Rating: 
Summary: a great film with beautiful imagery
Review: This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.Michaelangelo Antonioni's "L'Avventura" also known as "The Adventure" or "The Fling" is hailed as a masterpiece by many critics. In the film, a group of people go on a yachting trip in the Mediterranean sea. Later, a woman in the group disappears and they begin a fruitless search. One woman helps the vanished girl's boyfriend search for her, but they soon forget about searching and fall in love with each other. My cousin, who is half Italian says that the subtitles on this edition are word-for-word unlike older copes of the film.
The cinematography is excellent and I agree with the statement made in the supplements about each indivudual frame being worthy of use as a photograph. The special features on the DVD are good also. On the first disc is the actual film with optional audio commentary by Gene Youngblood. The second disc has a theatrical trailer, a restoration demonstration, a 58-minute documentary on the director, and audio of actor Jack Nicholson narrating writings by the film's director, Michaelangelo Antonioni, plus Jack Nicholson's recollections on working with Antonioni on the film "The Passenger" made in 1975 Fans of Italian cinema will surely love this release and many others would like it also.
Rating:
Summary: Literally Dazzled
Review: Monica Vitti is very blonde, very classy, pretty. She wore her Jackie Kennedy dresses with grace. The black and white photography of her white-dot suit literally dazzled. The scene where the Sicilian men stand about Monica (Claudia) like the scenes in Hitchcock's "Birds" made me very uncomfortable. The background is Italian Neo-Realism, rocks, sand, and the juxtaposition of old Italian Architecture, art, and communist style people's housing, empty and lifeless; I confess I drank about 2 bottles of water, more than my viewing of "Lawrence of Arabia." What happened to Anna on that volcanic island? Weird, L'Avventura (1960) is ranked on many cinema lists anywhere from #1 to #10.
Rating:
Summary: A Truly Great Film; A Super DVD package
Review: Some people seem to think "L'Avventura" is Antonioni's first 'Great' film. No Way! Antonioni was already up there with the all-time greats with his first two Fifties masterpieces "Chronicle of a Love Affair" and "Le Amiche," (Glad to say "Le Amiche" is now available in a very good transfer on IMAGE DVD with removeable subtitles in all its rapid-fire Italian dialogue glory which you can freeze and study at your own pace) although he didn't become quite the Revolutionary of Cinema until about the time of "Il Grido (The Cry)" which hinted at everything that soon crystalized on the magnificent trilogy of "L'Avventura," "La Notte," and "The Eclipse," & later even expanded into an almost romantic and transcendent view of the future (through individuation & discarding of outdated myths and customs) in the vastly underrated artistic coup-d'etat of American cinema & all of American commercial culture: the awesome post-Hippie tour-de-force "Zabriskie Point" (a multi-million dollar commercial disaster that severely crippled Antonioni's later ability to raise financing). The superb ultra-dense and illuminating commentary on the first disc of Criterion's "L'Avvenura" by Gene Youngblood (author of the late '60s cinematic theory classic "Expanded Cinema"; for a different take on Antonioni, that goes even deeper than what Youngblood has to say on this disc without becoming didactic or pretentious in any 'film-or-art-school gibberish' way, you cannot do much better than William Arrowsmith's long essay in "Antonioni: Poet of Images";), that alone, along with the pristine transfer of the film itself (only one negligable line in the final party scene which they've reduced to an absolute minimum) would easily be worth the price of 4 movie tickets.
But you also get a second disc which doesn't have too much on it, but what it does have is fantastic: a rare 1 hour mid-'60s French documentary on Antonioni & Jack Nicholson's passionate reading of 3 of Antonioni's most insightful essays (and later a recalling of a hilarious incident on the set of "The Passenger"). Now, for a superstar like Nicholson (who has never embarrassed himself as an artist or sold-out to the Hollywood mainstream despite a thousand and one opportunities & made the producers of "Batman" pay points through the nose for agreeing to appear in that fluff piece) to take the time to pay his respects to a director he truly admires, and promote the sale of this DVD, should teach some of the younger generation of actors something (or even Robert De Niro, who has for many years now, it's pretty friggin' obvious, gone completely mainstream, and is busy doing DVD commentaries for awful pieces of unfunny, brain-dead commerical putritude like "Meet the Parents," that didn't need his commentary to sell a zillion copies!)! The documentary is in Black and White and among other things which are of supreme interest for cineastes, are the rare interviews with Cesare Zavattini (one of the founders of Neo-Realism), Ennio Flaiano (Fellini's and Antonioni's co-writer), Giovanni Fusco (the Rolls Royce to Ennio Morricone's Ford Mustang in the Paisano hierarchy of film composers), Monica Vitti (at home, in the early '60s with Antonioni himself, who doesn't talk to the interviewer & only throws in an occasional comment!), and Fellini (taking a break from filming "Juliet of the Spirits" to talk to the enquiring interviewer about his friend & co-writer on "The White Sheik"). There are some rare, very revealing shots of Antonioni directing films which give you a rough idea of his style of interaction with cast and crew (in one scene, he is shown directing Princess Soraya, the former wife of the Shah of Iran, whom the Shah had divorced for not having borne him a son!). Last but not least, we also get to see the ridiculously vulgar American trailer for "L'Avventura" that tries to sell it to 'high-class' American audiences as some kind of 'sophisticated' European sex-exploitation film by showing every 'provocative' little snippet in the entire film!
Rating:
Summary: timeless
Review: One can praise L'Avventura endlessly. I won't do so.
