L'Avventura - Criterion Collection

Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece Of Subtlety, Beautiful Film!
Review: Oddly enough at the time of its release this film was highly praised but also booed. One of the main complaints is that nothing really ever happens in the film. The characters are presented with a problem; a lost woman in a deserted island, after a while they give up the search and it never reaches a conclusion. But the story really never was the attractive feature of the film. The mood and the emotional rhythm are uniquely wonderful, it is also a film rich with multi-layered meanings. Monica Vitti is ravishing as the complicated Claudia, she is truly a sight to behold, the most fascinating face and profile since Garbo. A subtle study of the idle decay of the rich and bored. The scenes on the island are unforgettably beautiful, mostly because of the haunting cinematography. Considered to be the flip side of Fellini's 'La Dolce Vita', both portray the decay of the rich and both have unsettling endings. From a scale of 1-10 I give this film a 9!

Rating:
Summary: Demanding film that reaps fine rewards
Review: Antonioni has conveyed the spiritual malaise of our age in a film that, granted, moves at a snail's pace and demands the attention and involvement of it's audience. The effort involved is worth the trouble because L'Avventura builds into a powerful experience. Some have viewed the film as Marxist tract against the idle rich but it is more than just that. Non-caring egotism,spiritual emptiness, easy betrayal are some of the major themes. The disappearance of Anna is more of a plot device than anything else; don't get too hung up on it as it is not one of Antonioni's main concerns. A worthy "companion" piece to Fellini's La Dolce Vita and one of the masterpieces of international cinema.

Rating:
Summary: Modern Masterpiece
Review: This director creates meditative films that are certainly not propelled by action or overt themes; his audience is, thus, small, but devoted. The beauty of "L'Avventura" was not so apparent to me until I had the great pleasure of watching a new print on a wide screen the way it was conceived and intended. Admittedly, I'm a big fan of Monica Vitti; I'd probably pay to watch her sit and loll about in anything. This film exerts a certain pull over me because of its focus of spatial relationships and textures, its lovely compositions which make the emotional barreness of its characters all the more distressing. Sure, it's an acquired taste, and will probably not garner any new fans in the age of attention deficit disorder, but the pleasures of letting it slowly work its understated magic on one amount to much more than just surmising it's two and half hours of rich people being aimless. Antonioni cared about the beauty of the natural world, about humans retaining virtue and honesty and meaning in relationships. It may not rank as "entertainment" to watch a world where these qualities have seriously eroded, but it certainly does approach and sometimes achieve art.

Rating:
Summary: Antonioni's Chef D'Oeuvre
Review: L'Avventura has a certain strangeness that goes beyond the archetypal film plot. Its minimal and effective way of conveying feeling and sensiblilty puts it side by side with other extraordianry films, and Antonioni in the Pantheon of filmmaking, along with Ozu, with Bresson, and others who invented new forms, but talked about common ideas and things.

Rating:
Summary: Antonioni, the king of pretension
Review: I once saw a magazine list of the greatest movies of all time that had this movie as number one. So, I was very interested in finally seeing it. When I finally did, years later I was mystified as to why it was chosen. Since then I've seen other Antonioni pictures and to me, his films are the archetypes of the annoying foreign film pretending to reveal the deep mysteries of life to you but delivering nothing. The rich often lead shallow aimless lives. No kidding. A dope like Kurt Cobain could figure that out too and only take up three minutes of my time in saying it. See Bergman's Wild Strawberries or Welles' Chimes at Midnight for some substance.

Rating:
Summary: L'avventura dei sentimenti
Review: "L'avventura" inizzia il primo numero della trilogia che Michelangelo Antonioni continua con "La notte" e "L'eclisse" en in certo modo conclude con "Il deserto rosso" tutti quattro con la splendida partecipazzione di Monica Vitti. Ne "L'avventura" Antonioni rispecchia l'incomunicabilità, la fragilità dei sentimenti, l'incapacità d'amare dei personaggi della borghesia del boom economico italiano degli anni '60. Maestro nei chiamati "tempi morti", lunghe sequenze dove gli attori guardavano la cinepresa in modo che lo spettatore potesse intuire cosa atraversava loro mente ed anima. Uno dei massimi capolavori del cinema italiano. Inmancabile in una videoteca!

Rating:
Summary: Antonioni's eloquence is unmatched.
Review: Oblique and elliptic, "L'avventura" is one of the true modernist masterpieces. One of the most common misreadings of the film is that it is merely a critique of the bourgeoisie (see review below). The larger themes of the film, it seems to me, are about the ultimate impossibility of communication, the betrayal of memory and the frailty of human relationships. Far from boring, the film is beautiful, entrancing.

Rating:
Summary: Was this really necessary?
Review: Do we really need 2 and a half hours to figure out that the rich lead aimless lives? Shallow message, shallow movie. Not to mention its also boring, although I assume that was the point. Filling a movie with shallow, empty characters and engaging in upper class bashing does not make it a masterpiece, let alone any kind of artistic statement of any worth or insight. Watch "La Dolce Vita" to see how this kind of movie should be done.

Rating:
Summary: breathtaking
Review: One of Antonioni's best films. The girl disappears in the middle of the film and never comes back. We feel just this mistery while we see the rocks and the sea: she could have died anywhere...A masterpiece that equals the best in visual arts in the twentieth century

Rating:
Summary: One of the greatest films ever made
Review: While on a cruise vacation, a group of young rich Italians stop on a desert island. After a while they notice one of them has gone missing. In the ensuing search for her, which eventually takes them back to the mainland, the missing woman's best friend and her loved fall for each other to fill the void of their meaningles lives. The movie is powerful in showing the decaying and worthless lives of the rich, and towards the end of the movie the main characters actually fear the return of the missing girl. This movie is slow and lets the story develop. We get to see lots of these characters' lives. It's a forceful and moving statement on the existence of society's upper class, and it's one of the greatest films ever made.