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119-410: Michelangelo Antonioni ( / ˌ æ n t oʊ n i ˈ oʊ n i / AN -toh-nee- OH -nee or / æ n ˌ t oʊ -/ an- TOH - ; Italian: [mikeˈlandʒelo antoˈnjoːni] ; 29 September 1912 – 30 July 2007) was an Italian director and filmmaker. He is best known for his "trilogy on modernity and its discontents"— L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), and L'Eclisse (1962),

238-400: A film festival . I introduced myself and told him that I adored his movies, his contributions to film, because he was the first guy who really started making films about the reality of the vacuity between people, the difficulty in traversing this space between lovers in modern day ... and he never gives you an answer, Antonioni—that's the beautiful thing." Modernity Modernity ,

357-405: A "satisfaction" found in this mass culture. In addition, Saler observed that "different accounts of modernity may stress diverse combinations or accentuate some factors more than others...Modernity is defined less by binaries arranged in an implicit hierarchy, or by the dialectical transformation of one term into its opposite, than by unresolved contradictions and oppositions, or antinomies: modernity

476-400: A 2006 review essay, historian Michael Saler extended and substantiated this premise, noting that scholarship had revealed historical perspectives on modernity that encompassed both enchantment and disenchantment . Late Victorians, for instance, "discussed science in terms of magical influences and vital correspondences, and when vitalism began to be superseded by more mechanistic explanations in

595-557: A Love Affair , 1950) broke away from neorealism by depicting the middle classes. He continued to do so in a series of other films: I vinti ( The Vanquished , 1952), a trio of stories, each set in a different country (France, Italy and England), about juvenile delinquency; La signora senza camelie ( The Lady Without Camellias , 1953) about a young film star and her fall from grace; and Le amiche ( The Girlfriends , 1955) about middle-class women in Turin. Il grido ( The Outcry , 1957)

714-577: A Woman",) a 1982 film shot in Italy, explores the recurring themes found in his Italian trilogy. In 1985, Antonioni suffered a stroke that left him aphasic and partly paralyzed. Despite his incapacity to speak or write, Antonioni continued to direct films including Beyond the Clouds (1995), for which Wim Wenders was hired as a back-up director to shoot various scenes. As Wenders has explained, "without someone else, no film of his would find insurers." During

833-486: A background populated by local people rather than extras brought in for the film. They were shot almost exclusively on location, mostly in rundown cities as well as rural areas. Neorealist films typically explore the conditions of the poor and the lower working class. Characters often exist within a simple social order where survival is the primary objective. Performances are mostly constructed from scenes of people performing fairly mundane and quotidian activities, devoid of

952-453: A beach, and the song "Michelangelo Antonioni", composed and sung by Caetano Veloso . The film was not well-received internationally. In America, Roger Ebert claimed it was neither erotic nor about eroticism. The U.S. DVD release of the film includes another 2004 short film by Antonioni, Lo sguardo di Michelangelo ( The Gaze of Michelangelo ). Antonioni died in Rome, aged 94, on 30 July 2007,

1071-661: A chronological sense in the Carolingian era . For example, a magister modernus referred to a contemporary scholar, as opposed to old authorities such as Benedict of Nursia . In its early medieval usage , the term modernus referred to authorities regarded in medieval Europe as younger than the Greco-Roman scholars of Classical antiquity and/or the Church Fathers of the Christian era, but not necessarily to

1190-576: A cold enticement, the abstractions that fascinated him." AllMovie stated that "his films—a seminal body of enigmatic and intricate mood pieces—rejected action in favor of contemplation, championing image and design over character and story." Stephen Dalton of the British Film Institute described Antonioni's influential visual hallmarks as "extremely long takes , striking modern architecture, painterly use of colour, [and] tiny human figures adrift in empty landscapes," noting similarities to

1309-708: A derivation from the adverb modo ("presently, just now", also "method"), is attested from the 5th century CE, at first in the context of distinguishing the Christian era of the Later Roman Empire from the Pagan era of the Greco-Roman world . In the 6th century CE, Roman historian and statesman Cassiodorus appears to have been the first writer to use modernus ("modern") regularly to refer to his own age. The terms antiquus and modernus were used in

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1428-407: A director of extraordinary sequences," and advised viewers to "forget plotting, characters or dialogue, his import is conveyed in absolutely formal terms." Film director Akira Kurosawa considered Antonioni one of the most interesting filmmakers. Stanley Kubrick listed La Notte as one of his ten favorite films in a 1963 Poll. Andrei Tarkovsky was deeply influenced by Antonioni, especially for

1547-409: A discrete "term applied to the cultural condition in which the seemingly absolute necessity of innovation becomes a primary fact of life, work, and thought". And modernity in art "is more than merely the state of being modern, or the opposition between old and new". In the essay " The Painter of Modern Life " (1863), Charles Baudelaire gives a literary definition: "By modernity I mean the transitory,

1666-607: A full shot of somebody walking down a road. And you think, 'Well, he's not going to carry that woman all the way up that road.' But he does . And then she leaves and you go on looking at the road after she's gone." American actor Peter Weller , whom Antonioni directed in Beyond the Clouds , explained in a 1996 interview: "There is no director living except maybe Kurosawa , Bergman , or Antonioni that I would fall down and do anything for. I met Antonioni three years ago in Taormina at

