words by antonioni [转自网络]

张研

Colloquo con Michelangelo Antonioni<br>June 1958<br>Blanco e Nero<br><br>The technique I use (which is an instinctive one, for I do not decide a priori to shoot in any given way) seems to me to be directly tied up with my desire to follow the characters in order to unveil their most hidden thoughts. I may perhaps be deceiving myself in thinking that one can make them speak by following them with the camera. But I believe it is much more cinematographic to try to catch a character\'s thoughts by showing his reactions, whatever they may be, than to wrap the whole thing up in a speech, than to resort to what practically amounts to an explanation.<br><br>One of my preoccupations when I am shooting is that of following the character until I feel the need to let him go . . . I follow him not because of any theoretical notion, but because it seems to me important to catch those of the character\'s thoughts which appear-but are not at all-the least significant. .<br><br>When everything has been said, when the scene appears to be finished, there is what comes afterwards. It seems to me important to show the character, back and front, just at that moment-a gesture or an attitude that illuminates all that has happened, and what results from it.<br><br>It is in this spirit that I try to shoot the scenes of my films. I do not read what I am about to shoot each morning-I know the scenario by heart; thus I do not need to study it every morning at my desk. When I arrive at the studio, I ask everyone to leave for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes, the time required to try out the camera movements, to soak myself in them, to run through the sequence from a technical point of view. I do not shoot several times over, I do not change, I have no doubts about the position of the camera. Obviously, these are problems I set myself, but I resolve them at the beginning and then do not change afterwards.<br><br>Naturally I cannot work out camera movements at my desk, I have to think about them at the studio. . . . I always use a dolly, even when I am going to shoot an important scene (besides, I prefer vertical rather than horizontal movements). I follow the characters with the movements I have already worked out, and I correct them later if need be. I compose my scenes from behind the camera. Certain directors-for instance, Rene Clair-work in a different way. I do not say that theirs is not a legitimate system, but I cannot understand how they manage to shoot from little designs and plans they have drawn on paper ahead of time. I feel that the composition is a plastic, figurative element which ought to be seen in its exact dimensions.<br><br><br>- - -<br><br>It is obvious, and this is a general truth, that everything which has happened to me in life has impelled me to create certain stories rather than certain others. That much I can say with confidence, but it is impossible for me to give an exact account of the cinematographic or extra-cinematographic experiences that have contributed to my development. It is difficult to say how a story is born, how I got the ideas for Cronaca di un Amore and Il Grido. Films are born in me like poems in the heart of a poet (I do not mean to pass for a poet, I am only making a comparison).<br><br>Words, images, concepts force themselves onto the mind, they are all mixed together, and the end result is a poem. And so it is, I believe, With films. Everything we read, feel, think and see takes on concrete form in images at a given moment, and from these images the story is born.<br><br>It is often real incidents that suggest stories, but this has happened to me only rarely-in fact just once, with I Vinti.<br><br>I could not really say whether I am a neorealistic director. It is not true that neorealism is finished; it is evolving. A movement, an intellectual current, is never finished so long as it has not been replaced by a later development. There is never a gap in the continuity.<br><br>The neorealism of the postwar period, when reality itself was so searing and immediate, attracted attention to the relationship existing between the character and surrounding reality. It was precisely this relationship which was important and which created an appropriate cinema. Now, however, when for better or for worse reality has been normalized once again, it seems to me more interesting to examine what remains in the characters from their past experiences.<br><br>This is why it no longer seems to me important to make a film about a man who has had his bicycle stolen. That is to say, about a man whose importance resides (primarily and exclusively) in the fact that he has had his bicycle stolen. We do not seek to find out whether he is timid, whether he loves his wife, whether he is jealous, etc. We are not interested in these aspects of his character, because the only thing that counts is the theft of the bicycle which prevents him from working, and so we must follow the man on his search.<br><br>Now that we have eliminated the problem of the bicycle (I am speaking metaphorically), it is important to see what there is in the mind and in the heart of this man who has had his bicycle stolen, how he has adapted himself, what remains in him of his past experiences, of the war, of the period after the war, of everything that has happened to him in our country-a country which, like so many others, has emerged from an important and grave adventure.<br><br><br>- - -<br><br>The problem that arises most often for a director is that of creating a harmonious whole while using actors of widely differing origins. One must never lose sight of what one wants in the long run. A foreign actor is chosen because he has the face of the character one wishes. If the character is Italian, the actor will become Italian. There is not a great deal to be done about it either he does become Italian or he doesn\'t. The problem is to get rid of everything about him that suggests his native country, to give him Italian gestures, Italian behavior, an Italian walk. This is an instinctive thing, it has to be polished up little by little.<br><br>I could give you many instances of occasions when I had to resolve serious problems in my relationships with actors. I should like at least to mention one of them in order to return to the question of intelligence in actors: the case of my relationship with Betsy Blair [who plays Elvia in Il Grido]. She is a very intelligent actress, who demands very elaborate explanations. I must confess that it was with her that I spent one of the most agonizing times in my career as a director; it occurred when she wanted to read the scenario of 11 Grido with me. She wanted me to unveil the meaning behind every speech-which was, of course, impossible.<br><br>Speeches are the fruit of the instinct; they are suggested by imagination, not by reason, and they often have no other reason for existing than the need felt by the author for\' just those words and no others. This is a perfectly natural fact, inherent in the nature of literary creation, and for that very reason often inexplicable.<br><br>Thus I had to invent purely imaginary explanations for Betsy Blair, which corresponded in absolutely no way with what I meant to say in the film, and at the same time try to understand what she \'wanted to know. Only thus could I try to bring her to the point where she could play the character better than if I had explained it to her.<br><br>With Steve Cochran [who plays Aldo] I had to use the opposite procedure. He had come to Italy thinking - who can say why? - that he might try to become a director, which was quite absurd. And so he refused from time to time to do something, the necessary motivation for which, so he said, he could not feel. Thus I was forced to direct him with gimmicks, never letting him understand what I expected of him, but working with methods the existence of which he never suspected.<br><br><br>Art and Man<br><br>[Reply to a questionnaire on neorealism, originally published in Bianco e Nero, September 1958; republished in different form as part of "Fare un film e per me vivere" in Cinema Nuovo, March-April 1959]<br><br>Making a film is not like writing a book. Flaubert said that living was not his trade; his trade was writing. Making a film, however, is living; at least it is for me. (I draw this flattering comparison, of course, only to give some tone to my remarks.) My personal life is not interrupted during the shooting of a film; indeed, it is then that it becomes most intense. What is one\'s compulsion to pour all the wine of one\'s personal life into the cask of the film, if not a way of participating in life, of adding something worthwhile (or at least intended to be so) from one\'s personal heritage - the richness or the poverty of which it is up to others to assess?<br><br>Since a film is a public spectacle, it is obvious that one\'s own affairs cease to be private, and they too become public property. For my own part, today, I have a clearly defined feeling on this subject (by today I mean in this postwar period, so full of disturbing facts, so thick with anxieties and fears about the destiny of the whole world). It is my feeling that to go on ignoring certain subjects is a distinct error, precisely because we are men of the cinema and thus exposed to the public view. We no longer have the right to allow it to be believed that our private lives continue as they once did. I should like to borrow a quotation from Giraudoux that I read in a newspaper article: "There are moments when one does not speak of trees, because one is angry with trees:\' And indeed, the least worthy thing an intellectual can do when faced with the grave events that trouble the world is to go on concerning himself with subjects that distract attention from the seriousness of those events.<br><br>No one talked of neorealism during the war, nor even during the period immediately after the war. Searing reality gave birth to a movement which the critics later christened "neorealism." I believe that we are today, mutatis mutandis, living in an identical climate. I do not know what sort of films we will be able to make, but I want to find out. I feel that there is one thing that we absolutely must d defend the principle of intelligence within the heart of the real. And reject the mental laziness and conformity of the many.<br><br>I know that by speaking in this way I lay myself open to the accusation of alarmism. It is a fashionable kind of accusation. It is also true that in Italy, where public opinion is nonexistent, no one in recent times has been afraid of war. It is also true that in France the most amazing sort of resignation has prevailed, despite the high intellectual level of that nation. But these are, at most, arguments in my favor. In any case, there is more than simply a moral commitment behind my remarks. I think that we men of the cinema must always find inspiration in our own era. Not so much to express and interpret it in its harshest and most tragic aspects, as to pick up from it the echoes it produces within us so that we, men of the cinema, may be sincere and coherent within ourselves, and honest and courageous with others. This is the one and only way to be alive. Intelligence which evades its responsibilities at a given moment is a contradiction in terms.<br><br><br>ENTRETIEN <br>by Michelangelo Antonioni <br>October 1960<br>Cahiers du Cinema<br><br>I am not a theoretician of the cinema. If you ask me what directing is, the first answer that comes into my head is: I don\'t know. The second: All my opinions on the subject are in my films. Among other things, I am an opponent of any separation of the various phases of the work. Such separation has an exclusively practical value. It is valuable for all those who participate in the work - except for the director, if he happens to be both author and director at once. To speak of directing as one of the phases in this work is to engage in a theoretical discussion which seems to me opposed to that unity of the whole to which every artist is committed during his work. Isn\'t it during the shooting that the final version of the scenario is arrived at? And, during the shooting, isn\'t everything automatically brought into question - from the theme to the dialogue itself, the real merit of which is never revealed until it is heard in the mouths of the actors?