Rating: 
Summary: Great work, if you can stand the slow pace
Review: This film is hailed as a masterpiece, and I agree the direction, cinematography, acting, and the concepts and ideas portrayed are very good, but the film moves at such a slow pace, for so long, it becomes quite boring. I found myself waiting anxiously just to arrive at the end of the film. The film compared to others, isn't actually that long, but because of the slow pace, it feels that way. I feel the story could have been changed to add some fresh material to quicken it up a little, but still keep the same issues on screen. The film begins as Anna, her boyfriend Sandro, and her good friend Claudia go on a trip in a yacht with their friends. Anna is afraid to loose Sandro, but she wants time alone, as she cannot seem connect with him anymore. Soon Anna is found to be missing, and they all search for her, Sandro and Claudia spending more time with each other. Sandro falls in love with Claudia but she does not accept him. After a while, she does, and they forget all about Anna. The rest of the film shows their relationship, and how quickly and paradoxically our opinions and feelings can change. The characters are empty, they feel nothing. All they trick themselves to believe they are feeling is just an illusion. They do not understand themselves, and as a result they do not understand their relationships. Their emptiness is well portrayed, as is their selfishness. The acting is well done, and directing is superb. When this film was released in 1960 it was very influential. There are no real happy moments in this film. There is some romance but it is all for the characters to gain for themselves, it is not true love. If these situations interest you, and you can stand extremely slow, and long films, you may want to check this out. But I feel this is too overrated. 3 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Blown Away
Review: May 2002: I purchase Roger Ebert's book THE GREAT MOVIES. Order the dozen or so I haven't seen to get caught up (so to speak). December 2002: "L'Avventura" arrives. December 2002: I view "L'Avventura". Suddenly, and without warning, I was blown away. I spend consecutive days rewatching the film, treasuring it more and more each time. It was all I could ever wish for in cinema, and more. January 2003 & Beyond: "L'Avvnetura" continues to haunt & resonate throughout my waking hours. Reflective, I ponder the life-changing impact this film has in regards to my love of film & cinema. All must now be reassessed & placed in perspective. Curious about "L'Avventura"? You should be!
Rating:
Summary: The Most Pure Film Ever Made
Review: No film is more pure in the cinematic sense than L' AVVENTURA. L' AVVENTURA is nothing like you've seen. It may be more than 40 years old and it still feels amazingly modern and refreshing. The first time I saw it when I was 18, I hated it ... it was so slow and dull and it was impossible to relate to any of the characters. But 15 years later, I came across the DVD and the picture of Monica Vitti with the "pyramid" in the backround evoked a very strangely powerful wave of images, sounds, and words. So I decided to give the film another chance. It was too beautiful and hypnotic that I couldn't stir for nearly 2.1/2 hours. After I got up from the couch, the world never looked the same again. I woke up the following morning feeling like a new person. I think the most perfect time to watch the film is around midnight when everything is quiet and dark. Turn off your phones and lock the doors. Turn off the lights and close the curtains. Push the "play" button and then the film will transport you to a totally new world that will haunt you eternally. But I think the film will work even more powerfully and beautifully if you wait for a week or two and watch it again. Most people I know "clicked" with the film during their second or third viewing. If you find yourself puzzled or even disappointed when L' AVVENTURA ends, that's okay. Don't give up. Wait for a few more weeks or even a year; then view the film again. You won't regret it; I can promise you that. The audio commentary by Gene Youngblood is magnificent. Make sure to listen to it. L' AVVENTURA is not called the landmark film for nothing. The Criterion Collection's treatment of the film is perfect - just like the film.
Rating:
Summary: An adventure in moviemaking.
