Michelangelo Red Antonioni Blue. Murray Pomerance
Michelangelo Red Antonioni Blue
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Eric Papenfuse and Catherine Lawrence Endowment Fund in Film and Media Studies of the University of California Press Foundation.
Michelangelo Red Antonioni Blue
Eight Reflections on Cinema
Murray Pomerance
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley • Los Angeles • London
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University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2011 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pomerance, Murray, 1946–.
Michelangelo red Antonioni blue : eight reflections on cinema/Murray Pomerance.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-520-25870-9 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-520-26686-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Antonioni, Michelangelo—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title.
PN1998.3.A58P66 2011
791.4302'33092—dc22 2010038908
Manufactured in the United States of America
19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on Cascades Enviro 100, a 100 percent postconsumer waste, recycled, de-inked fiber. FSC recycled certified and processed chlorine free. It is acid free, Ecologo certified, and manufactured by BioGas energy.
To Bill Rothman, true line of sight
We need always to be returning to the fact of how mysterious these objects called movies are, unlike anything else on earth.
—Stanley Cavell, Themes Out of School
The new library building, which in both its entire layout and its near-ludicrous internal regulation seeks to exclude the reader as a potential enemy, might be described, so Lemoine thought, said Austerlitz, as the official manifestation of the increasingly importunate urge to break with everything which still has some living connection to the past.
—W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz
For in spite of tricks which we shall presently describe and which created the image which we shall always have of him, he knew very well that his famous look was identical with the thing at which he was looking, that he would never attain true possession of himself, but simply that listless sampling of himself which is characteristic of reflective knowledge.
—Jean-Paul Sartre, Baudelaire
Contents
The Dangerous Thread of Things
Plates follow page
Plates
Following page 110
1. Beyond the Clouds: Carmen and Silvano
2. Beyond the Clouds: A Director in Portofino
3. Beyond the Clouds: Carlo, Patrizia, Her Husband, and His Lover
4. Beyond the Clouds: Niccolo in Aix
6. The Red Desert
7. The Dangerous Thread of Things
8. The Mystery of Oberwald
9. Zabriskie Point
10. The Passenger
11. Blow-Up
Acknowledgments
Any writer of passages such as these gets by with a little help from his friends, but in this case I have received generous support, encouragement, and aid over more than two decades from a number of people who began by loving Antonioni as much as I do and came eventually to smile upon me far more than I deserved. While the flaws and faults herein are entirely my own, I do wish to express my sincerest gratitude to those who have illuminated my path: Patricia Albanese (Toronto), Enrica Antonioni (Italy), Stephen P. Arkle (Technicolor, Los Angeles), Michal Bardecki (Toronto), Nikesh Bhagat (Toronto), Judy Boals (New York), Joseph John Cooke Esq. M.B.E. (Lincoln, England), Terry and Bob Dale (Los Angeles), Brett Davidson (Margaret Herrick Library, Beverly Hills), David Desser (Collegeville, Pa.), Rufus Dickinson (Toronto), Eugene Di Sante (Toronto), Michael Doleschell (Toronto), the late Slobodan Drakulic (Toronto), Julie Duxbury (Lincoln, England), David Edgar (BFI, London), Kris Erickson (Toronto), Megan Follows (Toronto), Lester Friedman (Bethesda, Md.), Linda Gerth (The New Republic, Washington), Terry Gillin (Toronto), Fernando Gómez Hervis (Toronto), Assheton Gorton (Montgomery, Wales), Chris Graeber