Michelangelo Antonioni

He attended the University of Bologna where he wrote for the theater and film criticism for the journal, Cinema. He later attended film school at the Centro Sperimentale.

Antonioni began his work in film as a scenarist and assistant director in the early 1940's, and in the later half of that decade, when neo-realism first began to emerge in Italian cinema, he made six distinctive short documentaries. During the war, he managed to shoot his first film, a documentary entitled Gente del Po (People of the River Po) (1943), about the region of his birth, in an unmistakeably neo-realist style. The plain of the Po valley, grey and desolate, is an integral part of the drama.

When Antonioni was 38 years old, he made his first fiction feature, Cronaca di un Amore (Story of a Love Affair, 1950), in which he began to depart from the neo-realism. He used professional actors in middle-class settings and portrayed his characters with less social emphasis, in a more personal and psychological manner, stressing what he later descrived as "spiritual aridity" and "moral coldness." Before making Cronanca di un Amore, Antonioni had been scriptwriter to Rossellini.

He followed Cronaca di un Amore with four other films in the mid-1950's, the best of these being Le Amiche (The Girl Friends, 1955) and Il Grido (The Outcry, 1957).

Antonioni did not come to international prominence until 1960 when he made his masterpiece, L'Avventura (The Adventure). At its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, the film was received poorly by some critics who did not appreciate the film due to its slow pace. They booed and continuously yelled "Cut!," asserting that Antonioni was inept at editing. Despite these few negative reactions, Antonioni became a favorite among critics as a result of L'Avventura (the film placed second in 1962 on the Sight and Sound critics poll for the 10 best films in history but has since fallen down the list, dropping off completely in 1992).

L'Avventura was only the first part of a projected trilogy, and it was quickly followed by the second and third parts, La Notte (The Night, 1961) and L'Eclisse (Eclipse, 1962), along with his first color film, Red Desert (1964). After Red Desert, Antonioni began to make films in other countries. His first film abroad was Blow-Up (1966), which was made in Britain, based on a short story by Julio Cortazar. The film was internationally an enormous commercial success, one that Antonioni was never to repeat. After Blow-Up, he made Zabriskie Point (1970) in the United States and The Passenger (1975), which starred Jack Nicholson, in Africa and England.

In March of 1995, Antonioni won a special Academy Award for his lifetime achievement in film.