At no point during its entire run this movie fails to attract your attention. Given its slow pace and meagre storyline, that's truly astounding. Being timeless in quality, structure and mood, it doesn't make sense to figure out Antonioni's secret on L'Avventura. Don't even try to do so. Just sit back and watch in admiration.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best movies in history
Review: i hate to criticize everyone, but i think u didnt understand this film. How can you say that nothing happens????!! everything happens in the inside, its only that people dont expose it. its about feelings, and how fragile they are. and about selfishness. it also has one of the greatest endings on film history (no one says nothing, but you can understand whats going on). its rythm is slow, because it is like life. life is made by silences too, not just explosions and gunshots. i really prefer L'eclisse, but anyway this is a great film. I recommend it to anyone that can stand it. if not, watch it by parts, but, to tell the truth, the godfather bored me, while i couldnt take my eyes from l'avventura
Rating: 
Summary: Nothing really happens
Review: This was the last straw for my husband, who now refuses to watch any more Italian movies with me. The story is that a woman mysteriously disappears while on a yachting trip with friends. Her fiance and her best friend search for her, and begin an affair. The premise may sound as though the film would be suspenseful or emotional, but it isn't. It's slow, meandering, and quite dull. It is perhaps "realistic" in that people sometimes behave oddly for no good reason, but this kind of realism isn't necessarily interesting.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant and Boring
Review: I usually don't review films (or anything) I am somewhat cold towards, as it might leave those able to be truly affected by the film (or anything) less liable to see it (or whatever). But here I must violate my principles because of the stature of this particular film.
It would be pointless to recapitulate the plot details and ins and outs of the elements that make the film great, as this has been done more than adequately by the 40 some-odd reviewers before me. What I want to do is just emphasize a few things.
L'Avventura has a lot in common with Godard's Contempt, and if you like the latter film you will probably feel similarly about the former. But if you don't, then beware, beware with a vengeance.
Slow to the point of tedium, monotonous and monomaniacal, contemptuous and ponderous, there is almost nothing that anyone could enjoy about this film if they just sat down to watch it, and that, in my opinion, is fatal to a movie. The plot is skeletal, the dialogue is mainly "I love you, let's go away together," and "Leave me alone, don't come after me," and the action is the subsequent going after and falling disingenuously in love, and then back to the dialogue "I love you," etc. Movies need ideas and brains, I agree. But movies cannot be only ideas and brains, because they need a heart, and my life-maxim is that "the heart is to be found in the surface, and only in the surface." L'Avventura's fatal flaw is that it has no surface. Draw your own conclusions about its heart.
Consequently, in any event, it is not an unintelligent film, it is an extremely boring film. One feels as though Antonioni is not hitting nails on the head, but hitting nails into our heads. I feel like he would kind of hate me, and most of us--being more or less bourgeois--and I have no problem with being criticized by a director. I have a problem with being totally unaffected by it. The only way this film could affect anyone is either through the masterful photography or through composing an essay on its subtelties. I enjoyed the photography, but I enjoy the sanctuary in my backyard too. In other words, the photography is meaningless unless it is tied to the essay, and there is no beating heart to give it a visceral life of its own, as with, say, Tarkovsky.
The film has its strong points. It is undeniably tragic, and the ending is almost moving in spite of itself. The cinematography is masterful, particularly the early scenes on the island where the wind blows everything away--perhaps even Anna, or so it would seem. There is, I guess, I lot to get from the film if one hasn't been immersed in similar attempts to get at similar things by everyone from Pasolini and Bunuel to "I am Curious" (Yellow AND Blue, bwahahahaha).
You are forewarned that this is not easy viewing, and it is a very dreary, heady experience. That is the irony of this film, for me. So much sight and sound calling to our senses the earth and what we've done with it, but nothing in the way of emotion or human relationships that has anything to do with it. This may be the point or not, but if it is, then it shouldn't have been.
Rating:
Summary: L'Avventura
Review: Highly stylized and nice to look at. Not much happens in this long movie, though. I have a high tolerance for deliberately paced foreign movies, but L'AVVENTURA's substanceless beauty left me cold.
Rating:
Summary: A crude and bitter movie!
Review: This film plays hard on the viewer. It's a story who talks about the decay of the western world. When a woman vanishes in an island in the middleof the Mediteranean sea , there will be an exhaustive searching , and this journey will let us to feel the sign of the decay of an architect without a bit of creativity . Watch the split of the ink on the notebook of the young student.
One of the best films of the master of the silences!
Rating:
Summary: a great film with beautiful imagery
Review: This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film. Michaelangelo Antonioni's "L'Avventura" also known as "The Adventure" or "The Fling" is hailed as a masterpiece by many critics. In the film, a group of people go on a yachting trip in the Mediterranean sea. Later, a woman in the group disappears and they begin a fruitless search. One woman helps the vanished girl's boyfriend search for her, but they soon forget about searching and fall in love with each other. My cousin, who is half Italian says that the subtitles on this edition are word-for-word unlike older copes of the film.
The cinematography is excellent and I agree with the statement made in the supplements about each indivudual frame being worthy of use as a photograph. The special features on the DVD are good also. On the first disc is the actual film with optional audio commentary by Gene Youngblood. The second disc has a theatrical trailer, a restoration demonstration, a 58-minute documentary on the director, and audio of actor Jack Nicholson narrating writings by the film's director, Michaelangelo Antonioni, plus Jack Nicholson's recollections on working with Antonioni on the film "The Passenger" made in 1975 Fans of Italian cinema will surely love this release and many others would like it also.
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