Heard and Seen

Extract

There is little doubt that the most ok cinematic name in England to-day is that of Michelangelo Antonioni; critics back from Cannes brought reports of I’Avventura as voluminous as they were contradictory, and when last autumn it finally came to London—briefly at the South Bank Festival and then for an extended commercial run—the wave of interest and praise gathered momentum. In January and February of this year the National Film Theatre, sensibly cashing in on a vogue which it had done much to initiate, has been running an Antonioni season, and at the time of writing we have been able to see all his work except La Notte, the latest, which may not be available in time for this series.

It is, however, quite possible to come to some general conclusions about the work of this enigmatic director from the films shown already and, judging from I’Avventura, it seems unlikely in any case that the new picture is going to be radically different from the rest. Antonioni would never, I think, be a director with whom I would feel instinctively at home; his world is not mine, nor his obsessions; the people in whom he is interested are not those whose fives I should often feel drawn to study minutely. But his seeing eye, his concentration of observation, his obvious intellectual and sensuous delight in image and composition and movement compel one’s attentive admiration. In other words, though I often do not agree with what he has chosen to say, I would defend to the death his fashion of saying it.