Review: Monumentally influential film from 1960, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. A disaffected group of idle, rich Italians take a cruise to the volcanic islands south of Sicily. After they pause at one of the islands, one of their number, a beautiful young woman named Anna, suddenly vanishes. Her lover (Gabriele Ferzetti) and her best friend (Monica Vitti) scour the island for the missing girl -- no trace. Like any man in his right mind, Ferzetti's character Sandro almost immediately finds himself attracted to Vitti's Claudia -- she's taken aback at first, but only on a superficial level. The movie then chronicles the search for missing Anna -- and the burgeoning affair between Sandro and Claudia -- back in Italy. The rest you can see for yourself. What *L'Avventura* did for cinema was to shine light on the interiors of the human heart in a way that movies had been afraid to attempt before. The obvious charge one can lay against Antonioni's masterpiece is that it's slow and dull for that very reason -- a film character thinking about something doesn't exactly constitute action-packed cinema. Do understand that this movie is not for all tastes . . . but if you're reading this review, you're probably already curious and are considering buying the movie, to which I say, Take the plunge. *L'Avventura* is about ennui in our modern life -- ennui in our personal lives, ennui in our professional lives. Go ahead, snicker. It's easy to dismiss the subject as pretentious. Perhaps it IS pretentious -- but can you really deny the relevance of the subject matter? Can any man -- deep down in his heart of hearts -- not identify with Sandro, an overgrown boy unhappy in love and work? Can any woman not be impressed with Claudia's inner growth from shallow party-girl at the beginning of the movie to the Rock of Gibraltar she evolves into at the end? *L'Avventura* is a grown-up masterpiece for grown-ups. [Criterion furnishes us with an immersive experience for this movie. You get the brilliant transfer, of course, but you also get instructive commentary from critic Gene Youngblood, from which I certainly learned a lot. The second disc features a documentary about Antonioni made in the mid-60's -- it's very French, very pretentious, and very interesting. It also includes Jack Nicholson, of all people, reading Antonioni's mid-life-crisis screed against traditional morality, another essay in which the director displays a hilarious contempt for the utility of actors in film, and finally some personal recollections from Jack himself, who good-naturedly puts the intellectual director firmly back into place. This whole package is well worth the money, if what I've described is up your alley.]
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: "L'Avventorment. . ."
Review: "After finishing L'Avventura, I was forced to reflect on what the film meant." -director Michelangelo Antonioni. This is the greatest film about adult romantic relationships ever made. Every topic is touched on: infidelity, jeaslousy, male preoccupation with sex, female preoccupation with resistance, the urgency of love, and the futility ("why,why,why,why...") Is there a better? Perhaps I am underinformed. And the sheer beauty! My God, it's enough to make you forget the plot. For picturesque rocky islands and splashing surf, this must be the Ansel Adams of Palermo. This is not to mention the rest of the film. As a friend of mine said, every frame could be in a book of modern photography. Antonioni knows how to frame his shots. Enough, please, of this film being 'Boredom Personified.' Woe to those who are thoughtless enough to resist assimilating its message. This is not a film for children - or the childish. This film is partly about the psychological issues of love and romance in the modern industrial age. It is partly about keeping the difficulties thereunto connected, in proper perspective. Those who hold such an exercise as tedious, are advised to go back to the mall. Yet, "For those who wish to listen, it will have a value beyond words."
Rating: 
Summary: Theory, or just melodrama?
Review: The virtues of this film feel overstated. Notably, its alleged innovations seem more like evolutions or, not always successful, exaggerations of existing techniques. Also, its insights into human emotion seem less profound than its pretensions; and its beauty, while ultimately undeniable, has an artificial and less than celebratory quality.
*
the film renders its characters' inner worlds largely through objectification in the outer world - that is, not simply through the characters' actions, but through the choice of the natural and built environment that frames them, and through the very framing itself. This technique was not revolutionary, but when coupled with Antonioni's use of extended takes, and the audience's consequent confrontation with cinematic time where 'not much happens', and with his diminution of other traditional cinematic effects, such as music, the experience might stand as unprecedented. But is it effective? Can the background settings and the compositional arrangement of figures within the frame, alone, serve to unveil the inner emotional states of the characters with any perspicacity? While 'L'Avventura' makes a brave case, I think it ultimately falls short. One reason perhaps being its failure to acknowledge that dialogue, action, plot are still doing a tremendous amount of work in the film, work which it pretends is being shouldered by more 'subtle' elements.
*
The Criterion edition has an illuminating commentary by Gene Youngblood - he is a self-confessed advocate of Antonioni, and he sees innovation in the use of 'metonymy' rather than 'metaphor' - this distinction he draws as follows: a part of an object stands for the whole of the same object, rather than for an altogether different object or concept. Cryptically, he asserts this insulates metonymy from being taken as 'symbolism'. Is his case convincing? Characters pass through untold archways and doors and corridors in 'L'Avventura', and lovers even lie on a grassy foreground as a steaming locomotive rushes into a dark cutting - whatever the 'metonymical' force of such images, they also appear crudely symbolic (don't they?). The film does rely on symbolism, not always eloquently, and that it does helps to explain its 'abstract' quality.
