In honor of the long-awaited, upcoming Criterion release of Antonioni's Red Desert (1964) tomorrow (6/22/10), I decided to finally continue with my Director's Corner series. Enjoy!
Michelangelo Antonioni ranks right up there with Eric Rohmer in the pantheon of directors who are reviled by many moviegoers for being boring.
Despite this similarity in mainstream audience response, Rohmer toiled in obscurity while Antonioni was an internationally-renowned auteur who spent his free time in bed with internationally-renowned beauties and made exactly the sort of movies he wanted. Antonioni was even courted by both the Brits and the Yanks, back when Americans still thought Europeans were cool.
The strangest thing about this drastic difference in fortune compared to that of Rohmer is that Antonioni's movies are even slower than those of Rohmer. To give you an example, one of my favorite Antonioni scenes involves three characters who hardly say a word to each other--and one of them is an oscillating fan.
Huh?
