Tribute: Michelangelo Antonioni, 1912-2007

With the passing away of Michelangelo Antonioni another legend passes on. Film buffs will fondly remember his large, slightly garish, occasionally opaque body of work.

L'Avventura, made in the postwar period was a bleak black and white evocation of a society devastated by war. No one who saw the movie can forget the Sicilian church-bells tolling menacingly and a mob of lumpens eyeing the heroine. But the movie did have an upbeat ending.

Zabriskie Point made during the late sixties was unashamedly leftist. The scene in which a cop spells Marx as "marks" although a trifle crude was telling. The film featured a soundtrack from contemporary artists like Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead, and the Rolling Stones.

In 1989, he made a twenty-minute documentary, Kumbh Mela, which was poorly received for it's lack of narration and lack of depth.

His most famous movie, Blow up had no real message hence was more visually exciting. Vanessa Redgrave as a svelte model, London trendy albeit a little seedy, and a very ambiguous ending led to several conjectures and arguments. Jaane bhi do yaro, Kundan Shah's tribute to Antonioni's Blow Up was too loud.

Hist last films were post his 1985 paralytic stroke, and Wim Wenders assisted him in the completion of Beyond The Clouds, following which he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Academy Award in 1996, presented by Jack Nicholson, with whom he had made The Passenger.

The maestro passed away peacefully on the same day as another great director, Ingmar Bergman.