Antonioni: Documents and Testimonials Page #4

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-Were you ever trapped? -Sure, we were.

One night and one day, without food or anything,

because the food was on the boat, on a larger boat

that couldn't manage to get out there 'cause the sea was too rough

and the island was inaccessible.

We saw the boat leaving with all the food in it, you know,

and our eyes moistened.

We stayed there a whole night under sort of a shed,

sitting on the ground.

It was so cold and windy, and the sea so rough...

And how long were you without a producer?

I don't remember how long.

Without a producer for three months.

During the summer the islanders get the food in

from the mainland all the time.

Who came to your rescue?

Well... nobody did. Not a journalist, not a photo reporter.

Nobody, nobody came.

This scene ended up on the cutting floor.

During their search for Anna in Sicily, the two protagonists

encounter a street entertainer who invites them to play a strange game.

The game is a theme always present in Antonioni's films.

Making a movie with Antonioni is always sort of an adventure,

full of unforeseen situations.

This is one of the elements that makes it an important period

in the lives of those involved.

And these events are always unforeseen.

For instance when we went to Cannes,

that was my first film festival, and it was my first film too.

Getting there was like getting into a fair

where everybody is concerned with very mundane stuff.

The night of our screening the stairs were crowded

with hundreds of photographers.

It was a sort of... pointing their cameras at us like guns.

The cinema was totally dark and crowded.

The screening of L'Avventura at Cannes was a real life drama.

From the very beginning, from the opening titles sequence,

the audience was laughing and we couldn't understand why.

They were laughing at the most... most tragic sequences,

those that we had sweated the most over

and we believed the most in.

And this went on throughout the projection.

Very few followed and loved the screening of L'Avventura.

When I came out of the theater I was crying like a baby.

I was desperate. I felt that all my work, all these months

where I had invested all of myself

so that we could achieve a good result, were all for nothing.

We had all believed in this movie and it was all in vain,

it was all for those laughing people and their mundane entertainment.

The day after, something quite unexpected happened.

We'd left our rooms and in the hall of the hotel we found a list,

a very long list of signatures of important names

of Italian and foreign filmmakers, journalists, critics,

writers, people who had seen the movie,

and this list was preceded by a statement:

Yesterday, we saw L'Avventura the best movie

ever screened at this festival.

In La Notte, the drama of the protagonist couple explodes

after a long process of gaining awareness of it; and one night

will be enough for the disintegration of the relationship.

These images shot in 8mm were taken on set.

It's dawn, in the park of a sumptuous villa,

and it isn't any good that the musicians might keep playing

and our couple almost savagely listen, for

the day that will rise won't be a better one.

Did you collaborate with Antonioni exclusively on La Notte?

ENNIO FLAIANO author Yes exclusively on La Notte, then we...

evidently our dialogue was exhausted... our exchange...

over, so we interrupted our collaboration.

But I hold him in great esteem...

I believe ltaly has right now two great directors,

one is Fellini, the other Antonioni.

The problem is that

Antonioni fluctuates toward the image

and Fellini toward costume design.

Do you think he relies very much on the screenwriter's input?

No, he's quite easy...

He allows all the suggestions he receives to mature

and naturally he adds his own ideas,

otherwise he wouldn't be the director we know.

Do you think of La Notte

as a difficult film from a production standpoint?

I believe that Antonioni can only live among difficulties

Iike certain fish that can only live in the abyss...

and if there are no obstacles he seeks them

because he believes they stimulate his imagination.

Could I have a grappa, please?

Make it two.

You don't like interviews.

TONINO GUERRA screenwriter It's more like I don't understand them...

I'd like to know... right, I really dislike these... these interviews.

So what's the genesis of a screenplay,

Iet's say the one of Red Desert?

Comes from a story...

This story is set in a particular place,

in our case Ravenna...

Then we did a lot of research.

We spoke with doctors and psychologists...

it is a little tough with Michelangelo and it is quite a difficult job,

quite difficult because there are certain expectations to be met...

difficult and amusing sometimes... right,

because we play, we fight a lot

because I am stubborn and he is stubborn too.

He might want to race me up five flights of stairs,

I take the elevator and he's up the stairs, running.

He gets there before me, and I find him sitting in my apartment...

you know he's very funny.

But when we play cards I win 'cause he is naive like a child...

Were you ever disappointed with the movie?

No, never, never disappointed because, let's say...

the screenplay is something dead

and Antonioni is constantly building.

Antonioni's images have something that transcends...

All the new meanings of the movie are in these images,

there's nothing to do, no, no... there's a huge difference, huge...

He has a great ability to evoke images, really like one would work

with a malleable structure; figurative.

This takes him away from cinema,

RENZO VESPIGNANI painter from what is the average result of a cinematic image

and shows,

I would say, its artistic side.

And in this sense, I believe, we could say

that he has exercised an influence

on a certain branch of ltalian painting, quite indirectly,

and nobody has ever critically looked at this side of his work.

Perhaps, even those that have benefited

from this influence haven't thought about it.

Personally, for instance,

I found all the final sequence of Eclipse very suggestive.

I don't know if it were a cinematic masterpiece,

this is not my area of expertise,

but I thought it really contained great plastic

and figurative innovations.

A plastic suggestion that is not the result of great or bad photography,

or ultimately strictly based on the composition of the shot.

When relating to things, he's dealing with a different perception

and space, at least in that film in particular.

Of course it's difficult today finding a painter

depicting the corner of a house or a counter like in Eclipse.

Still, that kind of spatial relation,

that way of understanding the image's surface,

runs throughout all modern painting.

Antonioni is a director of the present and its only, fleeting reality.

He feels compelled to be connected to his time,

not only to express and interpret it in its harshest

and most tragic aspects,

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