Michelangelo Red Antonioni Blue

Michelangelo Antonioni, who died in 2007, was one of cinema’s greatest modernist filmmakers. The films in his black and white trilogy of the early 1960s—L’avventura, La Notte, L‘eclisse—are justly celebrated for their influential, gorgeously austere style. But in this book, Murray Pomerance demonstrates why the color films that followed are, in fact, Antonioni’s greatest works. Writing in an accessible style that evokes Antonioni’s expansive use of space, Pomerance discusses The Red Desert, Blow-Up, Professione: Reporter (The Passenger), Zabriskie Point, Identification of a Woman, The Mystery of Oberwald, Beyond the Clouds, and The Dangerous Thread of Things to analyze the director’s subtle and complex use of color. Infusing his open-ended inquiry with both scholarly and personal reflection, Pomerance evokes the full range of sensation, nuance, and equivocation that became Antonioni’s signature.

Murray Pomerance is Professor of Sociology and Media Studies at Ryerson University. He is the author of Johnny Depp Starts Here, An Eye for Hitchcock, and Film Experience Beyond Narrative and Theory, among many books.

List of Plates
Acknowledgments
Note on Images

Introduction

Beyond the Clouds
Identification of a Woman
The Red Desert
The Dangerous Thread of Things
The Mystery of Oberwald
Zabriskie Point
The Passenger
Blow-Up

Works Cited and Consulted
Index