1785-527: A historian, a politician or a moralist, but rather that of a utopian whose perception is seeking to pinpoint the new world, because he is eager for this world and already wants to be part of it." He added that his art "consists in always leaving the road of meaning open and as if undecided." Bordwell explains that Antonioni was extremely influential on art films : "More than any other director, he encouraged filmmakers to explore elliptical and open-ended narrative." The Guardian described him as, "in essence,

1904-455: A labourer in her youth. My father also was a good man. Born into a working-class family, he succeeded in obtaining a comfortable position through evening courses and hard work. My parents gave me free rein to do what I wanted: with my brother, we spent most of our time playing outside with friends. Curiously enough, our friends were invariably proletarian and poor. The poor still existed at that time, you recognized them by their clothes. But even in

2023-530: A logical conclusion, lead to atheism. The Roman Catholic Church was serious enough about the threat of Modernism that it required all Roman Catholic clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors and seminary professors to swear an Oath against modernism from 1910 until this directive was rescinded in 1967, in keeping with the directives of the Second Vatican Council . Of the available conceptual definitions in sociology, modernity

2142-441: A modern phylosopher] The Biblical God...was a mere myth of bygone ages. When, with the beginning of modern times, religious belief was becoming more and more externalized as a lifeless convention, men of intellect were lifted by a new belief, their great belief in an autonomous philosophy and science. Italian neorealism Italian neorealism came about as World War II ended and Benito Mussolini 's government fell, causing

2261-501: A more realistic approach to making films. Italian cinema went from utilizing elaborate studio sets to shooting on location in the countryside and city streets in a realist style. Although the true beginning of neorealism has been widely contested by theorists and filmmakers, the first neorealist film is generally thought to be Visconti's Ossessione , released in 1943, during the occupation. Neorealism became famous globally in 1946 with Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City , when it won

2380-438: A new methodological approach. It was an experimental based approach to science, which sought no knowledge of formal or final causes . Yet, he was no materialist. He also talked of the two books of God, God's Word (Scripture) and God's work (nature). But he also added a theme that science should seek to control nature for the sake of humanity, and not seek to understand it just for the sake of understanding. In both these things he

2499-481: A new subject of knowledge, which itself builds and develops. It produces a new world in which the main elements have not so many narrative functions as they have their own aesthetic value, related with the eye that is watching them and not with the action they are coming from. Although Umberto D. is considered the end of the neorealist period, later films such as Federico Fellini 's La Strada (1954) and De Sica's 1960 film Two Women (for which Sophia Loren won

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2618-414: A proponent of experimentation, provided the archetypal example of how both Cartesian mathematics, geometry and theoretical deduction on the one hand, and Baconian experimental observation and induction on the other hand, together could lead to great advances in the practical understanding of regularities in nature . One common conception of modernity is the condition of Western history since

2737-604: A screenplay with Mark Peploe , Niccolo Tucci , and Tonino Guerra , with plans to begin filming in the early 1970s with Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider. On the verge of production in the Amazon jungle Ponti suddenly withdrew support and the project was abandoned, with Nicholson and Schneider going forward to star in The Passenger . In 2008, "Technically Sweet" became an international group exhibition curated by Copenhagen-based artists Yvette Brackman and Maria Finn, in which

2856-617: A series of short films with Gente del Po (1943), a story of poor fishermen of the Po valley . When Rome was liberated by the Allies, the film stock was transferred to the Fascist " Republic of Salò " and could not be recovered and edited until 1947. The complete footage was never retrieved. These films were neorealist semi-documentary studies of the lives of working class people. However, Antonioni's first feature Cronaca di un amore ( Story of

2975-624: A thesis that mass culture, while generating sources for "enchantment", more commonly produced "simulations" of "enchantments" and "disenchantments" for consumers. The era of modernity is characterised socially by industrialisation and the division of labour, and philosophically by "the loss of certainty , and the realization that certainty can never be established, once and for all". With new social and philosophical conditions arose fundamental new challenges. Various 19th-century intellectuals, from Auguste Comte to Karl Marx to Sigmund Freud , attempted to offer scientific and/or political ideologies in

3094-537: A topic in the humanities and social sciences , is both a historical period (the modern era ) and the ensemble of particular socio - cultural norms , attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissance —in the Age of Reason of 17th-century thought and the 18th-century Enlightenment . Commentators variously consider the era of modernity to have ended by 1930, with World War II in 1945, or as late as

3213-474: A value to war and political violence, his lasting influence has been "tamed" so that useful conflict was deliberately converted as much as possible to formalized political struggles and the economic "conflict" encouraged between free, private enterprises. Starting with Thomas Hobbes , attempts were made to use the methods of the new modern physical sciences, as proposed by Bacon and Descartes , applied to humanity and politics. Notable attempts to improve upon

3332-489: Is "marked and defined by an obsession with ' evidence '," visual culture , and personal visibility. Generally, the large-scale social integration constituting modernity, involves the: But there does seem to be a necessary conflict between modern thought and the Biblical belief in revelation. All claims of revelation, modern science and philosophy seem agreed, must be repudiated, as mere relics of superstitious ages. ... [to

3451-480: Is Janus-faced." In 2020, Jason Crawford critiqued this recent historiography on enchantment and modernity. The historical evidence of "enchantments" for these studies, particularly in mass and print cultures, "might offer some solace to the citizens of a disenchanted world, but they don't really change the condition of that world." These "enchantments" offered a "troubled kind of unreality" increasingly separate from modernity. Per Osterrgard and James Fitchett advanced