*
The emotional world of the film is said to be that of ennui and alienation. Sandro, the male lead, is particularly vacuous - but we know this from standard narrative devices: in dialogue he tells of his avarice winning out over artistic ambitions; he neglects women, as per his month-long absence from Anna, and from his subsequent actions; his facial expressions are bereft of depth (so much so it's tempting to simply label Gabriele Ferzetti a poor actor, although it's more interesting to compare his function with that of Rock Hudson in Sirk's melodramas). The composition and framing help, sure, but his inner emptiness is obvious in any case. Monica Vitti's Claudia, likewise, demonstrates her inner confusion through her behaviour - the plot, while rudimentary, reveals her character all too traditionally - here is a woman whose best friend has either died or gone missing on account of an emotional crisis, and within days she succumbs to the sexual allure of her friend's erstwhile lover, a rich, handsome and shallow man. Gene Youngblood calls this 'romantic', but melodramatic might be more apposite. He goes on to say that Claudia and Sandro share in one of the cinema's greatest romances! This is misguided hyperbole. Neither Claudia, nor Sandro, possess the range of emotion or experience to viably function as an everywoman or everyman. They are grotesquely stunted human beings. To universalise from these (un)emotional lives is problematic. Any 'insights' gained are thus limited in scope, and less profound than they wish to be.
*
The choice of such shallow characters may provide difficulties for formal characterisation, plot, and for audience empathy, but it might also facilitate Antonioni's theoretical intentions - after all it is easier to render Sandro's limited palette of emotions through 'objectification', than it would be Hamlet's.
*
At one level the beauty of the cinematography and composition is undeniable. Yet even here I feel other directors outdo Antonioni - for example, Satyajit Ray, Bergman, Tarkovsky, Eisenstein, and Dreyer. I disliked the very limited range of grey that fill so many frames of earth and sky and sea - intentional, perhaps, but not altogether beautiful. At times I found myself wishing he'd filmed in colour, something I never wished for with the other directors cited. The composition too contained a kind of compromised beauty. At times it seemed too artificial and too repetitive, so that it was in danger of being formulaic. In contrast, Ray's wonderful compositions feel organic and less contrived.
*
In sum, it seems reasonable to agree with the film's detractors as well as with its champions. A flawed work of art, but an extremely interesting one.
Rating:
Summary: Greatest example of 'What Once Was' in all of film
Review: I had a moving experience once. I was riding on a train (actually, it may have been half way between F and S) and we were going through some low mountain/valley situation, and there was this little point jutting out some distance away and below, on which there was this neo-ancient swimming pool. The pool had long since, and disrepair, and neglect, what must have, part of a mansion, even more buried, dark green. But to imagine the days. And nights. The parties. What must have been. Like F. Scott Fitzgerald. The dried-up swimming pool has a particularly surreal quality, which compounded with its isolation, was too much. It evoked melancholy, déjà vu, a la recherché du ton perdus, and every other sort of big emotion I can still have including loneliness, regret and even wonder. Did you know in the palace in Monaco, they used to have lions and tigers and other wild beasts wandering through the royal garden? Can you imagine? That was before 'Animal Planet' and congressional telecasts. But this wasn't the only time. Once, I was wandering around some town I've never heard of in actual Mexico, and we stayed in this old hotel, which was clearly much larger than it has needed to be for probably the last twenty-five years. And that's just it. There were entire floors, whose only reason for being there was that they were already there. There was even an old ball room with a huge carpet all rolled up against the wall and covered in dust. This is the phenomenon of 'what once was' whose main spokesman is architecture. But it needs a hipper name. Maybe we'll call it 'The Gold Room' as in 'Hi Lloyd. Been away but now I'm back.' It's in Scarface when they visit the palatial estate set in the mountains of (I guess it would be) Columbian supremo. It's in the Godfathers whenever they visit old Sicily, and there is the little burrow, the old ways, which have such killing power, such hold over our imagination. There is the scene in 'Blade Runner' when she says, 'we're stupid and we'll die' and Rutger Hauer says, 'No we won't.' How big the room, and so baroque, so full of old toys, relics of happiness, and yet so empty of human companionship. The scene percolates with 'what once was', echoing the film's greater theme, a society which has lost so much, and given over to a world of androids. To that, the ruins of New York in Blade Runner's unwitting remake A.I. And ruins. Any and all ruins, the basis for an industry called tourism. The scene at the end of Wong Kar-Wai's 'In the Mood for Love' when they drop visit Cambodia. This picture of Carthage, which I took with a throw-away camera. It was her idea. I don't buy those things. Just like leaving me was her idea. And by the way, Carthage was once 'all that.' And Cuba. The men, the cars, the streets in Buena Vista Social Club. There, 'The Gold Room' is