<br><br>Of course 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. In the cinema, as in the other arts, this is the most delicate moment - the moment when the poet or writer makes his first mark on the page, the painter on his canvas, when the director arranges his characters in their setting, makes them speak and move, establishes, through the compositions of his various images, a reciprocal relationship between persons and things, between rhythm of the dialogue and that of the whole sequence, makes the movement of the camera fit in with the psychological situation. But the most crucial moment of all comes when the director gathers from all the people and from everything around him every possible suggestion, in order that his work may acquire a more spontaneous cast, may become more personal and, we might even say - in the broadest sense - more autobiographical.<br><br>Each stage in the creation of a film is of equal importance. It is not true that it is possible to establish a clear distinction between them. They all enter into the final synthesis. Thus it may happen that, during the working-out of the theme, a particular kind of shot might be decided upon - a traveling shot, for example; during the shooting, a character or a situation might be changed; or during the dubbing, one or more speeches might even be altered. For me, from the moment when the first, still unformed, idea comes into my head until the projection of the rushes, the process of making a film constitutes a single piece of work. I mean that I cannot become interested in anything, day or night, which is not that film. Let no one imagine that this is a romantic pose - on the contrary. I become relatively more lucid, more attentive, and almost feel as if I were intelligent and more ready to understand.<br><br>No one can fail to see that the shooting script has become less detailed than it was formerly, less detailed even than it was a few years ago. The technical directions have almost entirely disappeared, along with the right-hand column, the dialogue. In my own scripts, I have got to the point of leaving out the numbers by which we used to indicate each scene. (The script girl is the only person who uses them, because they facilitate her work.) And this, because it seems to me more logical to divide the scenes at the same time as you shoot them. Here we already have a way of improvising.<br><br>But there are others. I rarely feel the desire to reread a scene the day before the shooting. Sometimes I arrive at the place where the work is to be done and I do not even know what I am going to shoot. This is the system I prefer: to arrive at the moment when shooting is about to begin, absolutely unprepared, virgin. I often ask to be left alone on the spot for fifteen minutes or half an hour and I let me thoughts wander freely. I keep myself from doing anything but looking. I am helped by the things that surround me; things, perhaps even more than with people, though it is the latter that interests me more.<br><br>In any case, I find that it is very useful to look over the location and to feel out the atmosphere while waiting for the actors. It may happen that the images before my eyes coincide with those I had in my mind, but this is not frequently the case. It more often happens that there is something insincere or artificial about the image one has thought of. Here again is another way of improvising.<br><br>But this is not at all. It also sometimes happens that in trying out a scene I abruptly change my mid. Or that I change it gradually, as the camera crews sets up the lights and as I watch the actors move and speak under the arcs. In my opinion, it is only then that one can make a proper judgment of a scene and correct it.<br><br><br>- - -<br><br>I attribute enormous importance to the sound track, and I always try to take the greatest care with it. And when I say the sound track, I am talking about the natural sounds, the background noises rather than the music. For L\'Avventura, I had an enormous number of sound effects recorded: every possible quality of the sea, more and less stormy, the breakers, the rumble of the waves in the grottoes. I had a hundred reels of tape filled with nothing but sound effects. Then I selected those that you hear on the film\'s sound track. For me, this is the true music, the music that can be adapted to images. Conventional music only rarely melts into the image; more often it does nothing but put the spectator to sleep, and it prevents him from appreciating what he is seeing. After long consideration, I am relatively opposed to "musical commentary," at least in its present form. I detect something old and rancid in it. The ideal solution would be to create a sound track out of noises and to call on an orchestra leader to conduct it. But then, wouldn\'t the only orchestra leader capable of doing that be the director himself?<br><br><br>- - -<br><br>The principle behind the cinema, like that behind all the arts, rests on a choice. It is, in Camus\' words, "the revolt of the artist against the real." If one holds to this principle, what difference can it make by what means reality is revealed? Whether the author of a film seizes on the real in a novel, in a newspaper story or in his own imagination, what counts is the way he isolates it, stylizes it, makes it his own. The plot of Crime and Punishment, apart from the form given it by Dostoyevsky, is a perfectly ordinary plot. One could make a very beautiful or a very ugly film out of it. This is why I have nearly always written original stories for my films. Once it happened that I fell in love at first sight with a novella by Pavese. While working on it I realized that I liked it for quite different reasons from those which had made me think of it for the film. And the pages that had interested me most were those that lent themselves least to film adaptation. Then again, it is very difficult to get one\'s bearings in someone else\'s story that one has clearly in mind. So, in the long run, I find it much simpler to invent the story out of a whole cloth. A director is a man, therefore he has ideas; he is also an artist, therefore he has imagination. Whether they are good or bad, it seems to me that I have an abundance of stories to tell. And the things I see, the things that happen to me, continually renew the supply.<br><br><br>L\'Avventura statement at Cannes<br>by Michelangelo Antonioni<br>1960<br><br>There exists in the world today a very serious break between science on the one hand, always projecting into the future and each day ready to deny what it was the day before, if that will enable it to advance its conquest of the future even by a fraction. . . . between science on the one hand and a fixed, stiff morality on the other, the faults of which are perfectly apparent to man, but which still continues to stand.<br><br>From the moment. he is born, man is burdened with a heavy load of feelings. I do not say these feelings are old or out of date, but they are entirely unsuited to his needs; they condition him without aiding him, fetter him without ever showing him a way out of his difficulties.<br><br>And yet man has not succeeded-so it seems-in unburdening himself of this inheritance. He acts, he hates, he suffers, impelled by moral forces and myths which were already old in the time of Homer. Which is an absurdity in our day, on the eve of man\'s first journey to the moon. But that is the way things are!<br><br>Man, then, is ready to unburden himself of his technical or scientific knowledge when it proves false. Never before has science been so humble, so ready to retract its statements. But in the realm of the emotions, a total conformity reigns.<br><br>During the last few years, we have examined, studied the emotions as much as possible, to the point of exhaustion. This is all we have been able to do. But we have not been able to find any new emotions, nor even to get an inkling of a solution to the problem.<br><br>I do not pretend to be able, nor would it be possible for me, to find the solution. I am not a moralist.<br><br>My film L\'Avventura is neither a denunciation nor a sermon. It is a story told in images, and I hope people will be able to see in it not the birth of a delusory emotion but the method by which it is possible to delude oneself in one\'s feelings. For, I repeat, we make use of an aging morality, of outworn myths, of ancient conventions. And we do this in full consciousness of what we are doing. Why do we respect such a morality?<br><br>The conclusion which my characters reach is not that of moral anarchy. They arrive, at best, at a sort of reciprocal pity. That too, you will tell me, is old. But what else is there left to us?<br><br>For example, what do you think this eroticism that has invaded literature and the performing arts really is? It is a symptom, and perhaps the easiest symptom to discern, of the illness from which the emotions are suffering.<br><br>We would not be erotic, that is, the sick men of Eros, if Eros himself were in good health. And when I say in good health, I mean just that: adequate to man\'s condition and needs.<br><br>Thus, there is discomfort. And, as always happens when he feels discomfort, man reacts; but he reacts badly, and he is unhappy about it.<br><br>In L\'Avventura, the catastrophe is an erotic impulse of this order: cheap, useless, unfortunate. And it is not enough to know that this is the way things are. For the hero (what a ridiculous word!) of my film is perfectly aware of the crude nature, the uselessness, of the erotic impulse that gets the better of him. But this is not enough.<br><br>Here then is another fallen myth, the illusion that it is enough to know oneself, to analyze oneself minutely in the most secret places of the soul.<br><br>No, that is not enough. Each day we live through an "adventure," whether it be a sentimental, a moral or an ideological one.<br><br>But if we know that the old tables of the law no longer offer anything but words too often read out and repeated, why do we remain faithful to those tables? There is a stubbornness here that strikes me as pathetic.<br><br>Man, who has no fear of the scientific unknown, is frightened by the moral unknown.<br><br>If you have an enemy, do not try to beat him up, do not insult him, do not curse him, do not humiliate him, do not hope that he will have an automobile accident. Wish, quite simply, that he may remain without work. That is the most terrible hardship by which a man can be struck. Any vacation, even the most marvellous of vacations, has meaning only if it forms a counterweight to one\'s fatigue.<br><br>I consider that I am especially privileged in this matter - I do work that I enjoy. I do not know many Italians who can say as much.<br><br>That work is the most important thing in my life. It would be superfluous to ask what it gives me. It gives me everything. It gives me the possibility to express myself, to communicate with others. Considering the difficulty I have in speaking, I would feel as if I were nonexistent without the cinema.<br><br><br>Various Interview &amp; Essay Excerpts<br><br>Fabio Rinaudo, "Foyer-Antonioni," Croniche del Cinema e della Teleolrione, No.7, December 1955<br><br>Dear Rinaudo, you ask me what I want to do in the cinema, or what I want to say, or what I want to be. I thought I could answer you. And yet, on the contrary, I have been sitting here in front of my typewriter for a half hour now, and every time I strike the keys and form a word, I feel as if I were playing a role. That is just it.