3570-419: Is a society—more technically, a complex of institutions—which, unlike any preceding culture, lives in the future, rather than the past. Other writers have criticized such definitions as just being a listing of factors. They argue that modernity, contingently understood as marked by an ontological formation in dominance, needs to be defined much more fundamentally in terms of different ways of being. The modern

3689-451: Is associated with (1) a certain set of attitudes towards the world, the idea of the world as open to transformation, by human intervention; (2) a complex of economic institutions, especially industrial production and a market economy; (3) a certain range of political institutions, including the nation-state and mass democracy. Largely as a result of these characteristics, modernity is vastly more dynamic than any previous type of social order. It

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3808-598: Is closely linked to the ethos of philosophical and aesthetic modernism ; political and intellectual currents that intersect with the Enlightenment; and subsequent developments such as existentialism , modern art , the formal establishment of social science , and contemporaneous antithetical developments such as Marxism . It also encompasses the social relations associated with the rise of capitalism, and shifts in attitudes associated with secularization , liberalization , modernization and post-industrial life . By

3927-539: Is marked by "four fundamental values": Modernity rejects anything "old" and makes "novelty ... a criterion for truth." This results in a great "phobic response to anything antiquarian." In contrast, "classical Christian consciousness" resisted "novelty". Within Roman Catholicism, Pope Pius IX and Pope Pius X claim that Modernism (in a particular definition of the Catholic Church) is a danger to

4046-399: Is periodized into three conventional phases dubbed "Early", "Classical", and "Late" by Peter Osborne: In the second phase, Berman draws upon the growth of modern technologies such as the newspaper, telegraph and other forms of mass media. There was a great shift into modernization in the name of industrial capitalism. Finally in the third phase, modernist arts and individual creativity marked

4165-455: Is thus defined by the way in which prior valences of social life ... are reconstituted through a constructivist reframing of social practices in relation to basic categories of existence common to all humans: time, space, embodiment, performance and knowledge. The word 'reconstituted' here explicitly does not mean replaced. This means that modernity overlays earlier formations of traditional and customary life without necessarily replacing them. In

4284-675: Is to control one's own chance or fortune, and that relying upon providence actually leads to evil. Machiavelli argued, for example, that violent divisions within political communities are unavoidable, but can also be a source of strength which lawmakers and leaders should account for and even encourage in some ways. Machiavelli's recommendations were sometimes influential upon kings and princes, but eventually came to be seen as favoring free republics over monarchies. Machiavelli in turn influenced Francis Bacon , Marchamont Needham , James Harrington , John Milton , David Hume , and many others. Important modern political doctrines which stem from

4403-424: Is unnecessary for a command to be given and seen through to its effect. Consequent to debate about economic globalization , the comparative analysis of civilizations, and the post-colonial perspective of "alternative modernities", Shmuel Eisenstadt introduced the concept of "multiple modernities". Modernity as a "plural condition" is the central concept of this sociologic approach and perspective, which broadens

4522-579: The 11th Berlin International Film Festival , His first color film, Il deserto rosso ( The Red Desert , 1964), deals with similar themes, and is sometimes considered the fourth film of the "trilogy". All four films featured Vitti, his romantic partner at the time. Antonioni then signed a deal with producer Carlo Ponti that would allow artistic freedom on three films in English to be released by MGM . The first, Blowup (1966),

4641-521: The 1960 Cannes Film Festival it received a mixture of cheers and boos, but won a Jury Prize and became popular in arthouse cinemas around the world. La notte (1961), starring Jeanne Moreau and Marcello Mastroianni , and L'Eclisse (1962), starring Alain Delon and Monica Vitti , followed L'avventura . These three films are often referred to as a trilogy. La notte won the Golden Bear at

4760-768: The Communism of Karl Marx , and the modern forms of nationalism inspired by the French Revolution , including, in one extreme, the German Nazi movement. On the other hand, the notion of modernity has been contested also due to its Euro-centric underpinnings. Postcolonial scholars have extensively critiqued the Eurocentric nature of modernity, particularly its portrayal as a linear process originating in Europe and subsequently spreading—or being imposed—on

4879-528: The De Gasperi cabinet, characterized the official view of the movement: Neorealism is "dirty laundry that shouldn't be washed and hung to dry in the open". Italy's move from individual concern with neorealism to the tragic frailty of the human condition can be seen through Federico Fellini 's films. His early works La Strada (1954) and Il bidone (1955) are transitional movies. The larger social concerns of humanity, treated by neorealists, gave way to

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4998-467: The French Revolution (1789–1799), and the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804). A second phase of modernist political thinking begins with Rousseau, who questioned the natural rationality and sociality of humanity and proposed that human nature was much more malleable than had been previously thought. By this logic, what makes a good political system or a good man is completely dependent upon

5117-554: The Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones . However, Zabriskie Point was a critical and commercial failure, and has been called "the worst film ever made by a director of genius". The third, The Passenger (1975), starring Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider , received critical praise but did poorly at the box office. In 1966, Antonioni drafted a treatment entitled "Technically Sweet", which he later developed into

5236-596: The Judeo-Christian belief in the Biblical God as a mere relic of superstitious ages. It all started with Descartes' revolutionary methodic doubt , which transformed the concept of truth in the concept of certainty, whose only guarantor is no longer God or the Church, but Man's subjective judgement. Theologians have adapted in different ways to the challenge of modernity. Liberal theology , over perhaps

