Things to Make and Do: L'Avventura (dir. Antonioni, 1960) -- some thoughts

Gabriele Ferzetti and Monica Vitti in L'Avventura

Michelangelo Antonioni’s seventh feature film, L’Avventura (The Adventure or perhaps The Fling) was his first internationally successful film. First shown at the Cannes Film Festival on 15 May 1960, it took the audience by surprise as Antonioni had pivoted to a new, radically different style for which they were ill-prepared. Deprived of the familiar kind of structure and plot they were expecting, the audience laughed at the film’s key moments and then began to jeer so loudly that both Antonioni and his leading lady Monica Vitti (also his partner at the time) wept in their seats in the theatre. The next day a large number of the critics and film-makers attending the festival gave Antonioni a letter that they had all signed saying that they admired the film; it also won a special jury prize a few days later (although there were also boos at that ceremony).

Two screenshots from the documentary Dear Antonioni (Arena, 1997) plus the proud notice at the start of the film itself

In spite of its rocky launch, the film found audiences internationally that loved its strange atmosphere and very modern sense of alienation. It became highly influential, ushering in new trends in art cinema and, as such, has been written about by many critics since.

I came to Antonioni’s film only recently as part of a process I undertook to try to heal myself of a lingering ‘wound’. In 1982 I spent a year in Siena, Italy, as part of my university degree. Now is not the time to retell everything that happened while I was there, but when I left Italy at the end of my stay I never wanted to go back: I hadn’t enjoyed myself there, or not all the time (even though I did have some happy memories) and, as time went on, with repeated retelling the story of my Italian year hardened into one of dislike and regret. I turned my back on the country. It was only in 2020 that I began to go over my experiences in detail and to try to work out why I had taken against it so categorically. Was it something the Italians I’d met had done to me or was it my own fault? There was ‘wrong’ on both sides, I decided and, besides, at nearly forty years’ distance most of the upsets seemed more like youthful clumsiness.

Me in 1982 above the Piazza del Campo, Siena

I soon began to regret my boycott of Italy and of Italian culture for all this time (though I had managed to force down plenty of their delicious food over the years). My timing was poor: it was the Covid lockdown and Italy was one of the worst affected countries, along with the UK – so there wasn’t the option to jump on a plane and get my feet wet in the Trevi Fountain or revisit the Piazza del Campo, the stunning open space in the centre of Siena where so many of my misadventures had begun.

Instead, I turned to films and began to greedily consume the great works of Italian cinema, starting with neo-realism, particularly the films of Roberto Rossellini. I didn’t really have a coherent ‘programme’ of watching in mind, but I’ve been guided by My Voyage To Italy, Martin Scorsese’s fantastic two-part tour through the history of Italian cinema (1999). From Rossellini’s extraordinary Stromboli (1950), it was a short hop to Antonioni’s L’Avventura, two films whose key sequences take place on unforgiving volcanic islands surrounded by an indifferent sea. I’d like to write about the interplay of these two films one day, but for now I’m going to note down some thoughts about L’Avventura.

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't seen L'Avventura before, please note that what follows will include detailed spoilers.

Characters like chess pieces...

One of the hardest things to get our heads around is that the characters in novels, plays and films are not real people. They’re not people at all, but chimeras: fictions conjured up from the author or film-maker’s head for whatever purposes their creator wants them to serve. With films and plays, it’s even harder for us to bear this truth in mind because the director’s or playwright’s chimeras are interpreted by actors who move and speak more or less like real people. We have a strong tendency to identify with these characters, to side with them or against them, and that seems to be an important factor in many people’s enjoyment of a book or film or play. When I was in a book group, I was always struck by the number of times people said, ‘I didn’t like the book, the characters were so unlikeable’, as though the two things were intimately bound together. But there’s no obligation for a writer or director to give us sympathetic characters or even to be concerned to make their characters realistic. Characters are perhaps better thought of as more like chess pieces, where each piece represents an aspect of the creator’s overall idea for the work. In L’Avventura, I think this is a particularly useful thing to keep in mind, because the characters function less like ‘real’ individuals and more like ciphers for the directors’ ideas. He moves them about his landscapes and interiors almost like an artist adding paint to a canvas (and Antonioni was a keen painter) or like a choreographer bringing members of a ballet on and off the stage. So although I'm not going to ignore the foregrounded ‘story’ of Anna and Sandro and Claudia and the others on their doomed mini-cruise, for me the most interesting elements of the film are the structural metaphors, in which Claudia et al function as symbols in Antonioni’s vision of the human condition.

