L'Avventura

Film Analysis L’Avventura

Michelangelo Antonioni’s film, L’Avventura is a cinematic masterpiece that defined Antonioni’s career in film, and proved to be revolutionary. The film created a new cinematic language through the beauty of its images, proving that cinema was not just an entertainment medium, but that it could also be viewed as a form of art. The story is told to the audience through the use of complex imagery, providing an aesthetic representation of the plot. Antonioni’s choice to abandon a conventional plot is a direct result of his intent to express and compliment the raw emotions of the characters through this aesthetically remarkable composition.

After the opening credits, the first scene fades in from black, revealing a long shot of Anna walking through a Roman arch in the villa. The next cut reveals a long shot of Anna’s father aligned with a solid dome in the distance, and other architecture from the past. As Anna crosses through the shot from right to left, the landscape reveals a row of modern condominiums. The contrasting architecture in the opening scene of L’Avventura represents the old world and the new world, which becomes a major theme for the film. The spatial content of this scene is not metaphoric or a symbolic in any sense. Instead, by using this concrete example of old and new, the background in this scene, in essence, narrates the actions of the characters throughout the film. This provides the film with an aesthetic density. The various arches throughout the film follow the same formula. Instead of symbolizing transition, they cinematically capture the transition that takes place within the film and within the characters themselves.

Much of the dialogue in the scenes to follow express the self absorbed, isolated, nature of these characters. During the next scene, Anna goes into the apartment where Sandro has been waiting. Once in the room, the camera pans to the right as she walks towards the window, and opens the doors. Here, she frames herself in the open window. Anna’s longing for isolation and escape is clearly depicted in this long shot. The next cut reverts back to Sandro, where his playfulness is displayed, and he too takes a pose, like art sculpture in a museum. After little to no dialogue, Anna takes off her clothes, and uses sex as a means of a pleasurable escape from the serious issues that the two characters have with each other. An abstract close-up of the couple engaging in sex captures Anna and Sandro falling in and out of the frame. This provides the film with yet another aesthetic representation of the plot. This shot ties the unbalanced composition of the cinematography to the unbalanced relationship between these two characters.

After Anna’s disappearance on the volcanic island off the coast of Sicily, Claudia’s transition into Anna’s character begins. After Claudia picks at Anna’s clothes, an over the shoulder medium shot shows the character opening a door to reveal a beautiful landscape shot of the sunlight and the ocean. No dialogue takes place. Only the ambience