5355-403: The dominance of Western Europe and Anglo-America over other continents has been criticized by postcolonial theory . In the context of art history , modernity (Fr. modernité ) has a more limited sense, modern art covering the period of c.  1860–1970. Use of the term in this sense is attributed to Charles Baudelaire , who in his 1863 essay " The Painter of Modern Life ", designated

5474-450: The late 19th and 20th centuries , modernist art, politics, science and culture has come to dominate not only Western Europe and North America, but almost every populated area on the globe, including movements thought of as opposed to the West and globalization . The modern era is closely associated with the development of individualism , capitalism , urbanization and a belief in

5593-838: The "empty urban dreamscapes" of surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico . Film historian Virginia Wright Wexman notes the slowness of his camera and the absence of frequent cuts, stating that "he forces our full attention by continuing the shot long after others would cut away." Antonioni is also noted for exploiting colour as a significant expressive element in his later works, especially in Il deserto rosso , his first colour film. Antonioni's plots were experimental, ambiguous, and elusive, often featuring middle-class characters who suffer from ennui , desperation, or joyless sex. Film historian David Bordwell writes that in Antonioni's films, "Vacations, parties and artistic pursuits are vain efforts to conceal

5712-414: The "fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis", and the responsibility art has to capture that experience. In this sense, the term refers to "a particular relationship to time, one characterized by intense historical discontinuity or rupture, openness to the novelty of the future, and a heightened sensitivity to what is unique about the present". The Late Latin adjective modernus ,

5831-400: The 'end of history', of post-modernity, 'second modernity' and 'surmodernity', or otherwise to articulate the intuition of a radical change in the arrangement of human cohabitation and in social conditions under which life-politics is nowadays conducted, is the fact that the long effort to accelerate the speed of movement has presently reached its 'natural limit'. Power can move with the speed of

5950-615: The 16th and 17th centuries, Copernicus , Kepler , Galileo and others developed a new approach to physics and astronomy which changed the way people came to think about many things. Copernicus presented new models of the Solar System which no longer placed humanity's home, Earth, in the centre. Kepler used mathematics to discuss physics and described regularities of nature this way. Galileo actually made his famous proof of uniform acceleration in freefall using mathematics. Francis Bacon , especially in his Novum Organum , argued for

6069-489: The 16th to 18th centuries are usually described as early modern , while the long 19th century corresponds to modern history proper. While it includes a wide range of interrelated historical processes and cultural phenomena (from fashion to modern warfare ), it can also refer to the subjective or existential experience of the conditions they produce, and their ongoing impact on human culture, institutions, and politics. As an analytical concept and normative idea, modernity

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6188-442: The 1830s, magic still remained part of the discourse—now called 'natural magic,' to be sure, but no less 'marvelous' for being the result of determinate and predictable natural processes." Mass culture, despite its "superficialities, irrationalities, prejudices, and problems," became "a vital source of contingent and rational enchantments as well." Occultism could contribute to the conclusions reached by modern psychologists and advanced

6307-490: The Antonioni films Blowup and La notte masterpieces, he found the other films boring and noted that he had never understood why Antonioni was held in such esteem. Orson Welles regretted the Italian director's use of the long take : "I don't like to dwell on things. It's one of the reasons I'm so bored with Antonioni—the belief that, because a shot is good, it's going to get better if you keep looking at it. He gives you

6426-601: The Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia to study film technique but left after three months. He was subsequently drafted into the army, and survived being condemned to death as a member of the Italian Resistance . In 1942, Antonioni co-wrote A Pilot Returns with Roberto Rossellini and worked as assistant director on Enrico Fulchignoni's I due Foscari . In 1943, he travelled to France to assist Marcel Carné on Les visiteurs du soir and began

6545-476: The Christian faith. Pope Pius IX compiled a Syllabus of Errors published on December 8, 1864, to describe his objections to Modernism. Pope Pius X further elaborated on the characteristics and consequences of Modernism, from his perspective, in an encyclical entitled " Pascendi dominici gregis " (Feeding the Lord's Flock) on September 8, 1907. Pascendi Dominici Gregis states that the principles of Modernism, taken to

6664-533: The Classical period of the Greco-Roman civilization. The term modernity , first coined in the 1620s, in this context assumed the implication of a historical epoch following the Renaissance, in which the achievements of antiquity were surpassed. Modernity has been associated with cultural and intellectual movements of 1436–1789 and extending to the 1970s or later. According to Marshall Berman , modernity

6783-581: The Cultural Revolution. In 1980, Antonioni directed Il mistero di Oberwald ( The Mystery of Oberwald ), based on Jean Cocteau 's play, L'Aigle à deux têtes ( The Eagle With Two Heads ). Featuring Monica Vitti in the lead, the film delves into an experimental approach to color enhancement through electronic treatment. The process involves initially capturing the footage on video and transferring it to 35mm film stock during post-production. Identificazione di una donna ("Identification of

6902-471: The English-language film Blowup (1966) and the multilingual The Passenger (1975). His films have been described as "enigmatic and intricate mood pieces" that feature elusive plots, striking visual composition , and a preoccupation with modern landscapes. His work substantially influenced subsequent art cinema . Antonioni received numerous awards and nominations throughout his career, being

7021-531: The Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival as the first major film produced in Italy after the war. Italian neorealism rapidly declined in the early 1950s. Liberal and socialist parties were having difficulties presenting their message. The vision of the existing poverty and despair, presented by neorealist cinema, was demoralizing a nation anxious for prosperity and change. Additionally,

