In a time before now, there was a great continuum between popular art and the ways in which societies defined themselves. It may have been in the composition of the frame, the staggered and foreboding shadows falling at the feet of the fleeing heroine. It may have been the lost and searching eyes.
When Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni unleashed his torrid and dreamlike L’Avventura on the world in 1960, few were ready for its dizzying impact and incredible staying power.
More than an Italian art film, L’Avventura radically reshaped they ways in which popular culture viewed itself, and its alleged impact on the world at large.
For many years longer than I can actually remember, I had a paperback copy of the script. I think I must have picked it up in a used bookstore one afternoon. I was in college at the time, so you know how that goes! Those years were largely spent in a fog, as I was constantly laboring under an overly vague notion of some day working in the film business. I think I may have been drawn to the cover, which as I recall, featured a close-up shot of the sultry and mysterious Monica Vitti, with her pouty lips working overtime. The purple-tinged duotone photo treatment gave the image an artsy, from-another-world sort of look.
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