Anna and her father (with the 'sinking' St Peter's in the background)

The film begins on the outskirts of Rome with a young woman, Anna (Lea Massari), walking down a gravel path away from a house. She looks moody and out of sorts (and I found myself being very aware of how her ankles wobble in her high heels, as if she’s being undermined by her feminine accoutrements). When she reaches the road she meets her father and they have a miserable conversation which seems to underline that they don’t gain much comfort or affection from each other. In the background a huge dome (actually St Peter’s) appears to be sinking beneath the horizon, as though to remind us that religion isn’t much help these days and the whole great gilded edifice of the Church is on its way out.

The location of Sandro's apartment today (Googlemaps)

Anna’s friend Claudia (Monica Vitti) appears from nowhere and although Anna is clearly out of sorts they hop into Anna’s chauffeured car to drive into Rome. Perhaps life isn’t too bad after all. They soon pull up in a little square in the heart of the city (Piazza San Bartolomeo all’Isola on the Isola Tiberina). Anna’s boyfriend Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti) has his flat here, above a chic little art gallery. Although Sandro’s life seems pretty well sorted, he doesn’t strike me as particularly attractive. His features are rather ill-defined, he’s a tiny bit overweight.

Man or god? You decide...

I think it’s important that he can stand for everyman, an ordinary man rather than a godlike film star. In any case, Anna isn’t keen to see him. Even though they rushed to get there, she says she’s going to go to a bar first. Claudia is fairly accepting of her friend’s capricious behaviour and she listens as Anna tries to explain her accidie: it’s hard being apart from Sandro, a wrench, but it’s also easy – you can think your own thoughts – then, when you get together, you’re confronted by the banal reality of the relationship: that’s all there is.

To my mind, Anna’s speech goes to the very heart of the film, pinning down the state of dissatisfaction and boredom in which we so often seem to find ourselves, in which nothing is ever enough, nothing fills the hole at the core of our selfhood. We're drawn towards someone else, perhaps just physically to begin with, but then they don't fulfil us as we'd hoped.

Even as she undresses, Anna seems angry...

Just as Anna says they should just leave, Sandro spots them from his window and so they can't run away. Instead, Anna goes up to the flat. She skulks around like a caged animal, then begins to undress, even though the threesome are on their way to join friends for a boat-trip and Claudia is waiting down in the square. It promises to be a fairly joyless coupling but Sandro doesn't say no. There's a moment when we actually see Claudia standing below.

Claudia is watching...

'She'll wait,' Anna says. The next shot is from Claudia's point of view and we see Sandro closing the curtains, so we know she knows what's going on up there.

Soon, though, the three are on their way to the coast. Transitions between places happen speedily in this film and the next scene is the next morning when the guests on rich Patrizia's boat are waking up after their first night on board. The poor crew have had to stay awake all night so that the guests can wake up with their destination in sight: the Aeolian Islands, volcanic deposits jutting harshly out of the Mediterranean off Sicily. It seems Sandro works for Patrizia's husband Ettore, although Ettore isn't in the party. Instead, Patrizia has a rather fey admirer called Raimondo paying court to her, and there is another couple, Corrado, older than the others, and ditzy Giulia (perhaps not as young as she looks as she has been with Corrado for at least twelve years and he seems completely bored with her). This is the lifestyle of the Italian bel mondo, wealthy, worldly and cynical. Jumping ahead a little, we'll see Raimondo humiliated by Patrizia: wanting to be intimate with her, he has to made do with a glimpse of her leg under the table and then a desultory touch of her flesh while she lights a cigarette. Her little lap dog isn't even disturbed.