7140-460: The Italian film industry to lose its centre. Neorealism was a sign of cultural and social change in Italy. New realism films are considered to be films with specific styles and philosophies that emerged during the turbulent period after World War II. Its films presented contemporary stories and ideas and were often shot on location as the Cinecittà film studios had been damaged significantly during

7259-501: The Oscar for Best Actress) are grouped with the genre. Director Pier Paolo Pasolini 's first film, Accattone (1961), shows a strong neorealist influence. The Neorealist period is often simply referred to as "The Golden Age" of Italian cinema by critics, filmmakers and scholars. The extent to which Italian neorealism was truly innovative continues to be debated among film historians. Despite its wide influence, some have argued that it

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7378-607: The United States, where classicism was prevalent before World War II, to Europe, where realism was prevalent. Furthermore, as some critics have argued, the abandoning of the classical way of doing cinema and so the starting point of the French New Wave and the Modern Cinema can be found in the post-war Italian cinema and in the neorealism experiences. In particular, this cinema seems to be constituted as

7497-409: The beginning of a new modernist age as it combats oppressive politics, economics as well as other social forces including mass media. Some authors, such as Lyotard and Baudrillard , believe that modernity ended in the mid- or late 20th century and thus have defined a period subsequent to modernity, namely Postmodernity (1930s/1950s/1990s–present). Other theorists, however, regard the period from

7616-479: The chance path a whole people has taken over history. This thought influenced the political (and aesthetic) thinking of Immanuel Kant , Edmund Burke and others and led to a critical review of modernist politics. On the conservative side, Burke argued that this understanding encouraged caution and avoidance of radical change. However more ambitious movements also developed from this insight into human culture, initially Romanticism and Historicism , and eventually both

7735-461: The characters' lack of purpose and emotion. Sexuality is reduced to casual seduction, enterprise to the pursuit of wealth at any cost." The New Yorker wrote that "Antonioni captured a new bourgeois society that shifted from physical to intellectual creation, from matter to abstraction, from things to images, and the crisis of personal identity and self-recognition that resulted," calling his 1960s collaborations with Monica Vitti "a crucial moment in

7854-414: The context of this debate, the ancients ( anciens ) and moderns ( modernes ) were proponents of opposing views, the former believing that contemporary writers could do no better than imitate the genius of Classical antiquity, while the latter, first with Charles Perrault (1687), proposed that more than a mere Renaissance of ancient achievements, the Age of Reason had gone beyond what had been possible in

7973-431: The creation of cinematic modernism ." Richard Brody stated that his films explore "the way that new methods of communication—mainly the mass media, but also the abstractions of high-tech industry, architecture, music, politics, and even fashion—have a feedback effect on the educated, white-collar thinkers who create them," but noted that "he wasn't nostalgic about the premodern." Wexman describes Antonioni's perspective on

8092-521: The creations of artists, working in multiple mediums and based on Antonioni's manuscript, were displayed in New York. One of these was the short film "Sweet Ruin", directed by Elisabeth Subrin and starring Gaby Hoffmann . Antonioni's widow Enrica and director André Ristum announced plans to produce a film based on the screenplay, with filming in Brazil and Sardinia to begin in 2023. In 1972, Antonioni

8211-472: The definition of "modernity" from exclusively denoting Western European culture to a culturally relativistic definition, thereby: "Modernity is not Westernization, and its key processes and dynamics can be found in all societies". Central to modernity is emancipation from religion, specifically the hegemony of Christianity (mainly Roman Catholicism ), and the consequent secularization. According to writers like Fackenheim and Husserl, modern thought repudiates

8330-559: The development of his film Nostalghia . In an interview with Serge Kaganski in 2004, Jean-Luc Godard judges that Antonioni is the filmmaker who has most influenced contemporary cinema. Wim Wenders considered Antonioni as a master and the two collaborated as directors for the film Beyond the Clouds . Miklós Jancsó considers Antonioni as his master. American director Martin Scorsese paid tribute to Antonioni following his death in 2007, stating that his films "posed mysteries—or rather

8449-420: The documentary-style films of Francesco De Robertis . Two of the most significant precursors of neorealism are Jean Renoir 's Toni (1935) and Blasetti's 1860 (1934). Both Visconti and Michelangelo Antonioni worked closely with Renoir. In the spring of 1945, Mussolini was executed and Italy was liberated from German occupation. This period, known as the "Italian Spring", broke from old ways and fostered

8568-400: The early 1950s the neorealist torch was picked up by artists like Sicily's Bruno Caruso , whose work focused on the warehouses, shipyards and psychiatric wards of his native Palermo . Neorealist films were generally filmed with nonprofessional actors, although in a number of cases, well-known actors were cast in leading roles, playing strongly against their normal character types in front of

8687-725: The editing, however, Antonioni rejected almost all of the material filmed by Wenders except for a few short interludes. They shared the FIPRESCI Prize at the Venice Film Festival with Cyclo . In 1994, he was given an Honorary Academy Award "in recognition of his place as one of cinema's master visual stylists." Presented to him by Jack Nicholson, the statuette was later stolen by burglars and had to be replaced. Previously, Antonioni had received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay for Blowup (1967). Antonioni's final film, directed when he