<br><br>laying a role I have not learned. It is not only unattractive to talk about oneself, it is difficult as well. Then, perhaps it is entirely impossible to foresee the ideas and the impulses we will have in the future, and the experiments we will make. We live so tightly bound up in reality,. and reality changes so quickly. The turris eburnea has crumbled away. The greatest effort is the effort to be oneself. That is to say, to make films which have some meaning in one\'s personal life, without straying into the confessional. This is the only way they can have meaning for others. You have asked me, after all, to state a poetic theory. And I answer that if I were sufficiently sure of being an artist to give a reply, then I should have closed myself off forever from the possibility of truly becoming one some day.<br><br><br>- - -<br><br>Enrico Roda, "37 Domande a Michelangelo Antonioni," Tempo, Milan, July 4, 1957<br><br>Q: What is the problem that lies closest to your heart?<br><br>A: Can there exist a saint without God?<br><br>Q: In a world without film, what would you have made?<br><br>A: Film.<br><br>Q: To what do you attribute your present activity?<br><br>A: To film.<br><br>Q: What do you feel is your principle fault, as a man?<br><br>A: Modesty.<br><br>Q: And as an artist?<br><br>A: It takes courage to write: "As an artist, I feel that. . ." Courage I don\'t have.<br><br><br>- - -<br><br>"Questions a Antonioni," Positif, July 1959<br><br>. . . Reality changes so rapidly that if one theme is not dealt with, another presents itself. Allowing one\'s attention to be attracted by each little thing has become a vice of the imagination.<br><br>All one has to do is to keep one\'s eyes open: everything becomes full of meaning; everything cries out to be interpreted, reproduced. Thus, there is no one particular film that I would like to make; there is one for every single theme I perceive. And I am excited by these themes, day and night. However, opportunity and other practical considerations limit and direct the choice. . . .<br><br>I never begin with an idea in order to end with a story. The majority of the stories that have taken form in my hands have come from outside, from germs which I have, as it were, breathed from the air. It can happen that films acquire meanings, that is to say, the meanings appear afterwards, which is natural enough. I am a man, and, of course, I am not without my own opinions. I do wish to say that suicide is not one of my preoccupations; it is only one among the very many possible solutions to the problem of life. A dreary solution, certainly, but as legitimate as any other. If life is a gift, then so must be the freedom we have to deprive ourselves of it.<br><br><br>- - -<br><br>L\'Express, September 8, 1960<br><br>Q: Why do you use only natural settings?<br><br>A: Because they stimulate me more. It is the same as it might I be with a painter to whom someone said, "Here is a wall which I is to be covered with frescoes, so many yards long and so many yards high." These are the kinds of limitations which aid rather than fetter the imagination.<br><br>Q: Sometimes you transform your natural setting, you give it an appearance it does not actually possess, you work over it, you select it . . .<br><br>A: Yes, that\'s true. But you are describing a temptation I have every time I go anywhere~ to an office or to a private home. Sometimes it even arises in my own house. Someone comes to see me and suddenly, during the conversation, I begin to feel uneasy; it is because I feel that we are badly placed in the room, we are badly seated. He is on a sofa, I am next to him, while I ought to be seated opposite him. And instead of a wall with a picture on it behind the back of the man I am speaking to, I should like to have a window, perhaps even so that I could distract myself by looking out. When I shoot a film, that is all I am doing. I arrange things and people the way they ought to be.<br><br><br>- - -<br><br>L\'Express, February 28, 1961<br><br>The film actor ought not to understand, he ought to be. One might argue that in order to be, he needs to understand This is not true. If it were true, the most intelligent actor would be the best actor. Reality often proves the contrary.<br><br>When an actor is intelligent, the effort he has to make to be a good actor is three times as great, for he wants to get to the bottom of everything, even the finest shades of meaning, and in trying to do so he trespasses on ground that is not his own-in fact, he creates obstacles for himself.<br><br>His reflections on the character he is playing, which, according to popular theory, should lead him to an exact characterization, end by hamstringing his work and depriving him of naturalness.<br><br>The actor should arrive on the set in a virgin state. The more intuitive his work, the more spontaneous it will be.<br>The actor ought not to work on the psychological level but on the level of the imagination. And the imagination is lit up spontaneously; it has no electric buttons to press.<br><br>It is not possible to have true collaboration between actor and director. They work on two quite different levels. The director owes the actor no explanations except general ones about the character and the film. It is dangerous to go into details. Sometimes the actor and the director necessarily become enemies. The director must not compromise himself by revealing his intentions. The actor is a kind of Trojan horse within the director\'s citadel.<br><br>My favorite method consists in bringing about certain results by a certain amount of secret labor. I mean, by stimulating the actor to realize possibilities which lie in him but of whose existence he is himself unaware; by exciting not his intelligence but his instinct; by giving him not justifications but illuminations. One may even go so far as to cheat with the actor: to ask him for one thing in order to obtain another. The director ought to know how to discern and to separate the good and the bad, the useful and the superfluous, in what the actor has to offer.<br><br>The most important quality in a director is the ability to see. It is also valuable in directing actors. The actor is one of the elements in the image. A modification of his pose or gesture modifies the image itself. A speech which the actor makes in profile gives a different weight from one spoken full-face. A speech made with the camera placed overhead has a different value from a speech made with the camera below.<br><br>These are only a few very simple observations, but they prove what the director is: the man who composes the scene, who has to decide upon and then judge the actor\'s pose, gestures and movements.<br><br>The same is true for the speaking of the dialogue. The voice is one "noise" mingled with other noises, and the relationship among them is fully understood only by the director. Thus it is up to him to establish the balance, or imbalance, between various noises.<br><br>One has to listen to an actor for a long time, even when he is merely making mistakes. One has to allow him his mistakes and still try to understand how it may be possible to use his errors in the film; for his errors are, at that particular moment, the most spontaneous thing he has to offer.<br><br>To explain a scene or a piece of dialogue is to treat all the actors in the same way, for the scene and the dialogue do not change. All actors, however, require special treatment. Hence the need to seek out other methods. In short, the problem consists in leading the actor little by little into the right path, by means of apparently innocent corrections which must never arouse his suspicions.<br><br>This method of working may seem paradoxical, but it is the only one that enables the director to obtain a satisfactory result with amateur actors, actors whom, as we say, we "pick up off the streets." Neorealism taught us this. But it is also applicable to professional actors, even to the greatest among them.<br><br>I wonder whether there exists a really great film actor; what a great film actor would be like. The actor who thinks too much is troubled by one ambition: to be great. This is a terrible obstacle, and it carries with it the risk that his playing may be deprived of much of its truthfulness.<br><br>I do not think I have two legs. I have them. If the actor seeks to understand, he thinks. If he thinks, it will be difficult for him to find the power to be humble. And humility constitutes the best single point of departure in any attempt to find the truth.<br><br>Sometimes an actor is intelligent enough to overcome his limitations and discover for himself the proper path to follow-that is, he uses his own intelligence in order to apply the method I have described.<br><br>When this happens, the actor has the qualities of a director.

[此贴子已经被作者于2005-11-14 23:40:56编辑过]

陈卫

<>我只看懂米开朗基罗·安东尼奥尼，以及其他几个如：I、by、of、a、this、is、in、the、and、for。</P>
<>所以请顾耀峰翻译一下，最近他学英语蛮勤的，在群里都经常用英语说话。</P>

张研

呵呵,我英语很烂的,但关于偶像的东西非看不可,带着词典上阵

张研

<>再加俩个(自己还没看呢:</P>
<>A talk with Michelangelo Antonioni on his work<BR><BR>Excerpted from Blanco E Nero, 1961. This translation first appeared in considerably longer form in Film Culture, Spring 1962.<BR><BR>The following article is based on the transcript of an open discussion that took place at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome on March 16, 1961, after a retrospective screening of Antonioni\'s films for students and faculty members, arranged by the Centro\'s director, Leonardo Fioravanti. It originally appeared in the school\'s monthly periodical, Blanco E Nero.<BR><BR>ANTONIONI: Someone once said that words, more than anything else, serve to hide our thoughts. I am a filmmaker who began making feature films about ten years ago, and who forced himself to follow a certain direction, to maintain a certain coherence.<BR><BR>Now, if you ask me what were the motives and the reasons that led me to make films in this particular manner, I think I can say today that I was motivated by two considerations. (And bear this clearly in mind, these statements are being made ex post facto and not a priori; that is, I had no conception of them until I actually became involved in making feature-length dramatic films.) The first had to do with those crucial events that were taking place around us immediately after the war, and even later, in 1950, when I first started working in films; the second was simply a technical matter more closely related to cinematography per se with reference to the first consideration, I will most certainly say that as far as their particular period was concerned, all those so-called Italian neo-realistic films, among which are some genuine masterpieces, were representative of the most authentic and the most valid cinematic expression possible, and they were also the most appropriate. After all, it was a period in which everything happening around us was quite abnormal; reality was a burning issue. . . . It really wasn\'t necessary to know the protagonist\'s inner thoughts, his personality, or the intimate relationship between him and his wife; all this could very well be ignored. The important thing was to establish his relationship with society. That was the primary concern of the neo-realist films made at that time.<BR><BR>However, when I started making films, things were somewhat different, and my approach therefore was also different.. . . . Consequently, I was forced to stop and consider what subject matter was worth examining at that particular moment; what was really happening, what was the true state of things, what ideas were really being thought. And it seemed to me that perhaps it was no longer so important, as I said before, to examine the relationship between the individual and his environment, as it was to examine the individual himself, to look inside the individual and see, after all he had been through (the war, the immediate post-war situation, all the events that were currently taking place and which were of sufficient gravity to leave their mark upon society and the individual), out of all this, to see what remained inside the individual.<BR><BR>And so I began with Cronaca di un Amore, in which I analyzed the condition of spiritual aridity and a certain type of moral coldness in the lives of several individuals belonging to the upper middle-class strata of Milanese society. I chose this particular subject because it seemed to me there would be plenty of raw material worth examining in a situation that involved the morally empty existence of certain individuals who were only concerned with themselves, who had no interest whatsoever in anything or anyone outside of themselves, and who had no human quality strong enough to counterbalance this self-centeredness, no spark of conscience left which might still be ignited to revitalize themselves with a sense of the enduring validity of certain basic values. . . .