Even wealth and an apparent freedom to do whatever you like doesn't seem to bring much joy.

Meanwhile, Anna seems like a caged animal -- the cramped space on the boat too small to contain her. Sandro suggests a swim but Claudia doesn't fancy the sea around the brooding islands they're passing just then: Basiluzzo nearby and Lisca Bianca in the distance. She says it's 'frightening'.

The forbidding rocks of Basiluzzo

But in a sudden fit of pique, Anna dives into the water.

It's as though her 'noia' (boredom, annoyance) makes her careless, she's taking risks. As the boat is moving along quite swiftly, Anna is quickly left behind in the water. Poor Sandro feels obliged to jump in after her -- the manly thing to do. You feel that Anna probably jumped in to 'test' Sandro.

The boat stops and a couple of the others jump in for a swim as well. But the next thing we know, Anna is crying out that there's a shark in the water!

Everyone panics, but luckily Sandro is able to bring Anna safely back to the boat. Everyone else scrambles back on board too.

Back on the boat there's a brief interlude while Anna and Claudia dry themselves and get changed. There's a moment of quite powerful sexual frisson between the two. Anna gets Claudia to try on a shirt of hers and says it looks better on Claudia than on her, and then she tells Claudia that there wasn't a shark, she made it up. Claudia doesn't really understand why -- 'Something to do with Sandro?'

When Claudia leaves the cabin, Anna stuffs the shirt into Claudia's duffel bag. This feels like the end of the film's 'first act'.

'Act 2' sees the party disembark to explore Lisca Bianca, a near-deserted volcanic rock of an island. In the still above elderly Corrado flirts feebly with Claudia (upsetting ditzy Giulia). In the background note that Anna is climbing up the rock, setting herself apart from the others.

Everyone wanders aimlessly about the island on their own. There's nothing to do, not much to see. Anna and Sandro meet up, seemingly by chance, and have a short and difficult conversation about their relationship.

Anna is so unhappy. She says the 'disagio' (uneasiness, discontent) she's feeling is worse this time (on seeing Sandro again after a month away from him), she wants to talk about it, 'Or is it pointless?'

Sandro says, 'We'll have plenty of time to talk about it when we're married.'

Anna shoots back, 'Marriage won't change a thing.'

Sandro: 'All this talk... words just confuse things. I love you, isn't that enough?'

'No,' replies Anna, 'It isn't enough. I want to be on my own for longer... Two months, a year, three years... and yet the thought of losing you kills me... but I don't feel you any more.'

'Didn't you "feel" me at my place yesterday?' jokes Sandro but now he's offended Anna. Why does he have to drag everything into the gutter? They fall into an awkward silence. In a way, this scene replays Anna's speech outside Sandro's flat in Rome and reminds us of her and Sandro's strangely joyless coupling while Claudia waited for them down in the square. This is Anna's last moment of existence as a character in the film.

In the very next shot we see, in the distance, a small boat passing the end of the island, barely visible.

Anna is gone. The others don't even know it yet. Did she leave in that little boat, somehow? Did she drown? Did she kill herself? We don't know. We will never know. Her disappearance is as final as death -- no explanation, no coming back, no way to find out her reasons. Gone. But for the time being no one has missed her.

It's Claudia who first sounds a note of alarm, asking Sandro if he's seen Anna. 'She was here,' he says. Now, with the weather suddenly worsening, they all start to look for her, just when they wanted to go back onto their boat. It's like when Anna cried 'Shark!': everyone else has to act on her whims. Sandro hates this side of her, he says (and who wouldn't?).

