Written by: Goodtime Charlie, Special to CC2K

The International Years

Blow-Up (1966)

Blow-Up is by far the most Pop Art and accessible of Antonioni’s movies; it is unsurprisingly also his most successful. He loved London and wanted to make a movie there, so he did, as part of a three-picture deal with MGM. He soaked up all the mod ’60s London had to offer and came up with a strange mystery involving photos taken accidentally by a swinging professional photographer–and plenty of sex, drugs, and confusion to get in the way of a resolution. The movie is definitely highly stylized and polished, with some great moments, but I have always been disappointed by it for some reason. Maybe because it is in color, in swinging London, and full of sex and drugs, I want it to be a different kind of movie than it is, I want there to be a tidy resolution. And even more sex.

Zabriskie Point (1970)

I’m sure I can’t make the call as to which is better, so I’ll just sit on the fence and say Zabriskie is tied with Five Easy Pieces for the best ending I have ever seen in a movie. It is a movie about the 1960s counterculture revolution in America and so it is understandably scattered, confused, and dangerous, but–unfortunately true to the revolution our Baby Boomers never fully consummated–it is ultimately disappointing. There is some interesting footage at a meeting of radical college students and the ensuing uprising, but it goes on too long. There is beautiful desert scenery, but beautiful desert scenery does not a movie make. There is a crazy orgy sequence in the desert that also goes on too long–can you imagine ever saying that? The two main characters are attractive but completely uninteresting, which is no doubt a result of Antonioni using untrained actors for some reason. My favorite parts of the movie take place in a random office building and a fabulous desert home, after a sexy young secretary comes in for her first day of work and the boss invites her out to his house to seduce her at a meeting with some clients. Unlike Antonioni’s previous efforts, there is just too much waiting in Zabriskie that feels like…well, waiting; waiting for some kind of payoff that never happens. Although, ultimately, I find Zabriskie Point misguided and boring, there are some fantastic scenes in it that make viewing it at least once a worthwhile endeavor, so I recommend renting it and giving it a go, but don’t expect to be blown away.

Professione: reporter (1975) [aka The Passenger]

The Passenger is my favorite of Antonioni’s later films and the last good one he made that I have seen. It is also Jack Nicholson’s favorite film that he worked on, for all you trivia buffs out there. In fact, thanks to him and his largesse, the original negative was cleaned up and a beautifully-restored DVD sits on my shelf, complete with a fantastic commentary track by Jack himself. All that aside, the two things I like most about The Passenger are the gorgeous locations/set-design and the rhythm of the story. It begins in the desert of Africa, as Jack chases down a radical leader in hiding. Dialogue is sparse, everything and everyone moves at a glacial pace, and the viewer has almost no idea what is going on. Comparing the opening third of the movie to the rest–after Jack fakes his own death, adopts the identity of somebody he barely knew, and heads out on a tour of Spain with Maria Schneider–it seems almost absurd that you are watching the same movie. Toward the end, after the requisite bit of delightfully unresolved intrigue, the pace of the story once again slows to an African pace and ends beautifully with a legendary seven-minute shot that took Antonioni and his crew eleven days to film. Jack Nicholson is fantastic and effortlessly carries the movie on his famous eyebrows. Maria Schneider is perfectly beguiling in her role as ‘The Girl.’ In fact, there really isn’t anything not to like about this movie.