<BR><BR>The second consideration that led me along this particular road was an ever-increasing feeling of boredom with the current standardized methods of filmmaking, and the conventional ways of telling a story. I was already instinctively aware of this feeling when I started working on my early documentaries. I felt a need to avoid certain established and proven techniques. I felt somewhat annoyed with all this sense of order, this systematic arrangement of the material. I felt a need to break it up a little. So, having a certain amount of material in my hands, I set out to do a montage that would be absolutely free, poetically free. And I began searching for expressive ways and means, not so much through an orderly arrangement of shots that would give the scene a clear-cut beginning and but more through a juxtaposition of separate isolated shots and sequences that had no immediate connection with one another but which definitely gave more meaning to the idea I had wanted to express and which were the very substance of the documentary itself; in the case of N.U. [Antonioni\'s second documentary], the life of street-cleaners in particular city.<BR><BR>When I was ready to start work on Cronaca di un Amore, I found myself with these observations already acquired, and with this basic experience already assimilated. So, when I used that particular technical approach which consisted of extremely long shots, of tracking and panning shots that followed the actors uninterruptedly I did it perhaps instinctively, but reflecting upon it now I can understand what led me to move in that particular direction.<BR><BR>In effect, I had the feeling that it wasn\'t quite right for me to abandon the actor at a time when, having just enacted an intensely dramatic scene, he was left alone by himself to face the after-effects of that particular scene and its traumatic moments. Undoubtedly those moments of emotional violence had had a meaningful effect upon the actor and had probably served to advance him one step further psychologically. So I felt it was essential for me to follow the actors with the camera a few moments after they had completed their performance of the written scene. And though this may have seemed pointless, it actually turned out that these moments were exactly those which offered me the best opportunity to select and utilize in the editing process certain spontaneous movements in their gestures and facial expressions that perhaps could not have been gotten in any other way. (Many times, of course, I had the camera follow the actors even without their being aware of it, that is, at a time when they had thought the shot was finished.) . . . I have always tried to fill the image with a greater suggestiveness - by composing the shot in a way that would assist me to say precisely what I intend, and at the same time to assist the actors to express exactly what they are required to express, and also to assist in establishing a working rapport between the actors and the background, that is, the activity going on behind them as they perform their particular scene.<BR><BR>So, film by film, I gradually began to divest myself of certain precious and professionalized techniques. However, I must say that I don\'t regret having had them, for without them perhaps I would not have been able to arrive finally at what I feel is a greater simplicity. Now I can actually permit myself to make some minor technical errors. And I do make them. In fact, sometimes I even do it on purpose, in order to obtain a greater degree of effectiveness. For example, certain unorthodox uses of "field" and "counterfield," certain errors regarding position or movement. Thus, I have rid myself of much unnecessary technical baggage, eliminating all the logical narrative transitions, all those connective links between sequences where one sequence served as a springboard for the one that followed.<BR><BR>The reason I did this was because it seemed to me - and of this I am firmly convinced - that cinema today should be tied to the truth rather than to logic. And the truth of our daily lives is neither mechanical, conventional, nor artificial, as stories generally are; and if films are made that way, they will show it. The rhythm of life is not made up of one steady beat; it is, instead, a rhythm that is sometimes fast, sometimes slow; it remains motionless for a while, then at the next moment it starts spinning around. There are times when it appears almost static, there are other times when it moves with tremendous speed, and I believe all this should go into the making of a film. I\'m not saying one should slavishly follow the day-to-day routine of life, but I think that through these pauses, through this attempt to adhere to a definite reality - spiritual, internal, and even moral - there springs forth what today is more and more coming to be known as modern cinema, that is, a cinema which is not so much concerned with externals as it is with those forces that move us to act in a certain way and not in another. Because the important thing is this: that our acts, our gestures, our words are nothing more than the consequences of our own personal situation in relation to the world around us. And for this reason it seems most important nowadays for us to make these so-called "literary" or "figurative" films. (Obviously, these terms are paradoxical, because I am absolutely sure that no such thing as a literary film or a figurative film exists. There exists only cinema, which incorporates the experience of all the other arts.) I think it is important at this time for cinema to turn toward this internal form of filmmaking, toward ways of expression that are absolutely free, as free as those of literature, as free as those of painting which has reached abstraction. Perhaps one day cinema will also achieve the heights of abstraction; perhaps cinema will even construct poetry, a cinematic poem in rhyme. Today this may seem absolutely unthinkable, and yet little by little, perhaps even the public will come to accept this kind of cinema. I say this because something of the sort is already taking shape, something which even the public is becoming aware of, and which I think is the reason why certain difficult films today are even achieving commercial success; they no longer remain in the film libraries, they no longer remain in the can. Instead, these films are reaching the great masses of people; in fact, I would say the more widespread they become, the more they are being understood.<BR><BR>ENZO BATTAGLIA (student in the Centro\'s directing class): to what extent [do] you plan your shots in advance and to what extent [do] you let yourself be influenced by the locale during the actual shooting?<BR><BR>ANTONIONI: I believe that in every form of artistic endeavor there is, first of all, a process of selection. This selection, as Camus once said, represents the artist\'s revolt against the forces of reality. So, whenever I\'m ready to start shooting a scene, I arrive on location in a fixed state of "virginity." I do this because I believe the best results are obtained by the "collision" that takes place between the environment in which the scene is to be shot and my own particular state of mind at that specific moment. I don\'t like to study or even think about a scene the night before, or even a few days before I actually start shooting it. And when I arrive there, I like to be completely alone, by myself, so that I can get to feel the environment without having anybody around me.<BR><BR>The most direct way to recreate a scene is to enter into a rapport with the environment itself; it\'s the simplest way to let the environment suggest something to us. Naturally, we are well acquainted with that area in advance, from the moment we have selected it, and therefore know that it offers the proper setting for the particular scene that\'s being shot. So it\'s only a matter of organizing and arranging the sequence, adapting it to the characteristic details of the surrounding environment. For this reason, I always remain alone in the area for about half an hour before I start shooting a scene, whether it\'s an indoor scene or an outdoor scene. Then I call in the actors and begin testing out the scene, because this too is a way of judging whether the scene works well or not. In fact, it\'s possible that a well-planned scene that was written while sitting behind a desk just won\'t work anymore once it\'s laid out in a particular locale, so it has to be changed or modified right then and there. Certain lines in the script might take on a different meaning once they\'re spoken against a wall or against a street background. And a line spoken by an actor in profile doesn\'t have the same meaning as one given full-face. Likewise, a phrase addressed to the camera placed above the actor doesn\'t have the same meaning it would if the camera were placed below him. But the director (and, I repeat, this is my own personal way of working) becomes aware of all these things only when he\'s on the scene and starts moving his actors around according to the first impressions that come to him from being there. So, it is extremely rare that I have the shots already fixed in my mind.<BR><BR>Obviously, in the various stages of preparing a film, a director creates images in his mind, but it is always dangerous to fall in love with these formulated images, because you eventually end up by running after images abstracted from the reality of the environment in which the scene is being shot and which are no longer the same as they first appeared while sitting behind the desk. It is really much better to adapt yourself to a new situation, and this is especially so since the nature of film scripts today, as you know, is becoming less and less detailed and less and less technical. They are the director\'s notes, and serve as a model on which one works during the course of the shooting.<BR><BR>So, as I was saying a short while ago, improvisation comes directly from the rapport that is established between the environment and ourselves, from the rapport between the director and the people around him, both the usual professional collaborators and the people who just happen to be gathered in that particular area when the scene is being shot. In other words, it is possible that the rapport itself could suggest the outcome of a scene; it could suggest the modification of a line; it could suggest so many things, inasmuch as it, too, is a method of improvisation. So, I repeat, for this reason I very seldom give much advance thought to the shot but prefer to think about it when I\'m there on the scene, and when I put my eye behind the camera.<BR><BR>ANTONIO PETRUCCI (member of the Centro faculty): If I\'m not mistaken, you once wrote somewhere that just before you start shooting a scene, you put yourself in a state somewhat similar to that of a writer in front of a blank page. And yet, undoubtedly, you must have some clue in mind as to what you want to do, just as a writer does; he doesn\'t sit down in front of a blank page unless he first has a definite idea of what he wants to write about.<BR><BR>ANTONIONI: No, but to continue your metaphor, you might say it\'s more like a writer who has an idea in mind as to what the house in which his character lives should be like, but has not yet begun to describe it. The creation doesn\'t take place until he describes it. Just as a scene in a film isn\'t depicted until the actual shooting of that scene takes place. Now there are more than a thousand ways an actor can enter a room and slap someone across the face. But there is only one right way; the other fifty thousand are all wrong.<BR><BR>It\'s a matter of finding the right way. . . . And I\'m pursued by doubts right up until that moment when I see the material on the Moviola screen. If every detail in the sequence were foreseen, well, then there wouldn\'t be any need at all for the dolly. Today a film is made while in progress; it is written right there on the spot, with the camera.