The island is implacable, difficult to clamber over and with thousands of possible places where Anna might be. The situation soon seems grim, frustrating, disturbing.

Everyone searches alone. I froze this shot of Sandro mirrored by a very phallic rock -- we'll come back to this later.

The barrenness of this island where everyone is alone seems to me to be a central image of alienation and solipsism -- this is the human condition.

While Claudia is peering over the sheer rocks to see if Anna might have slipped, a loose stone tumbles past her and plummets into the sea. The island seems fraught with tension and danger. It's almost as if the whole thing might crumble into the sea.

When it becomes clear that the party are not going to find Anna just by wandering around, they split up. Sandro and Corrado will stay on the island in case she turns up, while the rest of the group will go to the nearest island where they can raise the alarm and get the coastguard out. Claudia insists on staying as well, even though Sandro says she'll be a nuisance. She was close to Anna and feels she must help to find her.

She gets her bag and goes off ahead of the other two.

On the very top of the island there's a tumbledown hut and when stormy weather sweeps in, the trio seek shelter there.

The hut is actually the home of a solitary fisherman and, later in the afternoon, he comes back and finds them there. He doesn't seem to mind too much but almost immediately launches into a 'tour' of the photos on his wall, which are all of family and friends.

The visitors spend the stormy night there.

Claudia wakes from her night in the hut

I feel this hut carries a special meaning within the film, albeit rather a conservative one: this primitive shelter, and the way it honours kith and kin, is the best option the benighted individuals have going for them. The old man takes them in and shares his space with them for the night. They survive the storm and the next day there's a kind of peace. It might suggest that a simple home life with loved ones is our best option for dealing with life.

Claudia's dress is still damp from the rain, so she hunts in her bag for something else to put on. That's when she finds the shirt that Anna secretly gave her, back on the boat.

She puts it on and, now, she symbolically becomes Anna or, at least, she stands in for Anna. She and Anna occupy the same symbolic space now. This change or merging seems to be underlined by the way her face is obscured, almost erased, in the next scene.

It's one of the emblematic images from the film which is why I already used it right at the start -- but this is where it comes in the narrative. Where previously Sandro and Claudia were rather hostile towards each other, perhaps seeking to blame each other for Anna's disappearance, now there's almost a tenderness between them and they talk about their shared affection for Anna and the impossibility of making her happy. Something passes between them, a freighted moment when Claudia slips and Sandro helps her up.

Before long the boat comes back to pick them up and the coastguards take over the search. Anna's father also arrives and there's an awkward moment when he sees that Claudia is wearing his daughter's shirt -- has she stolen it? Does her wearing it somehow dishonour Anna? No, but she apologises anyway. It adds weight to her having assumed Anna's identity somewhat.

Now everyone is coming off the island and they each plan what they're going to do. Claudia and Sandro go back onto Patrizia's boat to get their belongings. The moment where Sandro sees Claudia brushing her hair in her cabin recalls the earlier scene in Rome when Claudia stood below in the square and saw Anna and Sandro kissing. Now she is in the place of Anna.

Sandro can't resist. He moves in on Claudia. He is, I feel, acting out his Man function, responding to an attractive woman, he can't help himself (not my view -- I'm reading the film here!). It may only be a day since Anna disappeared but he can't resist the Anna substitute in front of him. Claudia pulls away and is upset.

Soon after, Sandro goes with the coastguard to see some suspect fishermen being interrogated. Claudia plans to visit each of the islands in the group to look for her friend. The others are going to visit their rich friends, the Montaldos, and there's a vague plan to meet up again there.

Sandro leaves Claudia behind

Some time later, Claudia is on the mainland of Sicily, waiting to catch a train to wherever the Montaldos live.

Sandro has heard where she is from the coastguard who brought her to Sicily. He turns up at the station, desperate to take things to the next level with her.

