L'Avventura (1960)

This personal appreciation of L'Avventura was the final extended writing I composed post-filmwatching during my sophomore year at college -- film class papers notwithstanding. My overall rating was 4 stars out of a possible 4. It was the 223rd film to receive my highest rating distinction

I absolutely loved this film. Though I must say: this was not what I expected. I knew the basic plot and read the reports of the film being booed after its premiere at Cannes for its slow pace and uneventful storyline. So naturally, I came up with an idea for what I thought the film would be like. I figured it would be entirely spent on the rocky islands in the Mediterranean with Claudia (Monica Vitti in an utterly superb performance) and Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti in a grand performance as well) searching for the lost Anna (Lea Massari, whose screen time was brief and not very memorable, which I found to be integral to the film's message). I did not think that the second half of the film would be of everyone from the yachting trip moving on and about society again, but it is. I think what I was expecting would surely make for a stronger film, or at the very least be more deserving of the title, but L’Avventura is overwhelmingly strong as is.

If I were to try and explain why the film proceeds as it does, in terms of the other characters’ handling of the disappearance, I would contrast this film with John Ford’s masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath (1940). In that film, the Joads, although they know very well where Tom (Henry Fonda) is, they are still hurting that he has to spend time in jail. Even though life is miserable all around them, what with it being the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, they are still thinking about him and hoping that he will get out and find his way to them. In L’Avventura, most of the characters only worry about Anna when they are on the island looking for her, both initially and after returning with the police and coast guard. Claudia is the last to let go, which is understandable since she is Anna’s best friend. However, it is surprising that Anna’s boyfriend Sandro, who was arguing with her on whether they should marry or not, abandons hope after a few days back on the mainland. Ordinarily, one would expect Sandro to be devoted the longest for his missing Anna. However, his attention quickly shifts to Claudia, which is the first indication of the purpose for L’Avventura. Eventually, Sandro feigns interest in finding Anna just because Claudia is still focused on finding Anna, or so he assumes.

By now, you are probably wondering why I introduced The Grapes of Wrath since I have not related it to L’Avventura. Except I did... mind you, it was quite subtle and implicit. The characters in The Grapes of Wrath are focused on everyone involved, rather than their independent vanity and trivial desires. Anna's friends are upper-class and self-involved members of society that have a certain personal expectation of how they need to feel and appear. Claudia is the character who lies between the compared character ensembles. She states that she had a sensible childhood, which the world of L'Avventura defines as destitute and moneyless. This explains why she looked longer than anyone else on the island. The rest are people who do not concern themselves with matters which do not directly concern their physical selves. However, since Claudia no longer resides in a sensible world, she eventually loses the determination to find Anna and returns to high society, too. If the situation was reversed and Claudia had disappeared instead of Anna, there would have been the same response while everyone was on the island. However, no member of the yacht party would continue the search once they returned to the mainland, not even her best friend Anna, since Claudia is the only member not born into wealth and status and thus the only individual not immediately preoccupied with matters they assign as more personally dire.

The point I am trying to make, because it may be a little jumbled in there, is that as soon as they return to the mainland, Anna’s comrades no longer feel responsible for finding her because it interferes with focusing on their opulent lifestyles. Whilst on the island, they, although not really feeling responsible, wanted to find her because they felt like they were expected to. For almost all involved, there was never a moment when they wanted to find Anna because they cared about what happened to her. This film is a study that concludes with this result: no matter the circumstances nor events, certain people will move on simply because they want to, and others will not move on because they morally cannot.

As depressing and aggravating as this may be, especially to someone conscionable, this message makes the film beautiful. This is a beautiful film in how it’s shot, where it’s shot, and what happens in the film.

This is a very original film. It is a mystery, but it is more a drama than a mystery and more a romance between Sandro and Claudia than a mystery. Yet it is still a mystery, and an unsolved mystery at that. Director Michelangelo Antonioni did reveal in an interview that they had initially filmed a scene of Anna’s body being pulled out of the Mediterranean, but it did not survive the cutting room floor due to “time restraints.” Personally, I think leaving that scene out is beneficial to the story. While he refrained from revealing where that scene was within the storyline, I imagine that it would be at the very end, like when the authorities pulled the car out of the swamp in Psycho (1960). I feel that leaving the scene out is beneficial because it enriches the meaning of everything that has happened to the yachting group. With it staying as a disappearance, nobody can say for certain that she had died, but they do not let the possibility of her being alive elsewhere change who they are and what their true priorities are.

For Sandro and Claudia, Anna’s disappearance not receiving a resolution makes the compelling nature of their relationship more meaningful. If they had learned that she had died, they would live their lives together much differently. They are together because they assume that she is never coming back, but as is apparent with Claudia during the final moments of the film, when Sandro does not return to the room, she thinks that Anna has reappeared and Sandro will continue with Anna as if she had never left. To Claudia, it does not matter that Sandro says he loves her. She fully believes that the return of Anna would end their relationship, and this fuels her desire to keep their burgeoning relationship strong. Even after she finds Sandro on a couch with a promiscuous woman, their reconciliation at dawn, which ends the film, is dependent on one factor. Claudia decides that they will stay together because she knows that the only person that can truly get in the way of she and Sandro is Anna, and as long as she’s missing, she can hold on to that.

Customarily, I would end my critique there, but I have a few personal notes on this film to include, which in this instance we will label a postscript. This is one of the most beautifully shot films I have ever seen. Cinematographer Aldo Scavarda masterfully captures the stark bleakness of some natural locations and the vibrant beauty of the rich architecture, accentuating the true beauty of this film's appearance: the tender and soft black and white pictures that flutter across the screen. Fascinatingly, there really is no instance of the traditional black or white commanding the view; every scene is instead filled with various majestic hues of gray.

I also love this script. It is very real, authentic. It is brilliant, even. I would place L’Avventura’s script in the top 20 for best ever. There were many quotes that were laugh-out-loud funny. Understandably, they all came prior to Anna’s disappearance, but they are still funny to think about even after her vanishing.

I never thought that they would find Anna, with my assumptions fueled by knowing the gist of what was to come for her lover and her best friend, the response of the audience during its initial screening at Cannes, and by just a gut instinct of what this film would eventually be about (which I was right about). But even if I had no clue what the film was about apart from a young woman disappearing, there is a beautifully shot moment when Antonioni makes you infer that Anna will never be found, and this may be my all-time favorite shot in cinema. It happens around the 29:30 timestamp. Here's the set-up: the camera stares down at a section of the island that is similar to a bluff, with a sheer drop into the sea. The waves are crashing against the rocky walls and suddenly Sandro comes into frame. He first looks down at the sea, then turns and looks off in the distance diagonally past the camera, before going back the way he came and continuing his search. What comes next is my favorite shot. The camera begins a slow crawl upwards, panning from the sea, up one of the bluffs, up the rocky and grassy landscape of the island, and further up still, until the ground above the bluff is at the bottom of the frame and the clouds are at the top. In the middle of the frame, there is nothing. It was at this moment that I was certain we would never see Anna again. I paused the film and took a moment to process the beauty and simplicity of the shot I had just witnessed. Within a matter of seconds, I knew this was my favorite camera sequence in all of cinema.