<BR><BR>GIULIO CESARE CASTELLO (film critic and member of the Centro faculty): This method makes it necessary for you to shoot much more than the usual amount of footage. For example, how many feet of film did you shoot for L\'Avventura and La Notte?<BR><BR>ANTONIONI: Not so much. At least, not an extreme amount. For L\'Avventura, I shot about 170,000 feet; for La Notte about 140,000. So that\'s not much.<BR><BR>FIORAVANTI: In L\'Avventura, what are the parts that least satisfy you?<BR><BR>ANTONIONI: Well, for example, today I would do the entire party scene at the end in a different way. I don\'t mean it\'s not good as it is now: I mean I would just do it differently, perhaps worse, but in any case, differently. Then, certain scenes on the islands, for example, certain things with the father, certain things with the helicopter.<BR><BR>KRYSTYNA STYPULKOWSKA (student in the Centro\'s acting classes): First of all, I would like to speak about L\'Avventura, or more precisely, about the significance of its ending, its conception. I understand one should never put such questions to a director, and for this I apologize, but some of us have spent many hours, actually entire nights, in discussing this very problem because every one of us saw it in a different way. Some said it dealt with an almost Pascalian conception of life, which lays bare the solitude of man, his perpetual failure, his humiliation, his attempt to escape from a world in which there is no way out. Others found in this ending, however disconcerting, a conception of life that is perhaps more optimistic than any of your other films. What are your thoughts on the subject? My second question, though banal, interests me enormously inasmuch as I\'m a student of acting. I would like to know how you work with actors. To be more precise, do you change your methods according to the personality of the actors? For example, let\'s take three actresses who have worked with you and who are quite different from each other: Lucia Bose, Jeanne Moreau, and Monica Vitti.<BR><BR>ANTONIONI: I think it would be appropriate at this time to read you a statement I made at a press conference given for the opening of L\'Avventura at Cannes. It pretty well reflects my thoughts regarding the motives and the considerations that moved me to make L\'Avventura and, in a general way, sort of answers the young lad\'s question, which I will reply to more directly later on.<BR><BR>"Today the world is endangered by an extremely serious split between a science that is totally and consciously projected into the future, and a rigid and stereotyped morality which all of us recognize as such and yet sustain out of cowardice or sheer laziness. Where is this split most evident? What are its most obvious, its most sensitive, let us even say its most painful, areas? Consider the Renaissance man, his sense of joy, his fullness, his multifarious activities. They were men of great magnitude, technically able and at the same time artistically creative, capable of feeling their own sense of dignity, their own sense of importance as human beings, the Ptolemaic fullness of man. Then man discovered that his world was Copernican, an extremely limited world in an unknown universe. And today a new man is being born, fraught with all the fears and terrors and stammerings that are associated with a period of gestation. And what is even more serious, this new man immediately finds himself burdened with a heavy baggage of emotional traits which cannot exactly be called old and outmoded but rather unsuited and inadequate. They condition us without offering us any help, they create problems without suggesting any possible solutions. And yet it seems that man will not rid himself of this baggage. He reacts, he loves, he hates, he suffers under the sway of moral forces and myths which today, when we are at the threshold of reaching the moon, should not be the same as those that prevailed at the time of Homer, but nevertheless are.<BR><BR>Man is quick to rid himself of his technological and scientific mistakes and misconceptions. Indeed, science has never been more humble and less dogmatic than it is today. Whereas our moral attitudes are governed by an absolute sense of stultification. In recent years, we have examined these moral attitudes very carefully, we have dissected them and analyzed them to the point of exhaustion. We have been capable of all this, but we have not been capable of finding new ones. We have not been capable of making any headway whatsoever toward a solution of this problem, of this ever-increasing split between moral man and scientific man, a split which is becoming more and more serious and more and more accentuated. Naturally, I don\'t care to, nor can I, resolve it myself; I am not a moralist, and my film is neither a denunciation nor a sermon. It is a story told in images whereby, I hope, it may be possible to perceive not the birth of a mistaken attitude but the manner in which attitudes and feelings are misunderstood today. Because, I repeat, the present moral standards we live by, these myths, these conventions are old and obsolete. And we all know they are, yet we honor them. Why? The conclusion reached by the protagonists in my film is not one of sentimentality. If anything, what they finally arrive at is a sense of pity for each other. You might say that this too is nothing new. But what else is left if we do not at least succeed in achieving this? Why do you think eroticism is so prevalent today in our literature, our theatrical shows and elsewhere? It is a symptom of the emotional sickness of our time. But this preoccupation with the erotic would not become obsessive if Eros were healthy, that is, if it were kept within human proportions. But Eros is sick; man is uneasy, something is bothering him. And whenever something bothers him, man reacts, but he reacts badly, only on erotic impulse, and he is unhappy.<BR><BR>The tragedy in L\'Avventura stems directly from an erotic impulse of this type - unhappy, miserable, futile. To be critically aware of the vulgarity and the futility of such an overwhelming erotic impulse, as is the case with the protagonist in L\'Avventura, is not enough or serves no purpose. And here we witness the crumbling of a myth, which proclaims it is enough for us to know, to be critically conscious of ourselves, to analyze ourselves in all our complexities and in every facet of our personality. The fact of the matter is that such an examination is not enough. It is only a preliminary step. Every day, every emotional encounter gives rise to a new adventure. For even though we know that the ancient codes of morality are decrepit and no longer tenable, we persist, with a sense of perversity that I would only ironically define as pathetic, in remaining loyal to them. Thus moral man who has no fear of the scientific unknown is today afraid of the moral unknown. Starting out from this point of fear and frustration, his adventure can only end in a stalemate."<BR><BR>That was the statement I read in France. I believe one can deduce from its premise the significance of the film\'s ending, which, depending on how you look at it, might be considered either optimistic or pessimistic. Georges Sadoul has made a little discovery which I later found to be in agreement with what I had intended when I shot the final scene. I don\'t know if you still remember it. On one side of the frame is Mount Etna in all its snowy whiteness, and on the other is a concrete wall. The wall corresponds to the man and Mount Etna corresponds somewhat to the situation of the woman. Thus the frame is divided exactly in half; one half containing the concrete wall which represents the pessimistic side, while the other half showing Mount Etna represents the optimistic.<BR><BR>But I really don\'t know if the relationship between these two halves will endure or not, though it is quite evident the two protagonists will remain together and not separate. The girl will definitely not leave the man; she will stay with him and forgive him. For she realizes that she too, in a certain sense, is somewhat like him. Because - for no other reason - from the moment she suspects Anna may have returned, she becomes apprehensive, so afraid she may be back and still alive, that she begins to lose the feeling of friendship that she once had for Anna, just as he had lost his affection for Anna and perhaps is also beginning to lose it for her. But what else can she do but stay with him? As I was saying before, what would be left if there weren\'t this mutual sense of pity, which is also a source of strength. In La Notte, the protagonists go somewhat further. In L\'Avventura they communicate only through this mutual sense of pity; they do not speak to one another. In La Notte, however, they do converse with each other, they communicate freely, they are fully aware of what is happening to their relationship. But the result is the same, it doesn\'t differ. The man becomes hypocritical, he refuses to go on with the conversation because he knows quite well that if he openly expresses his feelings at that moment, everything would be finished. But even this attitude indicates a desire on his part to maintain the relationship, so then the more optimistic side of the situation is brought out.<BR><BR>CASTELL I find it a bit ridiculous, this wanting to establish whether an ending is optimistic or pessimistic. However, I have noticed there is a certain divergence of opinion. I find the ending of L\'Avventura far more optimistic than that of La Notte. And yet there are some who find La Notte more optimistic.<BR><BR>ANTONIONI: Once, in a situation similar to this, Pirandello was asked some questions about his characters, his scenes, his comedies. And he replied: "How should I know? I\'m the author." Now for the young lady\'s second question about acting. With actors, I use certain ideas and methods which are strictly personal, and I don\'t know if they are right or wrong. Looking back at what has been my experience with actors, I can say that I directed them in a certain way only because I didn\'t care to work in any other way, since my way seemed to give me the best results. And then, I am not like those directors, such as De Sica and Visconti, who can "show" the actor exactly how the scene is to be enacted. This is something I wouldn\'t know how do inasmuch as I myself do not know how to act. I believe, however, that I know what I want from my actors. As I see it, an actor need not necessarily understand everything he is doing. In this respect, I always have a great deal of trouble when I first begin working with my actors, especially with some foreign actors. There is a general belief that actors must understand everything they do when enacting a scene. If this were so, then the best actor would be the one who is the most intellectual, which is simply not the case; the facts show us that often the reverse is true. The more an actor forces himself to comprehend the meaning of a scene, the more he tries to achieve a deeper understanding of a given line, a sequence, or the film itself, the more obstacles he sets up between the really natural spontaneity of that scene and its ultimate realization. Aside from the fact that by doing such, he tends to become, in a certain sense, his own director; and this is more harmful than beneficial.<BR><BR>Now, I find it\'s not necessary for a director to have his actors rack their brains; it\'s better, in every respect, for them to use their instinct. As a director, I shouldn\'t have to consult with them regarding my conception of the way I feel a scene should be done. Otherwise, by revealing to them what is after all my own personal plan of action, they automatically become a kind of Trojan horse in what is supposed to be my citadel, which is mine by virtue of the fact that I am the one who knows what I want from them, and I am the one who knows whether their response to what I ask for is good or bad.