* L'AVVENTURA *

L'Avventura

L’Avventura is an example of a movie that has very little dialogue and virtually no music whatsoever and can still be considered one of the best mystery movies to this day. But to Michelangelo Antonioni, the director of the movie, there was no particular need for any additional music or excessive dialogue to heighten the movie’s climactic plot. All that was needed was the mystery depths of the movie and the exceptionally beautiful sceneries of Italy. This was the goal of Antonioni: to make a movie using solely the plot, the artistic landscapes, and the slow pace of the scenes.

Every scene in the movie has a story to it, a mystery of its own. If you will notice, none of the backgrounds the movie has ever gone out of focus, no matter how much is going on within the frame. Even in the scenes that zoom out to the landscape as the characters talks and walks away, you will see that the camera never loses its perspective and as every second pass, each artifact in the picture can easily be depicted. But why did Antonioni spend so much time and effort into perfecting this feature alone? At first I thought Antonioni was trying to plant subliminal messages into the movie, but this is too far-fetched of a conspiracy theory. Now I realize this was the result of his deep cinematography skills and a mastered pace of shooting.

Many will agree with me that the movie’s pace was slower than a snail’s and the plot was so obvious that it was excruciatingly long. But once the plot was taken into consideration, it seemed quite clear this had to be done to feed the audience with the suspense that all mystery movies have. An example of this theory is in one of the last shots of the movie, Sandro is walking around at the party looking for something he himself was unsure of. This scene stretched as long as five minutes. But in-between this long scene, the camera would cut back to Claudia who was desperately waiting for his return. As the scene continues, the audience will feel the suspense of the movie rising to a high climax because both the actors and the audience are unsure of what will happen next.

As a result of the non-excessive elements of a movie, the perfect sceneries, and the slow pace of the climax, you can see yourself why this movie is considered to be an exceptionally risky yet beautifully shot movie. Like many others, this has become one of my favorite classic movies of all time.

.