness in gifting her blouse to her friend. Similarly, Claudia’s adamant resolve to locate Anna is genuine. Sandro shows that he is well aware of his own failings. Although they seem distant most of the time and smiles are few and far between, these characters do show an ability to live in the moment and appreciate it for what it is. They also display flashes of intense feeling but only momentarily before turning impassive again.
Ennui and Futility
The term ‘ennui’ has often been used to describe this film. Its plot moves slowly and the film’s use of real time underscores this sense of time dragging on and showing us how the characters themselves feel. Tangled in a relationship that she simultaneously longs for and wishes to free herself from, Anna’s impulsive behaviour is a call for attention. It is a provocation intended to induce the emotional intensity she craves but finds lacking in her almost solely physical relationship with Sandro. She blithely comments that she would rather have the fantasy of a relationship rather than its disappointing reality. There is no evidence of an emotional bond between her and Sandro or even any empathy.
Like their lives, their relationship too seems to have grown stale and is in need of shock therapy to revive it. This might explain Anna’s lie about the shark and her need for drama. As she reveals that the tale of the shark was purely fabricated, her back is turned to the viewer. Precisely at the moment when we would most like to see her expressions, they are hidden from us and we are unable to empathise with her or fathom her motives. Does Anna have a death wish? Or perhaps, like drug addicts grown detached from reality, she and later Sandro are in search of the next potent fix to give them their escape.
There is a superficiality even in romantic interactions. Anna seems distracted and uninterested during her initial encounter with Sandro. She undresses with an air of resignation and remains disengaged throughout. Similarly, when Sandro asks Claudia to marry him, there is a lack of emotional gravity in the scene. This quality of detachment is present throughout. Viewers themselves will find it hard to connect with and feel for the emotionally distant and self-absorbed Anna. Her disappearance does not touch the nerve that it should, leaving us feeling strangely emotionally vacant ourselves.
Like children, Sandro and Claudia are easily distracted and even important conversations are abandoned for momentary pleasures. Their emotions are constantly yo-yoing back and forth, making the ride exhausting. This is evident in the scene where Sandro and Claudia listen in on a pair of strangers flirting on the train before lapsing back into melancholy. Later, Claudia preens childlike in front of a mirror wearing a wig, apparently having forgotten her missing friend. Even otherwise, there are several strained relationships but conversation is often aborted prematurely before issues can be resolved. The characters display a disturbing acceptance of this ambiguity and inertia in their relationships.
The bleakness of the locations serves to create an atmosphere of stillness and lack of vitality. The camera does its part by unsettling human characters from their usual position of prominence and turning them into specks, dipping in and out of the rocky terrain. They are powerless against their own base natures and desires just as they are powerless against the landscape that has inexplicably swallowed up Anna. The nature of their relationships is tenuous and as tempestuous as the crashing waves.
CONCLUSION
Our preconceptions about appropriate behaviour are underpinned by a cultural understanding of morality from which we also derive a personal code of ethics. To take that away and show what people can be when this is lacking is the central theme of this film. It is a comment on emotional alienation, all the more relevant in our present times of social interaction giving way to virtual pokes, Facebook likes and emoticon-mediated relationships. The camera maintains a distance from the characters, yet, it is not unsympathetic. The film isn’t an indictment of the empty lives it captures. As philosopher Roland Barthes observed of Antonioni’s work, this film is not a duplication of reality but rather an artful moiré representation of it coloured by sensitive perception (Barthes).
WORKS CITED
? Antonioni, Michelangelo. “L’Avventura: Cannes Statement.” The Criterion Collection, 25 Nov. 2014, www.criterion.com/current/posts/100-l-avventura-cannes-statement.
? Crowther, Bosley. “Screen: 'L'Avventura':Film by Michelangelo Antonioni Opens.” The New York Times, 5 Apr. 1961, www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9400e0db133de733a25756c0a9629c946091d6cf.
? Lyman, Rick. “Michelangelo Antonioni, Director, Dies at 94.” The New York Times, 31 July 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/movies/31cnd-antonio.html.
Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. “L’Avventura: A Present Absence.” The Criterion Collection, 1 Dec. 2014,
www.criterion.com/current/posts/99-l-avventura-a-present-absence.