<BR><BR>Inasmuch as I consider an actor as being only one element in a given scene, I regard him as I regard a tree, a wall, or a cloud, that is, as just one element in the overall scene; the attitude or pose of the actor as determined under my direction, cannot but help to affect the framing of that scene, and I, not the actor, am the one who can know whether that effect is appropriate or not. Furthermore, as I said previously, a line spoken by an actor where the camera is facing him from above has one meaning, while it has another meaning if the camera is facing him from below, etc. Only the director can judge these things, not the actor. And the same applies to intonation, which is primarily a sound and only secondarily a line in a piece of dialogue. It is a sound that should be made to integrate with the other sounds accompanying a given image, and at that moment, when the actor speaks his line, all the sounds, including his delivery of that line that combine to make up the total sound pattern appropriate to that image or sequence, are not there yet. The actor pays no attention to all these details, but the director does. And that\'s not all. Even improvisation is a factor in connection with this particular, subject. For instance, when an actor makes a mistake in delivering a line, I let him make that mistake. That is, I let him go ahead with his mistake because I want to see how it sounds, how it works, before he goes ahead and corrects that mistake. I want to see whether I can somehow utilize that mistake. Because at that moment his mistakes are the most spontaneous things he can give me, and it is that spontaneity of his which I have need of, even though he gives it to me against his will. When going through a scene before shooting it, I often try out certain pieces of dialogue or certain actions which may not have anything to do with the actual scene itself, and I am greatly embarrassed when the actors ask me for explanations. Because beyond a certain point, I don\'t want to tell them anything.<BR><BR>There is another reason why I feel it really isn\'t necessary to explain every scene to your actors, for if you did so that would mean you\'d have to give the same explanation to each actor. And this would not do, at least not for me. In order to get the best results, I know that I have to say one thing to one actor and something else to another actor. Because I am supposed to understand his temperament, I am supposed to know how he reacts, that when affected a certain way, he reacts a certain way, and when affected another way, he reacts differently. So it\'s not possible to use the same approach with every actor. To the director, the scene itself remains always the same, but when I approach the actors, in order for me to obtain the desired results, my explanations to them have to vary in accordance with the nature and temperament of each actor.<BR><BR>CHRISTINA WINDISCH-GRATZ (student in the Centro\'s acting classes): I liked the ending of Il Grido because it clarifies something. It arrives at a definite conclusion, one that is perhaps too cruel, that needn\'t be so, but nevertheless that\'s the way it is. Whereas L\'Avventura and La Notte leave me cold because they don\'t come to any definite conclusion.<BR><BR>ANTONIONI: Lucretius, who was certainly one of the greatest poets who ever lived, once said "nothing appears as it should in a world where nothing is certain. The only thing certain is the existence of a secret violence that makes everything uncertain." Think about his for a moment. What Lucretius said of his time is still a disturbing reality, for it seems to me this uncertainty is very much part of our own time. But this is unquestionably a philosophical matter. Now, you really don\'t expect me to resolve such problems or to propose any solutions? Inasmuch as I am the product of a middle-class society, and am preoccupied with making middle-class dramas, I am not equipped to do so. The middle-class doesn\'t give me the means with which to resolve any middle-class problems. That\'s why I confine myself to pointing out existing problems without proposing any solutions. I think it is equally important to point them out as it is to propose solutions.<BR><BR>AOLO TODISCO (student in the Centro\'s acting classes): To go back to your experiences with actors, you said that you try to create a characterization, giving the actor a minimum amount of direction, and then wait to see how he himself develops a certain theme.<BR><BR>ANTONIONI: No, that\'s not quite right, I never let the actor do anything on his own. I give him precise instructions as to what he is supposed to do.<BR><BR>TODISC Okay, then here is my question: In your films, you have worked with Lucia Bose, who had done very little before she started working with you, and Monica Vitti, who comes to films from the stage. Who gave you the most difficulty?<BR><BR>ANTONIONI: With regard to Lucia Bose, I had to direct her almost with a sense of violence. Before every scene, I had to put her in a state of mind appropriate to that particular scene. If it was a sad scene, I had to make her cry; if it was a happy scene, I had to make her laugh. As for Monica Vitti, I can say she\'s an extremely serious actress. She comes from the Academy, and therefore possesses an extraordinary sense of craft. Even so, there were many times when we were not in agreement on certain solutions, and I was forced to beg her not to interfere in my domain.<BR><BR>TODISC It is said that a stage actor generally creates some difficulties for the director of a film. Now have you had such difficulties with, for example, Monica Vitti, who was originally a stage actress?<BR><BR>ANTONIONI: No, I wouldn\'t say so. Because Monica Vitti is a very modern actress, so even in her theatrical career she never had those attitudes which can be defined as "theatrical." Therefore, I didn\'t have any great difficulty with her. And then Monica Vitti is extraordinarily expressive. This is a great quality for a film actor. Perhaps on stage this expressiveness was of less value to her; that is, if an actor does have such a quality, it is all the better, but if he does not, it doesn\'t really matter much; what is more important for the stage is the actor\'s attitude. At a distance of 100 feet, the actor\'s facial expression is lost, but in a film what counts the most is the actor\'s expressions. And Monica Vitti has an extremely expressive face.<BR><BR>MARIO VERDONE (film critic and member of the Centro\'s faculty): Actually, what is your opinion about the contribution music can make to a film? I say actually because it has seemed to me this contribution has diminished in your last two films.<BR><BR>ANTONIONI: I think music has had and can continue to have a great function in films, because there is no art form which the film medium cannot draw upon. In the case of music, it draws directly, and therefore the relationship is even closer. It seems to me, however, that this relationship is beginning to change. In fact, the way music is being used today is quite different than it was used ten years ago. At that time music was used to create a certain atmosphere in order to help get the image across to the spectator. Earlier, of course, in the period of the silent film, there was the old pianola which was originally used to hide the noise of the projector and then, later, as a means of underscoring the images that crossed the screen in absolute silence.<BR><BR>Since then, the use of music in films has changed a great deal, but in certain films today it is still being used that way, that is, as a kind of external commentary. Its function is to establish a rapport between the music and the spectator, not between the music and the film, which is its proper function. Even to this day, especially in certain films from Hollywood, a battle scene is accompanied by violent symphonic crescendos from a full orchestra; a sad scene is always accompanied by violin music because it is felt that violins create an atmosphere of sadness. But this seems to me to be a completely wrong way to use music, and has nothing whatever to do with cinematography.<BR><BR>There are, of course, certain films where music is used in a more meaningful way, as a means to complement the images, to heighten and intensify the meaning of the image. And this has been done with certain scenes in L\'Avventura and in Resnais\' Hiroshima Mon Amour. And I must say that the music really worked well in these cases, that is, it expressed what the images themselves intended to express, it was used as an integral part of the image. Having said this, however, I must also say that I am personally very reluctant to use music in my films, for the simple reason that I prefer to work in a dry manner, to say things with the least means possible. And music is an additional means. I have too much faith in the efficacy, the value, the force, the suggestiveness of the image to believe that the image cannot do without music.<BR><BR>It is true, however, that I have a need to draw upon sound, which serves an essential "musical" function. I would therefore say that true film "music" has not yet been invented. Perhaps it might be in the future. Until that time comes, however, I feel that music should be spliced out of the film and spliced into a disc, where it has an autonomy of its own. . . . But there must be a mutual rapport. That is, the images cannot stand alone, without those sounds, just as those sounds would have no meaning at all if they were detached from the images.<BR><BR>VERDONE: Is there a definite rapport between contemporary art and your latest films?<BR><BR>ANTONIONI: I have a great love for painting. For me, it is the one art, along with architecture, that comes immediately after filmmaking. I\'m very fond of reading books on art and architecture, of leafing through pages and pages of art volumes, and I like to go to art shows and keep in touch with the latest work being done in at - not just to be au courant but because painting is something that moves me passionately. Therefore I believe all these perceptions and this interest have been somewhat assimilated. And, naturally, having followed modern art, my taste and my predilection for a certain style would be reflected in my work. But in framing a shot, I certainly don\'t have any particular painter or painting in mind; that\'s something I avoid.<BR><BR>FRANCO BRONZI (student of scenic design): According to your way of thinking, is scenic design an important contributing factor in the successful realization of a film?<BR><BR>ANTONIONI: I wouldn\'t say it isn\'t. It could be. It depends on the type of film you make. For example, in the next few months I\'ll be doing a film where I don\'t think I\'ll have any need of a studio, but immediately after that, at least if I don\'t change my mind and start something else, I\'ll be doing another film entirely inside a studio. For it will be done in color and I want to inject my own color scheme, that is, I want to paint the film as one paints a canvas. I want to invent the color relationships, I don\'t want to limit myself by only photographing natural colors. In this case, scenic design becomes an extremely important element. There is also something to be said for scenic design when one shoots a film outdoors and wants to obtain a specific kind of background - then scenic design is as important as it is in a studio. Today there are several filmmakers who are working in somewhat the same way I have been and will be working. Resnais, for example, is one of these, as well as several young filmmakers like Godard and others. They actually intervene and change the natural setting of the environment, and even go so far as to paint walls and add trees. It\'s not a matter of merely selecting a place and accepting it exactly as it is. A natural setting provides you with enough of an idea of the background required for the realization of a scene, but even outdoors one should intervene and make what changes are necessary. So therefore scenic design is important.