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Information

A.k.a.
L'Avventura
Year
1960
Runtime
144 min.
Director
Michelangelo Antonioni
Genres
Drama, Mystery
Rating *
7.9
Votes *
21,448
Checks
6,402
Favs
721
Dislikes
84
Favs/checks
11.3% (1:9)
Favs/dislikes
9:1
* View IMDb information

Top comments

  1. K.'s avatar

    K.

    Michelangelo Antonioni's Cannes statement - "Today the world is endangered by an extremely serious split between a science that is totally and consciously projected into the future, and a rigid and stereotyped morality that all of us recognize as such and yet sustain out of cowardice and sheer laziness. Where is this split most evident? What are its most obvious, its most sensitive, let us even say its most painful, areas?

    Consider the Renaissance man, his sense of joy, his fullness, his multifarious activities. Those were men of great magnitude, technically able and at the same time artistically creative, capable of feeling their own sense of dignity, their own sense of importance as human beings, the Ptolemaic fullness of man. Then man discovered that his world was Copernican, an extremely limited world in an unknown universe.

    And today a new man is being born, fraught with all the fears and terrors and stammerings that are associated with a period of gestation. And what is even more serious, this new man immediately finds himself burdened with a heavy baggage of emotional traits that cannot exactly be called old and outmoded but rather unsuited and inadequate. They condition us without offering us any help; they create problems without suggesting any possible solutions. And yet it seems that man will not rid himself of this baggage. He reacts, he loves, he hates, he suffers under the sway of moral forces and myths that today, when we are at the threshold of reaching the moon, should not be the same as those that prevailed at the time of Homer, but nevertheless are.

    Man is quick to rid himself of his technological and scientific mistakes and misconceptions. Indeed, science has never been more humble and less dogmatic than it is today. Whereas our moral attitudes are governed by an absolute sense of stultification. In recent years, we have examined these moral attitudes very carefully, we have dissected them and analyzed them to the point of exhaustion. We have been capable of all this, but we have not been capable of finding new ones. We have not been capable of making any headway whatsoever toward a solution to this problem, of this ever-increasing split between moral man and scientific man, a split that is becoming more and more serious and more and more accentuated.

    Naturally, I don’t care to, nor can I, resolve it myself; I am not a moralist, and my film is neither a denunciation nor a sermon. It is a story told in images whereby, I hope, it may be possible to perceive not the birth of a mistaken attitude but the manner in which attitudes and feelings are misunderstood today. Because, I repeat, the present moral standards we live by, these myths, these conventions, are old and obsolete. And we all know they are, yet we honor them. Why? The conclusion reached by the protagonists in my film is not one of sentimentality. If anything, what they finally arrive at is a sense of pity for each other. You might say that this too is nothing new. But what else is left if we do not at least succeed in achieving this? Why do you think eroticism is so prevalent today in our literature, our theatrical shows, and elsewhere? It is a symptom of the emotional sickness of our time. But this preoccupation with the erotic would not become obsessive if Eros were healthy, that is, if it were kept within human proportions. But Eros is sick; man is uneasy, something is bothering him. And whenever something bothers him, man reacts, but he reacts badly, only on erotic impulse, and he is unhappy.

    The tragedy in L’avventura stems directly from an erotic impulse of this type: unhappy, miserable, futile. To be critically aware of the vulgarity and the futility of such an overwhelming erotic impulse, as is the case with the protagonist in L’avventura, is not enough or serves no purpose. And here we witness the crumbling of a myth that proclaims it is enough for us to know, to be critically conscious of ourselves, to analyze ourselves, in all our complexities and in every facet of our personality. The fact of the matter is that such an examination is not enough. It is only a preliminary step. Every day, every emotional encounter gives rise to a new adventure. For even though we know that the ancient codes of morality are decrepit and no longer tenable, we persist, with a sense of perversity that I would only ironically define as pathetic, in remaining loyal to them. Thus moral man, who has no fear of the scientific unknown, is today afraid of the moral unknown. Starting out from this point of fear and frustration, his adventure can only end in a stalemate."
    6 years 3 months ago
  2. Sobchak's avatar

    Sobchak

    That felt long.. 11 years ago
  3. carpetdemon's avatar

    carpetdemon

    So many well-dressed men and women, handsome architecture, scenic landscapes, and beautiful language. Is this why I liked the movie? It was splendid! 12 years 9 months ago
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In 24 official lists

  1. This movie ranks #9 in FilmTV's The Best Italian Films
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    9
  2. This movie ranks #10 in Roger Ebert's Great Movies
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    10
  3. This movie ranks #24 in Roy Menarini's Il Grande Cinema Italiano
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    24
  4. This movie ranks #36 in Cahiers du Cinéma's 100 Films for an Ideal Cinematheque
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    Cahiers du Cinéma's 100 …

    36
  5. This movie ranks #37 in Amos Vogel's Film as a Subversive Art
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    Amos Vogel's Film as a S…

    37
  6. This movie ranks #37 in TSPDT's 1,000 Greatest Films
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    37
  7. This movie ranks #44 in Empire's The 100 Best Films of World Cinema
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    Empire's The 100 Best Fi…

    44
  8. This movie ranks #45 in Arts & Faith's Top 100 Films
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    Arts & Faith's Top 100 F…

    45
  9. This movie ranks #47 in The New York Times's Book of Movies
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    The New York Times's Boo…

    47
  10. This movie ranks #48 in Taschen's 100 All-Time Favorite Movies
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    Taschen's 100 All-Time F…

    48
  11. This movie ranks #52 in Time Out's 1000 Films to Change Your Life
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    52
  12. This movie ranks #61 in The Guardian's 1000 Films to See Before You Die
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    61
  13. This movie ranks #63 in Cahiers du Cinéma's Annual Top 10 Lists
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    Cahiers du Cinéma's Annu…

    63
  14. This movie ranks #63 in Sight & Sound's The Greatest Films of All Time
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    63
  15. This movie ranks #67 in iCheckMovies's 1960s Top 100
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    iCheckMovies's 1960s Top…

    67
  16. This movie ranks #102 in The Criterion Collection
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    The Criterion Collection

    102
  17. This movie ranks #150 in Harvard's Suggested Film Viewing: Narrative Films
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    150
  18. This movie ranks #278 in BFI's 360 Classic Feature Films Project
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    BFI's 360 Classic Featur…

    278
  19. This movie ranks #286 in Empire's The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time
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    Empire's The 500 Greates…

    286
  20. This movie ranks #351 in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
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    1001 Movies You Must See…

    351
  21. This movie ranks #446 in Jonathan Rosenbaum's Essential Cinema
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    Jonathan Rosenbaum's Ess…

    446
  22. This movie ranks #509 in Halliwell's Top 1000: The Ultimate Movie Countdown
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    Halliwell's Top 1000: Th…

    509
  23. This movie ranks #537 in UNESCO's Memory of the World
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    UNESCO's Memory of the W…

    537
  24. This movie ranks #581 in David Thomson's Have You Seen?
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    581
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