No, Claudia feels too guilty about usurping Anna's relationship with Sandro to act on her feelings for him, whatever they are.

She gets on the train alone but at the last minute Sandro can't resist running after it and jumping on.

On the train there's a wonderful sense of what Sandro and Claudia's relationship might be like if it wasn't under the dark cloud of Anna's disappearance. Even as Claudia is begging Sandro to back off, she is playful and full of laughter. Their acute sense of each other's proximity is palpable. But Claudia's guilty feelings ultimately override everything.

She can't believe that they are so close to 'betraying' Anna by giving in to their desire for each other.

She makes Sandro leave the train while she travels on.

The train carriage with the sea just outside the window is reminiscent of the cabin on Patrizia's boat -- a little cell where Claudia is trapped. There are many such visual echoes in the course of the film.

Now there's an interlude before the next 'act' of the film starts. It's an amazing scene: hundreds of men (not a woman to be seen) running across a city street -- the sort of thing you see when revolutions happen...

This mob is all in aid of Gloria Perkins, a starlet who has torn her skirt. The men of this city, Messina, are being driven to an absolute frenzy by the unexpected glimpse of her thigh. She milks it for all she's worth. The local newspaper ushers her into their office to save her from being torn limb from limb by the baying crowd -- and it happens that Sandro has just arrived there too, to question a journalist about Anna's disappearance.

The journalist whispers that Gloria's 'price' is '50,000': he'd pay for her himself if he had the money...

This scene shows men responding to a woman in an animalistic way, unthinkingly, in a herd. That's what they're programmed to do, the film seems to suggest. It's in their blood...

The next 'act' of the film takes place at the luxurious palazzo of the Montaldo family where Patrizia, her husband Ettore, plus Corrado Giulia and Raimondo have already settled in as guests. Claudia now joins them. The only person missing is Sandro, and Claudia is on tenterhooks, hoping he'll come soon. She runs from window to window, every time she hears a car engine. She's bored but in a state of feverish anticipation. She and Patrizia try on wigs to amuse themselves.

Patrizia says to her, 'You look like a completely different person'. And perhaps men only differentiate between women based on their hair colour? Nothing else matters much? We'll see...

Giulia, who is the ditzy girl who goes out with Corrado even though he constantly belittles her, has a new admirer, Goffredo, the creepy Montaldo grandson, seventeen. He likes to paint grotesque nudes and he wants Giulia to pose for him. She's beside herself with excitement at the attention. She drags Claudia with her to see Goffredo's studio and it's just like the beginning of the film all over again: Claudia has to stand and watch while the couple make out.

This enforced voyeurism sends Claudia in search of Sandro. The Montaldos' chauffeur takes her to the village where she has guessed that Sandro will be (the newspaper reported a sighting of Anna there).

They meet up and silently agree to continue the search together, in Sandro's car. Although Anna is still ostensibly the glue holding them together, everything has changed. Claudia and Sandro's desire is mutual now.

At last! Claudia looks so happy (a stark contrast with Anna, if we remember). Perhaps she and Sandro can make a go of things? -- although, perhaps as a warning of the dangers ahead, just when they met up again they had an encounter with a sleazy chemist and his very unhappy wife of three months.

They've heard a rumour that Anna was seen in Noto (a beautiful Baroque town in Southern Sicily), so they make their way there and plan to take a room in a pensione. The film seems to be chasing its own tail now (visually), recreating earlier scenes -- or that's how I saw it. I found it compelling.

When they get to Noto, Sandro goes into the pensione alone (there's some reason why Claudia doesn't want to go in too, something to do with Anna possibly being there?) and Claudia is left alone out on the street. It's the scene with Gloria Perkins again, only more threatening, sinister.