<BR><BR>GIAN-LUIGI CRESCENZI (student in the Centro\'s acting school): In the film La Amiche, we have the portrayal of a painter who is going through a certain crisis. - In L\'Avventura we have the portrayal of an architect who neither plans nor designs but merely calculates figures and draws up estimates for construction materials. In La Notte, Mastroianni is a writer in crisis. I would like to know if these three characterizations, which are analogous to one another, not only in terms of their professional crises but also with regard to their personal affairs, were conceived by you for the purpose of examining a certain type of individual in order to draw some conclusions about his particular situation, or was this similarity in your choice of character type simply coincidental?<BR><BR>ANTONIONI: It seems rather odd that you would think it could be a coincidence. Obviously, when I select the profession of a character for one of my films, I know very well what I\'m doing. I choose intellectual types mainly because they have a greater awareness of what is happening to them, and also because they have a more refined sensibility, a more subtle sense of intuition through which I can filter the kind of reality I am interested in expressing, whether it be an internal reality or an external one. Furthermore, the intellectual, more than others, is the type of person in whom I can find the symptoms of that particular kind of crisis which I am interested in describing. If I take an insensitive type, a rough and rugged type, he wouldn\'t have any of the particular problems I\'m concerned with, and the story would end right there. So I don\'t quite know what you mean. Do you want to know if I\'m searching for a single character type that would be representative of Everyman? I don\'t understand.<BR><BR>CASTELL Perhaps he means to ask if there exists a certain development from one character to another; whether your ultimate objective is to create a general character who would be representative of the intellectual in crisis, or if each character is independent of the other.<BR><BR>ANTONIONI: No, I don\'t believe the individual characters in the various films are meant to be representative of a certain type of man. Naturally, I shall make a film that will bring an end to this cycle of films which are dedicated, so to speak, to the emotions. As a matter of fact, at a certain point in the film I\'m now working on - although it too is mainly concerned with the relationships of human sentiments - due to the very nature of the story itself, this particular theme is given less prominence than it had in the other films and paves the way for the introduction of other themes.</P>
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<P>Michelangelo Antonioni interview<BR>by Charles Thomas Samuels<BR>July 29,1969<BR>"Encountering Directors" (New York: G.P. Putnam\'s Sons, 1972), pp. 15-32<BR><BR>The living room of Antonioni\'s apartment, where this interview took place, reflects intellectual restlessness rather than a desire for comfort. Except for a plush couch, the room is sparely furnished, yet everywhere there are books, records, a wild array of bric-a-brac. One table holds a collection of arrowheads, knife blades, and other antique weaponry. Crowding the windowsills is a profusion of objects trouves, including the television circuitry to which he refers during our conversation. Even the low glass coffee table is covered with an assortment of boxes, fragments of statuary, enormous ashtrays, and other items, some unidentifiable. Overwhelming the whole are striking, sometimes garish paintings, particularly the Lichtenstein he mentions and an enormous Francis Bacon of a semi-human figure installed in an easy chair but, for all that, apparently losing its innards.<BR><BR>We talked for four hours, despite the intense heat and his preoccupation with editing Zabriskie Point. My questions were posed in English, although, for speed\'s sake, I invited him to answer in Italian. My wife, who is fluent in that language, was present for on-the-spot explanations of anything I failed to understand. Subsequently, a full transcript was made and translated at Antonioni\'s expense, since he refused to let the tapes out of his hands. He explained that an uncensored conference recorded with students had been broadcast without his knowledge, thus putting at his producer\'s disposal certain comments he did not want publicized, including-to his later discomfort-some negative remarks about the producer. Moreover, he does not like the sound of his voice and prefers to limit its circulation.<BR><BR>The voice is soft and toneless, the eyes are lugubrious, and though the face and body are far younger than his sixty years, Antonioni\'s apparent virility is belied by an extremely austere manner and by a series of nervous tics that become more intense as he finds himself struggling for words. A week after the interview, at lunch, he showed his capacity for wit and relaxation, but as we talked now, he seemed burdened by his earnest attempt to answer my questions. Having been forewarned that he would find answering difficult, I began with something familiar and general.<BR><BR>SAMUELS: You are quoted as saying, "Once one has learned the two or three basic rules of cinematographic grammar, he can do what he likes-even break these rules." What rules were you referring to?<BR><BR>ANTONIONI: The simplest ones: crosscutting, making the actor enter from the right if he had previously exited to the left of the frame, etc. There are hundreds of such rules which are taught in cinema schools and which have value only until you actually begin making films. Often I have shot something simply to show myself how useless they are. You break one and no one notices, because the audience only sees the result of your "error." If that works, who cares about rules!<BR><BR>S: Cronaca di un amore, your first feature film, has more inventive and innovative camera work than your second film, La signora senza camelie. For example, in La signora you regularly track into a character when he moves toward the camera, which is certainly playing according to the rules, whereas in Cronaca, as in your later films, you are seldom so orthodox. Why is this so?<BR><BR>A: I can\'t answer that question. When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it. My technique, which differs from film to film, is wholly instinctive and never based on a priori considerations. But I suppose you are right in saying that La signora seems more orthodox than the earlier Cronaca because when I was shooting the first film, I made very long takes, following the actors with my camera even after their scene was finished. But, you know, Cronaca isn\'t more innovative than what comes after. Later I break the rules much more often. Look at L\'avventura and particularly Blow-up.<BR><BR>S: Blow-up is the most cinematographically unorthodox of all your films. But I was interested to notice precedents for the camera work of Blow-up in your short documentary L\'amorosa menzogna, which is about making fumetti, or live action comic strips, and which contains almost as many trick shots as the later work. I think, for example, of the shot of a fumetti scene reduced to its reflection in the camera. Isn\'t it more than a coincidence that the two films which contain your most complex shooting are the two that concern photography?<BR><BR>A: You are right to say that Blow-up is my most unorthodox film, but it is unorthodox in montage, as well as photography. At the Centro Sperimentale they teach you never to cut a shot during its action. Yet I continually do that in Blow-up. Hemmings starts walking to a phone booth-snip go a few frames-in a flash, he is there. Or take the scene in which he photographs Verushka; I cut many frames during that action, doing what the teachers at the Centro regard as utterly scandalous.<BR><BR>S: Is the rhythm of this scene meant to suggest the photographer\'s emotions?<BR><BR>A: Up to a point. I wanted to give the audience the same sensations as the photographer feels while shooting. However, this sort of thing is fairly common in the cinema today. I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules.<BR><BR>S: Your cutting in the Verushka scene has now become a sort of cliche in TV commercials.<BR><BR>A: Yes?<BR><BR>S: It doesn\'t disturb you, eh? Well, let\'s get back to this question of camera technique. Why do you so rarely use reverse cutting in dialogue scenes?<BR><BR>A: Because it is so banal that instinctively I find it irritating. But occasionally I do use it, even as late as Zabriskie Point. Normally, however, I try to avoid repetitions of any shot. It isn\'t easy to find one in my films. You might, I suppose, see something twice, but it would be rare. And then, you know, every line requires its own kind of shot. The American method of shooting one actor continuously, then moving to the other, then intercutting both-this method is wrong. A scene has to have a rhythm of its own, a structure of its own.<BR><BR>S: Progressively during your career, you seem to efface the precise moment of cutting and to avoid obvious transitions, almost as if you wish to keep the spectator from relaxing. In view of the fact that your later films tell slow, deliberate stories, aren\'t you trying to achieve briskness in the way you cut?<BR><BR>A: If so, it is instinctive. I don\'t do anything deliberately.<BR><BR>S: That\'s not true. You told Rex Reed that all your films were made with your stomach, except Blow-up, which was made with your head.<BR><BR>A: In Blow-up I used my head instinctively!<BR><BR>S: Checkmate. When you were interviewed by Bianco e Nero in 1958 you said that modern directors had eliminated the "problem of the bicycle."<BR><BR>A: What could I have meant by that?<BR><BR>S: I supposed you to mean sociological motivation for the character\'s behavior, and you certainly concentrate on the power of personality, of self rather than society. However, even though your characters aren\'t caused by society, they are embedded in a specific social context, which is what gives your films their extraordinary richness. Therefore, I think that 1958 statement indicates what is really a false distinction.<BR><BR>A: You know what I would like to d make a film with actors standing in empty space so that the spectator would have to imagine the background of the characters. Till now I have never shot a scene without taking account of what stands behind the actors because the relationship between people and their surroundings is of prime importance. 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.<BR><BR>S: Because of your telling eye for detail, you do relate your characters to their background. In fact, as one goes through your films, he sees you relying less and less on dialogue and more and more on the physical environment to establish your characters.<BR><BR>A: Yes.<BR><BR>S: What did you mean in the Cannes manifesto that accompanied L\'avventura when you said that man is burdened on the threshold of space by feelings entirely unsuited to his needs?<BR><BR>A; I meant exactly what I said: that we are saddled with a culture that hasn\'t advanced as far as science. Scientific man is already on the moon, and yet we are still living with the moral concepts of Homer. Hence this upset, this disequilibrium that makes weaker people anxious and apprehensive, that makes it so difficult for them to adapt to the mechanism of modern life.<BR><BR>S: That much I understand, but I\'m puzzled about some implications. Do you mean to imply that the old moral baggage must be thrown away? If so, is that possible? Can man conceive of a new morality?<BR><BR>A: Why go on using that word I loathe! We live in a society that compels us to go on using these concepts, and we no longer know what they mean. In the future-not soon, perhaps by the twenty-fifth century-these concepts will have lost their relevance. I can never understand how we have been able to follow these worn-out tracks, which have been laid down by panic in the face of nature. 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.