8806-412: The electronic signal – and so the time required for the movement of its essential ingredients has been reduced to instantaneity. For all practical purposes, power has become truly exterritorial, no longer bound, or even slowed down, by the resistance of space (the advent of cellular telephones may well serve as a symbolic 'last blow' delivered to the dependency on space: even the access to a telephone market

8925-417: The exploration of individuals. Their needs, their alienation from society and their tragic failure to communicate became the main focal point in the Italian films to follow in the 1960s. Similarly, Antonioni's Red Desert (1964) and Blow-up (1966) take the neorealist trappings and internalise them in the suffering and search for knowledge brought out by Italy's post-war economic and political climate. In

9044-469: The first positive effects of the Italian economic miracle period—such as gradual rises in income levels—caused the themes of neorealism to lose their relevance. As a consequence, most Italians favored the optimism shown in many American movies of the time. The views of the post-war Italian government of the time were also far from positive, and the remark of Giulio Andreotti , who was then a vice-minister in

9163-435: The fugitive, the contingent". Advancing technological innovation, affecting artistic technique and the means of manufacture, changed rapidly the possibilities of art and its status in a rapidly changing society. Photography challenged the place of the painter and painting. Architecture was transformed by the availability of steel for structures. From conservative Protestant theologian Thomas C. Oden 's perspective, modernity

9282-494: The hypocrisy of European modernity, which promotes ideals of progress and rationality while concealing how much of Europe’s economic growth was built on the exploitation, violence, and dehumanization integral to colonial domination. Similarly, Bhambra argued that beyond economic advancement, Western powers "modernized" through colonialism, demonstrating that developments such as the welfare systems in England were largely enabled by

9401-461: The lack of consistent film styles of neorealist film. Peter Brunette and Marcia Landy both deconstruct the use of reworked cinematic forms in Rossellini's Open City . Using psychoanalysis , Vincent Rocchio characterizes neorealist film as consistently engendering the structure of anxiety into the structure of the plot itself. The period between 1943 and 1950 in the history of Italian cinema

9520-503: The late 20th century to the present as merely another phase of modernity; Zygmunt Bauman calls this phase liquid modernity , Giddens labels it high modernity (see High modernism ). Politically, modernity's earliest phase starts with Niccolò Machiavelli 's works which openly rejected the medieval and Aristotelian style of analyzing politics by comparison with ideas about how things should be, in favour of realistic analysis of how things really are. He also proposed that an aim of politics

9639-547: The methodological approach of Hobbes include those of John Locke , Spinoza , Giambattista Vico , and Rousseau. David Hume made what he considered to be the first proper attempt at trying to apply Bacon's scientific method to political subjects, rejecting some aspects of the approach of Hobbes. Modernist republicanism openly influenced the foundation of republics during the Dutch Revolt (1568–1609), English Civil War (1642–1651), American Revolution (1775–1783),

9758-520: The mid-15th century, or roughly the European development of movable type and the printing press . In this context the modern society is said to develop over many periods, and to be influenced by important events that represent breaks in the continuity. After modernist political thinking had already become widely known in France, Rousseau 's re-examination of human nature led to a new criticism of

9877-424: The mystery, of who we are, what we are, to each other, to ourselves, to time. You could say that Antonioni was looking directly at the mysteries of the soul." American directors Francis Ford Coppola and Brian De Palma paid homage to Antonioni in their own films. Antonioni's spare style and purposeless characters, however, have not received universal acclaim. Ingmar Bergman stated in 2002 that while he considered

9996-554: The new Machiavellian realism include Mandeville 's influential proposal that " Private Vices by the dextrous Management of a skilful Politician may be turned into Publick Benefits " (the last sentence of his Fable of the Bees ), and also the doctrine of a constitutional separation of powers in government, first clearly proposed by Montesquieu . Both these principles are enshrined within the constitutions of most modern democracies . It has been observed that while Machiavelli's realism saw

10115-509: The new realism film adopts a documentary format, striving to showcase historicity, and striving to use the least cutting and video editing techniques, as well as tolerance for filming equipment. Open City established several of the principles of neorealism, depicting clearly the struggle of normal Italian people to live from day to day under the extraordinary difficulties of the German occupation of Rome, consciously doing what they can to resist

10234-408: The occupation. The children play a key role in this, and their presence at the end of the film is indicative of their role in neorealism as a whole: as observers of the difficulties of today who hold the key to the future. Vittorio De Sica 's 1948 film Bicycle Thieves is also representative of the genre, with non-professional actors, and a story that details the hardships of working-class life after

10353-647: The only director to have won the Palme d'Or , the Golden Lion , the Golden Bear and the Golden Leopard . Antonioni was born into a prosperous family of landowners in Ferrara , Emilia-Romagna . He was the son of Elisabetta (née Roncagli) and Ismaele Antonioni. The director explained to Italian film critic Aldo Tassone: My childhood was a happy one. My mother... was a warm and intelligent woman who had been

10472-440: The past 200 years or so, has tried, in various iterations, to accommodate, or at least tolerate, modern doubt in expounding Christian revelation, while Traditionalist Catholics , Eastern Orthodox and fundamentalist Protestant thinkers and clerics have tried to fight back, denouncing skepticism of every kind. Modernity aimed towards "a progressive force promising to liberate humankind from ignorance and irrationality". In

10591-470: The period falling between the 1980s and 1990s; the following era is often referred to as " postmodernity ". The term " contemporary history " is also used to refer to the post-1945 timeframe, without assigning it to either the modern or postmodern era. (Thus "modern" may be used as a name of a particular era in the past, as opposed to meaning "the current era".) Depending on the field, modernity may refer to different time periods or qualities. In historiography,