Nothing happens to Claudia but men silently materialise all around her and 'eat' her with their eyes. Then she sees Sandro coming out of the building -- there's a woman behind him. Could it be Anna? She runs into a paint shop to hide from her friend. But it wasn't her. Even so, all Claudia's guilt comes pressing back in on her. If Sandro were to say he loved her (Claudia) now, she says she could only think of all the times he'd said it to Anna previously. Sandro doesn't see that as a problem.

The scene switches to the top of a church tower in Noto. To me, this stands for the rugged island from earlier in the film, especially when you see Claudia cautiously clambering around the stonework.

Seemingly on a whim, Sandro asks Claudia to marry him (as he talked of marriage to Anna on the island), but she says no -- things aren't 'clear' enough for her yet. In the next scene, back at their hotel, she is happy, skittish, flirting with Sandro, irresistible you'd think, and yet he resists her, isn't in the mood. It's as though men and women so rarely match each other perfectly. There's always something to spoil simple happiness.

Sandro goes out into Noto for a stroll. Up on the church tower, Sandro had talked of wanting to ditch the well-paid work he does for Ettore to return to more creative work. In the square there's a young man sketching an architectural detail -- he could be Sandro in his younger days. Now, though, the museum is closed (even though it's supposed to be open) and Sandro is put out. The past is closed to him now and he can't get back there.

When the artist leaves his sketch unattended for a moment, Sandro deliberately spoils it by spilling the bottle of ink over it.

It's a shocking little act of pique and bitterness which speaks volumes. Then, after he nearly gets into a fight with the young man, Sandro joins a column of young boys coming out of a nearby school -- he so desperately wants to regress to his youth.

He comes back to the hotel room, angrily shuts out the gorgeous architecture of Noto, which seems to mock his dead creativity. Now he wants to have sex with Claudia, but she isn't in the mood any more (having been rejected earlier). Sandro almosts forces himself on her. It's an ugly scene.

Can they ever really be in tune with each other?

They move on to a grand hotel further along the coast -- again on a tip that Anna might be there. She isn't, but Patrizia and Ettore are. It's an opportunity for Sandro to do what he said he longed to do and resign from his job as Ettore's costings man, the thing that's supposedly holding his true creativity back. That evening, Claudia is exhausted. She just wants to go to bed early, so Sandro says he'll go down and talk to Ettore, tell him. But he doesn't, Ettore doesn't want to know -- the moment passes. Instead, Sandro roams the lounges and corridors of the hotel, catching women's eyes.

Oh no, it's only Gloria Perkins! She gives Sandro a very meaningful look.

Claudia wakes up very early the next day and discovers that Sandro never came up to bed. Melancholy, she looks out of the window in a way that mirrors her earlier gazing from the windows of the Montaldo palazzo.

left: at the hotel; right: earlier, at the palazzo

Then she runs through the hotel's now deserted corridors looking for him -- again there's an echo of her previous corridor-running in search of him at the palazzo.

left: at the hotel; right: earlier, at the palazzo

Picking through the detritus of the previous evening's decadent partying, she finally finds Sandro -- laid out on a sofa in the arms of Gloria...

What a calamity. Sandro jumps up, tossing some money over Gloria as the 'piccolo ricordo' (a 'keepsake') she begs him for, but Claudia has already run off. She's devastated.

What an idiot Sandro has turned out to be. He just can't help himself, but has to follow his base instincts constantly. Having hopped so readily from Anna to Claudia, now he's hopped on again. Already.

Claudia has run outside. She doesn't know what to do, where to go. The wind rustles the leaves on the trees ceaselessly -- it reminded me of the ceaseless roar of the sea when they were on the island. It's nature, human nature included, never changing.

Here's Sandro, feeling horribly guilty now, of course, sitting outside the hotel. He's crying. And look, there's a phallic symbol right behind him, just as there was briefly on the island (as I noted above). For me, this (perhaps humorously) underlines that, for Antonioni, Sandro is just a man, acting as men will act -- according to their nature. Is it a deliberate visual? Who knows.