<BR><BR>S: Let me match your statement with a moment in one of your films. By the end of L\'avventura, Sandro recognizes that his promiscuity is harmful to Claudia, with whom he has had the one intense relationship of his life, so far as we know. Do you mean us to believe that his ensuing guilt (inspiring him to tears) is an error because what makes him feel this guilt are conceptions of romantic love and personal responsibility that have become irrelevant burdens?<BR><BR>A: Sandro is a character from a film shot in 1960 and is therefore entirely immersed in such moral problems. He is an Italian, a Catholic, and so he is a victim of this morality. What I said awhile ago is that such moral dilemmas will have no right to exist in a future that will be different from the present. Today we are just beginning to glimpse that future, but in 1960 we lived in a country with the Pope and the Vatican, which have always been extremely important to all of us. There isn\'t a school in Italy still, not a law court without its crucifix. We have Christ in our houses, and hence the problem of conscience, a problem fed to us as children that afterward we have no end of trouble getting rid of. All the characters in my films are fighting these problems, needing freedom, trying to find a way to cut themselves loose, but failing to rid themselves of conscience, a sense of sin, the whole bag of tricks.<BR><BR>S: I don\'t think you\'re proposing something that\'s only a matter of time. Would it indeed ever be good to dispense with the bag of tricks, as you call it? I wonder if we shouldn\'t be more proud of this tradition going back to Homer than of the trip to the moon. Speaking only for myself-no, I\'m sure I speak for others, too-the ending of L\'avventura is so powerful because Sandro has the conscience to regret what he has done. To feel such regret, one has to believe in the supreme importance of human responsibility, and I can\'t conceive of art without that belief.<BR><BR>A: I would like to make clear that I speak only of sensations. I am neither a sociologist nor a politician. All I can do is imagine for myself what the future will be like. Today we find ourselves face to face with some curious facts. For example, today\'s youth movement was born under the sign of anarchy. It has made anarchy point to a new society, which will be more flexible, based on a system that can, by degrees, concur with contemporary events, facts, necessities. On the other hand, these youths structure themselves in mystic groups, and I must confess this rather disturbs me. I don\'t know what to think about it anymore.... I don\'t want what I am saying to sound like a prophecy or anything like an analysis of modern society .... these are only feelings I have, and I am the least speculative man on earth.<BR><BR>S: The implication of what you\'ve been saying as far as Blow-up is concerned intrigues me. Aren\'t you suggesting that you meant to depict the young people in that film positively?<BR><BR>A: Yes, Blow-up is favorable to the youth of that particular moment and place. I don\'t know how I would feel if I were to start studying certain groups in Italy, for example, about whom I must admit only the vaguest knowledge.<BR><BR>S: But I find the film critical, and so do others. For example, recall the peace-march scene, where the young people walk by with placards reading "Go," "On, on" "Forward." That\'s parody, yet you say you intended it to be favorable.<BR><BR>A: When a scene is being shot, it is very difficult to know what one wants it to say, and even if one does know, there is always a difference between what one has in mind and the result on film. I never think ahead of the shot I\'m going to make the following day because if I did, I\'d only produce a bad imitation of the original image in my mind. So what you see on the screen doesn\'t represent my exact meaning, but only my possibilities of expression, with all the limitations implied in that phrase. Perhaps the scene reveals my incapacity to do better; perhaps I felt subconsciously ironic toward it. But it is on film; the rest is up to you.<BR><BR>S: Last week I saw for the first time your documentary on the superstitions of Calabrese peasants, and I was struck by the similarities between these peasants and the hippies in whom you have such faith.<BR><BR>A: What similarities?<BR><BR>S: The hippies are also superstitious. The peasants have their magus, the hippies their guru. Hippies wear talismans, just like the Calabrese. Are they really the future? Aren\'t they bearing baggage even older than the moral tradition you find so burdensome?<BR><BR>A: I believe these similarities derive from the hippies\' desire not to reform present society, but to destroy it and, in destroying it, return almost to antiquity, to a purer, more primordial life, less mechanical ... not based on the same principles as present life. Therefore, they return to the original source, and their gurus resemble the wizard in Superstizione. But I don\'t believe that if they ever reach a position of power, these young people would reconstruct society along antique fines, for that would be absurd. They need to rethink society, and nobody knows the answers yet.<BR><BR>S: Therefore, both in Blow-up and Zabriskie Point you aren\'t so much admiring their present behavior as hoping that they will produce something better?<BR><BR>A: More or less. They believe in the possibility of life; that is what they show in their primitive communities. But I think that technology will one day shape all our actions. I don\'t think this can be helped, and there will be no chance to resist.<BR><BR>S: I\'m still puzzled. You say that the future must be technologically controlled and, moreover, that you desire that. But so far as I can see, your films suggest a revulsion against technology. In Red Desert, for example, there\'s a scene where Corrado talks to Giuliana\'s husband in front of a factory. The noise makes it impossible to hear, and the smoke makes it impossible for them to see each other. Soon the smoke envelops them so that we don\'t see them either. On the other hand, you painted the factory pipes so that they become rather attractive. On the one hand, you show that technological modern life is bad; on the other, you\'re saying it\'s good.<BR><BR>A: But I\'m not saying that technology is bad, something we can do without. I\'m saying that present-day people can\'t adapt to it. These are merely terms of a conflict: "technology" and "old-fashioned characters." I\'m not passing judgment, not at all. Ravenna, near the sea, has a stretch of factories, refineries, smokestacks, etc. on one side and a pine forest on the other. Somewhere I\'ve written that the pine forest is much the more boring feature. Look at this, for example. I find these components of a television circuit absolutely marvellous. Look! They\'re wonderful. So you see, I\'m an admirer of technology. From an outsider\'s view the insides of a computer are marvellous-not just its functioning but the way it is made, which is beautiful in itself. If we pull a man apart, he is revolting; do the same thing to a computer and it remains beautiful. In 2001, you know, the best things in the film are the machines, which are much more splendid than the idiotic humans. In Red Desert, I also confronted this technology and these machines with human beings who are morally and psychologically retarded and thus utterly unable to cope with modern life.<BR><BR>S: You mean, then, that it is man\'s fault and not the fault of the environment that he can\'t adjust, is miserable, etc.?<BR><BR>A: Yes. Modern life is very difficult for people who are unprepared. But this new environment will eventually facilitate more realistic relationships between people. For example, that scene, that great puff of-not smoke-steam that blasts out violently between the two characters. As I see it, that steam makes the relationship more real, because the two men have nothing to say to each other. Anything that might crop up would be hypocritical.<BR><BR>S: OK. But isn\'t it also possible to say that they can\'t speak to each other because their environment deprives them of an inner life to communicate?<BR><BR>A: No. I don\'t agree. In that case.... Wait, let me think it over a moment. 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. In my films it is the men who don\'t function properly-not the machines.<BR><BR>S: That isn\'t what we\'re discussing; we\'re discussing the cause. Is this something unavoidable in man\'s soul or something located in a specific moment of history.<BR><BR>A: You are trying to make me into some sort of philosopher of modern life-which is something I absolutely cannot be. When we say a character in my films doesn\'t function, we mean he doesn\'t function as a person, but he does function as a character-that is, until you take him as a symbol. At that point it is you who are not functioning. Why not simply accept him as a character, without judging him? Accept him for what he is. Accept him as a character in a story, without claiming that he derives or acquires meaning from that story. There may be meanings, but they are different for all of us.<BR><BR>S: There is a difference between an anecdote and a story. It is interesting to hear the director whose films are most like stories and least like anecdotes asking me to take his characters as if they were anecdotal, people who are shown doing things without obvious significance.<BR><BR>A: I\'m not saying that they have no significance. I am saying that this mustn\'t be extracted from the film according to a preestablished scale of values. Don\'t regard my characters as symbols of a determined society. See them as something that sparks a reaction within you so that they become a personal experience. The critic is a spectator and an artist insofar as he transforms the work into a personal thing of his own.<BR><BR>S: What if I transform the film into something wrong?<BR><BR>A: There is nothing in the film beyond what you feel.<BR><BR>S: Ah, that\'s Berkeley: If a tree falls and no one sees it, it didn\'t fall. You believe that?<BR><BR>A: No.<BR><BR>S: Then the film is an objective fact and as such can be misapprehended. Unless you\'re willing to grant a meaning that the film forces or should force you to understand, you\'ve got to accept every silly thing anyone has to say.<BR><BR>A: What can I say? I saw a film made by a friend of mine that was panned by all the critics and withdrawn by the censor. So I wrote to the newspapers explaining why it was a good film. But I am the only one who liked it, the only person in Italy!<BR><BR>S: But you\'re talking about evaluation, which is subjective. I\'m talking about objective meaning. For example, is Sandra in L\'avventura a weak or a strong character? Sandro is a fact, and the fact equals weakness. Right?<BR><BR>A: No, not right. In a way, he is a strong character.<BR><BR>S: In what way?<BR><BR>A: He is capable of giving up something he had never believed he would have the power to give up. You need strength for that sort of renunciation.<BR><BR>S: Why does he cry at the film\'s end?<BR><BR>A: For several reasons. A man who kills people during a war-which is an act of strength and courage-can also have a crisis and break down and cry. But it doesn\'t last long. Ten minutes later he will probably have stopped crying. But perhaps the crying will have released him from his crisis. Who knows?<BR><BR>S: If you think that Sandro\'s crying doesn\'t compromise him as a courageous character, I presume that you think that others of your characters possess courage. Yet most of them cry in the final shot.<BR><BR>A: Where?<BR><BR>S: The heroine cries at the end of Cronaca<BR><BR>A: No? Yes.<BR><BR>S: -and that\'s the way one episode ends in I vinti, and Il grido means the outcry, which is what concludes the film....<BR><BR>A: And Nene in Le amiche....<BR><BR>S: And Sandro-and Vittoria in Eclipse. .<BR><BR>A: No. That is a very optimistic film.<BR><BR>S: Optimistic? Why, the lovers don\'t even see one another again, or do they<BR><BR>A: No. They never meet.<BR><BR>S: If you wanted us to be so certain of this (let\'s leave the question of optimism aside for the moment), why does our last glimpse of Piero indicate a change in his character? Whereas he is frantic and agitated throughout the film, at the end we see him refusing to answer his phones, leaning bac