Offscreen Notes
The Passing of Antonioni and Bergman: Cinema Loses Two Giants
By some strange, cruel fate, two cinema giants were taken from us on the same day, July 30, 2007, at the respective ripe ages of 89 and 94, Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni. They were contemporaries whose careers followed each other closely, with their first and last films coming only a few years apart (1943/2004 for Antonioni and 1946/2003 for Bergman). The modern cinema associated with the influx of post-World War 2 New Wave cinema could not be thinkable without these two directors, whose respective visions of a humanity at odds with this modernity shaped the language of cinema forever. Antonioni’s rupture from classical narrative was so abrupt that his film L’Avventura was hissed at and jeered by a hostile Cannes audience when it showed in 1960. Such was the power of Antonioni’s daring use of formal language to express characters at odds with their physical (and emotional) surroundings. While Bergman concerned himself with the world of the sacred —religion, faith, the existence of God— Antonioni was preoccupied with the growth of the rational and scientific world and its relationship to the growth of the human moral world. As one Italian critic aptly put it, Antonioni was the only secular Italian director. And while Bergman may have begun at a profane place, he slowly worked his way through his Lutheran Protestant upbringing toward a position of bleakness and hopelessness not that far removed from Antonioni’s. As one person wrote in their eulogy for Bergman and Antonioni, in their own different ways they were both ‘searchers’ of the proverbial ‘mysteries of existence’. Looking back at their careers one can see parallels: both made their international marks with ‘trilogies’ at approximately the same time. Bergman with his ‘faith trilogy’ –Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light (1962) and The Silence (1963)– and Antonioni with his ‘alienation’ (or ‘sick eros’) trilogy –L’Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), and L’Eclisse (1962). Both directors also had a preference for female protagonists, with some critics going as far as referring to these actresses as important ‘muses’ (Monica Vitti for Antonioni and several for Bergman, including Liv Ullman, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thullin). Because of this, their films were strongly championed by the first wave of feminists in the late sixties/early seventies (although they also had their enemies among feminists, especially Bergman). Offscreen is truly saddened by this tremendous loss of human, artistic expression. When the dust settles we will plan a proper tribute to these important filmmakers.
