Michelangelo Antonioni, the master Italian film director who depicted the emotional alienation of Italy’s postwar generation in films such as “L’Avventura” and “La Notte” but achieved his greatest popular success with “Blowup,” an enigmatic tale set in “swinging” London of the 1960s, has died. He was 94.
Antonioni, who suffered a debilitating stroke in 1985 that severely limited his ability to speak, died Monday evening at his home in Rome, according to Italy’s ANSA news agency.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano said Tuesday that Italy had “lost one of cinema’s greatest protagonists and one of the greatest explorers of expression in the 20th century.”
For many American filmgoers, Antonioni might be best remembered for his English-language films “Blowup,” “Zabriskie Point” and “The Passenger.”
“Blowup,” his 1966 film about a London fashion photographer (David Hemmings) who discovers that he inadvertently might have captured a murder in a park while surreptitiously shooting pictures of a tryst between a young woman (Vanessa Redgrave) and an older man, was his first English-language film.
An imaginary tennis game played by white-faced mimes at the end of the film, which film scholars say symbolizes the difference between illusion and reality and whether a murder even occurred, has been described as “one of the defining moments of 1960s cinema.”
The film earned Antonioni Oscar nominations for best director and screenplay.
A former film critic and documentarian, Antonioni had a decade of feature filmmaking behind him when he achieved international renown in 1960 with “L’Avventura (“The Adventure”). It is the first in a loose trilogy of acclaimed films that established the director-screenwriter as one of the world’s most enigmatic and innovative moviemakers: one known for his stylistic, technical and thematic risk-taking.
The son of middle-class landowners, Antonioni was born Sept. 29, 1912, in Ferrara, Italy. He demonstrated his creative side at an early age, designing puppets and building sets when he was 10.
Antonioni graduated from the University of Bologna in 1935. But while earning his degree in economics and commerce, he wrote stories and plays, co-founded a student theater company and wrote film reviews for the local newspaper.
After moving to Rome in 1939, Antonioni worked for the film journal Cinema and attended the renowned film school Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia.
In 1995, Antonioni received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement
He is survived by his wife, Enrica Fico.