10710-420: The plot or the tone. The resulting film, The Earth Trembles , starred only nonprofessional actors and was filmed in the same village (Aci Trezza) in which the novel was set. More contemporary theorists of Italian neorealism characterize it less as a consistent set of stylistic characteristics and more as the relationship between film practice and the social reality of post-war Italy. Millicent Marcus delineates

10829-471: The point of exhaustion. We have been capable of all this, but we have not been capable of finding new ones." Nine years later he expressed a similar attitude in an interview, saying that he loathed the word 'morality': "When man becomes reconciled to nature, when space becomes his true background, these words and concepts will have lost their meaning, and we will no longer have to use them." Critic Roland Barthes claimed that Antonioni's approach "is not that of

10948-418: The popular mainstream films, some critics felt that Italian cinema should turn to the realist writers from the turn of the 20th century. Many of the filmmakers involved in neorealism developed their skills working on Calligrafismo films in the early 1940s (although the short-lived movement was markedly different from neorealism). Elements of neorealism are also found in the films of Alessandro Blasetti and

11067-414: The possibilities of technological and political progress . Wars and other perceived problems of this era , many of which come from the effects of rapid change , and the connected loss of strength of traditional religious and ethical norms , have led to many reactions against modern development . Optimism and belief in constant progress has been most recently criticized by postmodernism while

11186-629: The present day, and could include authors several centuries old, from about the time of Bede , i.e. referring to the time after the foundation of the Order of Saint Benedict and/or the fall of the Western Roman Empire . The Latin adjective was adopted in Middle French , as moderne , by the 15th century, and hence, in the early Tudor period , into Early Modern English . The early modern word meant "now existing", or "pertaining to

11305-608: The present times", not necessarily with a positive connotation. English author and playwright William Shakespeare used the term modern in the sense of "every-day, ordinary, commonplace". The word entered wide usage in the context of the late 17th-century quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns within the Académie Française , debating the question of "Is Modern culture superior to Classical (Græco–Roman) culture?" In

11424-463: The rest of the world. Dipesh Chakrabarty contends that European historicism positions Europe as the exclusive birthplace of modernity, placing European thinkers and institutions at the center of Enlightenment, progress, and innovation. This narrative marginalizes non-Western thinkers, ideas and achievements, reducing them to either deviations from or delays in an otherwise supposedly universal trajectory of modern development. Frantz Fanon similarly exposes

11543-419: The sake of progress—may in many cases have what critical theory says is a negative and dehumanising effect on modern society. Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth radiates under the sign of disaster triumphant. What prompts so many commentators to speak of

11662-446: The same day as renowned Swedish director Ingmar Bergman . Antonioni lay in state at City Hall in Rome, where a large screen showed black-and-white footage of him among his film sets and behind-the-scenes. He was buried in his hometown of Ferrara on 2 August 2007. It's too simplistic to say—as many people have done—that I am condemning the inhuman industrial world which oppresses the individuals and leads them to neurosis. My intention ...

11781-468: The self-consciousness that amateur acting usually entails. Neorealist films often feature children in major roles, though their characters are frequently more observational than participatory. These characters are both sympathetic and cynical, constantly portraying the pain, misfortune, social struggles, and working-class struggles in social life, with the aim of criticizing the injustice of the real social system and resisting reality. In terms of production,

11900-452: The starting point is the same as Marx, feudal society, Durkheim emphasizes far less the rising of the bourgeoisie as a new revolutionary class and very seldom refers to capitalism as the new mode of production implemented by it. The fundamental impulse to modernity is rather industrialism accompanied by the new scientific forces. In the work of Max Weber , modernity is closely associated with the processes of rationalization and disenchantment of

12019-437: The value of reasoning itself which in turn led to a new understanding of less rationalistic human activities, especially the arts. The initial influence was upon the movements known as German Idealism and Romanticism in the 18th and 19th century. Modern art therefore belongs only to the later phases of modernity. For this reason art history keeps the term modernity distinct from the terms Modern Age and Modernism – as

12138-410: The violin with the discovery of cinema in his teens, drawing would remain a lifelong passion. "I have never drawn, even as a child, either puppets or silhouettes but rather facades of houses and gates. One of my favourite games consisted of organizing towns. Ignorant in architecture, I constructed buildings and streets crammed with little figures. I invented stories for them. These childhood happenings —I

12257-422: The wake of secularisation. Modernity may be described as the "age of ideology". For Marx, what was the basis of modernity was the emergence of capitalism and the revolutionary bourgeoisie, which led to an unprecedented expansion of productive forces and to the creation of the world market. Durkheim tackled modernity from a different angle by following the ideas of Saint-Simon about the industrial system. Although

12376-465: The war. The neorealist style was developed by a circle of film critics that revolved around the magazine Cinema , including: Largely prevented from writing about politics (the editor-in-chief of the magazine was Vittorio Mussolini , son of Benito Mussolini ), the critics attacked the Telefoni Bianchi ("white telephone") films that dominated the industry at the time. As a counter to

12495-621: The war. This movie focuses on exploring the concerns and behaviors of struggling working-class characters through the presentation of outstanding non professional actors. The light portrayal of events reveals the indifference, dirtiness, and violence of society, showcasing the conflict between public and private perspectives. In the period from 1944 to 1948, many neorealist filmmakers drifted away from pure neorealism. Some directors explored allegorical fantasy, such as de Sica's Miracle in Milan , and historical spectacle, like Senso by Visconti. It

