[xmca] An epidemic of dying directors?

ROME (AP) -- Italian director Michelangelo
Antonioni<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=79780&inline=nyt-per>,
whose depiction of alienation made him a symbol of art-house cinema with
movies such as ''Blow-Up'' and ''L'Avventura,'' has died, officials and news
reports said Tuesday. He was 94.

The ANSA news agency said that Antonioni died at his home on Monday evening.

''With Antonioni dies not only one of the greatest directors but also a
master of modernity,'' Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni said in a statement.

Antonioni depicted alienation in the modern world through sparse dialogue
and long takes. Along with Federico
Fellini<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=89547&inline=nyt-per>,
he helped turn post-war Italian film away from the Neorealism movement and
toward a personal cinema of imagination.

In 1995, Hollywood honored his career work -- about 25 films and several
screenplays -- with a special Oscar for lifetime achievement. By then
Antonioni was a physically frail but mentally sharp 82, unable to speak but
a few words because of a stroke but still translating his vision into film.
The Oscar was stolen from Antonioni's home in 1996, together with several
other film prizes.

His slow-moving camera never became synonymous with box-office success, but
some of his movies such ''Blow-Up,'' ''Red Desert'' and ''The Passenger''
reached enduring fame.

His exploration of such intellectual themes as alienation and existential
malaise led Halliwell's Film Guide to say that ''L'Avventura,'' Antonioni's
first critical success, made him ''a hero of the highbrows.''

The critics loved that film, but the audience hissed when ''L'Avventura''
was presented at the 1960 Cannes Film
Festival<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/cannes_international_film_festival/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>.
The barest of plots, which wanders through a love affair of a couple,
frustrated many viewers for its lack of action and dialogue,
characteristically Antonioni.

In one point in the black-and-white film, the camera lingers and
lingers on Monica
Vitti<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=73738&inline=nyt-per>,
one of Antonioni's favorite actresses, as she plays a blond, restless
jet-setter.

''In the empty, silent spaces of the world, he has found metaphors that
illuminate the silent places our hearts, and found in them, too, a strange
and terrible beauty: austere, elegant, enigmatic, haunting,'' Jack
Nicholson<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=104455&inline=nyt-per>said
in presenting Antonioni with the career Oscar. Nicholson starred in
the
director's 1975 film ''The Passenger.''

Antonioni was born on Sept. 29, 1912, in the affluent northern city of
Ferrara. He received a university degree in economics and soon began writing
critiques for cinema magazines.

Antonioni's first feature film, ''Story of a Love Affair'' (1950) was a tale
of two lovers unable to cope with the ties binding them to their private
lives.

But Antonioni grew more interested in depicting his characters' internal
turmoil rather than their daily, down-to-earth troubles. The shift induced
critics to call his cinema ''internal Neorealism.''

After the international critical acclaim of ''L'Avventura,'' which became
part of a trilogy with ''The Night'' (1961) and ''Eclipse'' (1962),
Antonioni's style was established. He steadily co-wrote his films and
directed them with the recognizable touch of a painter. His signature was a
unique look into people's frustrating inability to communicate and assert
themselves in society.

On Oscar award night, his wife, Enrica Fico, 41 years his junior, and
''translator'' for him since his 1985 stroke, said: ''Michelangelo always
went beyond words, to meet silence, the mystery and power of silence.''

The first success at the box office came in 1966 with ''Blow Up,'' about
London in the swinging '60s and a photographer who accidentally captures a
murder on film.
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Received on Tue Jul 31 04:31 PDT 2007