Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI, was an Italian film director, screenwriter, editor, and short story writer. Best known for his "trilogy on modernity and its discontents"—L'Avventura, La Notte, and L'Eclisse—Antonioni "redefined the concept of narrative cinema" and challenged traditional approaches to storytelling, realism, drama, and the world at large. He produced "enigmatic and intricate mood pieces" and rejected action in favor of contemplation, focusing on image and design over character and story. His films defined a "cinema of...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth29 September 1912
CityFerrara, Italy
CountryItaly
Michelangelo Antonioni quotes about
I may film scenes I had no intention of filming; things suggest themselves on location, and we improvise. I try not to think about it too much. Then, in the cutting room, I take the film and start to put it together, and only then do I begin to get an idea of what it is about.
I think people talk too much; that's the truth of the matter. I do. I don't believe in words. People use too many words and usually wrongly. I am sure that in the distant future people will talk much less and in a more essential way. If people talk a lot less, they will be happier. Don't ask me why.
When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it.
But, you know, Cronaca isn't more innovative than what comes after.
I mean simply to say that I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible. I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see them in empty space.
The moment always comes when, having collected one's ideas, certain images, an intuition of a certain kind of development- whether psychological or material- one must pass on to the actual realization.
I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules.
I am neither a sociologist nor a politician. All I can do is imagine for myself what the future will be like.
Normally, however, I try to avoid repetitions of any shot.
You cannot penetrate events with reportage.
In Blow-up I used my head instinctively!
Scientific man is already on the moon, and yet we are still living with the moral concepts of Homer.
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.
You know what I would like to do: make a film with actors standing in empty space so that the spectator would have to imagine the background of the characters.