12614-413: The way they wore their clothes, there was a fantasy, a frankness that made me prefer them to boys of bourgeois families. I always had sympathy for young women of working-class families, even later when I attended university: they were more authentic and spontaneous. As a child, Antonioni was fond of drawing and music. A precocious violinist, he gave his first concert at the age of nine. Although he abandoned

12733-460: The wealth extracted through colonial exploitation. In sociology, a discipline that arose in direct response to the social problems of modernity, the term most generally refers to the social conditions, processes, and discourses consequent to the Age of Enlightenment . In the most basic terms, British sociologist Anthony Giddens describes modernity as ...a shorthand term for modern society, or industrial civilization. Portrayed in more detail, it

12852-439: The world as that of a " postreligious Marxist and existentialist intellectual." In a speech at Cannes about L'Avventura , Antonioni said that in the modern age of reason and science, mankind still lives by "a rigid and stereotyped morality which all of us recognize as such and yet sustain out of cowardice and sheer laziness [...] We have examined those moral attitudes very carefully, we have dissected them and analyzed them to

12971-546: The world. Critical theorists such as Theodor Adorno and Zygmunt Bauman propose that modernity or industrialization represents a departure from the central tenets of the Enlightenment and towards nefarious processes of alienation , such as commodity fetishism and the Holocaust . Contemporary sociological critical theory presents the concept of rationalization in even more negative terms than those Weber originally defined. Processes of rationalization—as progress for

13090-406: The world. It also influenced film directors of India's Parallel Cinema movement, including Satyajit Ray (who directed the award-winning Apu Trilogy ) and Bimal Roy (who made Do Bigha Zameen [1953]), both heavily influenced by Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948). The birth and development of Italian neorealism films marked the transition of the world film center from Europe and

13209-455: Was a return to working class stories, depicting a factory worker and his daughter. Each of these stories is about social alienation . In Le Amiche (1955), Antonioni experimented with a radical new style: instead of a conventional narrative, he presented a series of apparently disconnected events, and used long takes as part of his style. Antonioni returned to their use in L'avventura (1960), which became his first international success. At

13328-447: Was also the time period when a more upbeat neorealism emerged, which produced films that melded working-class characters with 1930s-style populist comedy, as seen in de Sica's Umberto D . At the height of neorealism, in 1948, Visconti adapted I Malavoglia , a novel by Giovanni Verga, written during the 19th century realist verismo movement , bringing the story to a modern setting, which resulted in remarkably little change in either

13447-551: Was an international critical and commercial success and won the Palme d'Or at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival . Set in Swinging London , the film starred David Hemmings as a fashion photographer and was loosely based on a short story by Argentine-French writer Julio Cortázar . The second film, Zabriskie Point (1970), was set in America and followed the counterculture . The soundtrack featured music from Pink Floyd ,

13566-474: Was dominated by the impact of neorealism, which was properly defined as a moment or a trend in Italian film rather than an actual school or group of theoretically motivated and like-minded directors and scriptwriters. Its impact nevertheless has been enormous not only on Italian film but also on French New Wave cinema, the Polish Film School , Brazilian Cinema Novo and ultimately on films all over

13685-554: Was eleven years old—were like little films." Upon graduation from the University of Bologna with a degree in economics, he started writing for the Ferrara newspaper Il Corriere Padano in 1935 as a film journalist. In 1940, Antonioni moved to Rome, where he worked for Cinema , the official Fascist film magazine edited by Vittorio Mussolini . However, Antonioni was fired a few months afterwards. Later that year, he enrolled at

13804-420: Was in his 90s, was a segment of the anthology film Eros (2004), entitled Il filo pericoloso delle cose ( The Dangerous Thread of Things ). The short film's episodes are framed using a series of enigmatic paintings by Antonioni, a luxury sports car that has difficulty negotiating the narrow lanes and archaic stone bridges of the provincial town setting, a bikini-clad women performing a cryptic choreography on

13923-512: Was influenced by Machiavelli's earlier criticism of medieval Scholasticism , and his proposal that leaders should aim to control their own fortune. Influenced both by Galileo's new physics and Bacon, René Descartes argued soon afterward that mathematics and geometry provided a model of how scientific knowledge could be built up in small steps. He also argued openly that human beings themselves could be understood as complex machines. Isaac Newton , influenced by Descartes, but also, like Bacon,

14042-763: Was invited by to China to film the achievements of the Cultural Revolution . The resulting documentary, Chung Kuo, Cina , was strongly condemned by the Chinese authorities as "anti-Chinese" and "anti-communist". It was first shown in China on 25 November 2004 in Beijing, with a film festival hosted by the Beijing Film Academy to honour the works of Antonioni. The film is now well-regarded by Chinese audiences, particularly by people who lived during

14161-619: Was to translate the poetry of the world, in which even factories can be beautiful. The line and curves of factories and their chimneys can be more beautiful than the outline of trees, which we are already too accustomed to seeing. It is a rich world, alive and serviceable ... There are people who do adapt, and others who can't manage, perhaps because they are too tied to ways of life that are by now out-of-date. —Antonioni, interviewed about Red Desert (1964). Critic Richard Brody described Antonioni as "the cinema's exemplary modernist " and one of its "great pictorialists—his images reflect, with

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