hopping with litte nine-year old ballerinas and beautiful Ruben Gonzales on the black and whites in color. So L'Aventurra is perhaps the most thorough use of 'what once was' I have ever seen. The film makes you ask, 'Is Italy really like this,' particularly Southern Italy, with its fewer people but no shortage of once-powerful city-states and the buildings they left? The answer is yes. Yes it is. When Sandro is a 'tourist' in minute 9?, in the town whose last tourists were a French couple one year before, that town, those heavy buildings, that expansive façade on what must have been some kind of palace. That is exactly how it is, exactly how it is. Go to Sicily. Go there. You will find the same. And then Antonioni does something extra. There is the scene where Sandro knocks over the ink, and the two men are about to throw down, when suddenly, from out of the huge, barren building in which we know there is nothing for five hundred years, bubbles forth a stream of small schoolchildren. Wha? Who would have thought? And so as it is an epiphany which stops men from fighting, so too it stops us from our stagnation. And there are at least fifteen instances of pure splendor shots, mostly to do with architecture. The preparation for the filming had, of course, been going on for six hundred years. So the first half hour is painful, slow, and slow, and slow, and even then, there are these beautiful shots, glimpses of the occipital memories to come, and even a few sparks. And the female leads are ridiculously beautiful, so it's really not that painful, that is, if you appreciate ridiculous beauty. The second 1 ½ has some of the finest moments in cinema. Key scenes include the one with the bolero-type music and the boy painter and when they drive to that old church and he wonders why it was even built. Could she have possibly just jumped off the ride and become a part of a lost little town like this? Likewise, could Sandro settle down in marriage? And even as they are leaving, the camera stays and just lingers in the alley between the old buildings. There is no obvious activity to suggest any reason for this. Perhaps it is the pull of the woods, 'lovely, dark and deep.' Perhaps it is merely Signor A gently creating the slightest notion of suspense. In any case, the alley has become a character in the film. It's brilliant. The last thing, which I almost forgot to do, is to make the obvious comparison to Hitchcock's Vertigo. The 'woman with, needless to say, some serious identity issues', the lead man who gives new meaning to the word 'persistent.' And the search and church that ensues. Both films have a faintly similar tone, an undercurrent of suspense, melancholy, and an inevitability as they lurch toward the final resolution. The difference is, however, that one skilled in the art could claim to see holes in the case for Vertigo. No reasonable person can honestly criticize L'Aventurra. Why did she want blue paint? Why blue? I didn't understand that part.
Rating:
Summary: Great DVD package of One of Cinema's Greatest Landmarks
Review: L'Avventura is many things. But it is first of all a work of near despair. Like Antonioni's other masterpieces of the period (Il Grido, La Notte), L'Avventura is about the impossibility of relationship and the imbreachable solitude of the individual. Just as importantly, it is an intensely visual movie: it is about what is seen, what it means to see, to search, to witness. L'Avventura is not a hard film to watch. Some may find it slow. I did not, but that said, I wasn't crazy about it on first viewing. But I couldn't stop thinking about it and re-feeling the sensations created by the visual affect of the film. The second time I watched it, I fell in love. Then I watched it with the excellent commentary on this DVD. I've sinced watched it about eight times. And then there's Monica Vitti. I mean everybody's great in this movie, but Monica Vitti is a revelation from God. It is no accident that she - who doesn't start out as, but becomes the film's central character - is also the designated witness to everything the film wants to show us. In other words, she witnesses it first, and we witness it through her eyes. The DVD package is excellent. Criterion is really improving it's DVD offerings. Disc 2 is not all that. I mean I could have lived without it. But it's got a lot of material that some will no doubt find enormously interesting. What I loved is disc number 1: the transfer, the extraordinary commentary, the sound, it's all good.
Rating:
Summary: AWESOME DVD
Review: This is the Criterion Collection at their best, and director Michelangelo Antonioni at his best! This transfer is breathtaking it's so clean. It's difficult to imagine that a 40+ year old film could look so good today. The film is presented in a shallow 1.85:1 widescreen format and is in black and white dual-layer. There is a brilliant commentary soundtrack, which comes-in quite handy. Listening to the commentary while watching this film shows just how detail-oriented director Antonioni was. Almost every scene, every prop has meaning and importance, and once you know what they are, you'll see just how brilliant this movie is. They truly don't make movies like this anymore! The scenery is implicit, the photography is fabulous, the cinematography is worthy of Kubrick himself! (The women actors are gorgeous too). The story is diliberately empty and void, and once you understand that, you'll see why the film feels the way that it does and you too will be haunted forever by it's beautiful vision.
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