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.
“Murray Pomerance’s close readings of selected Antonioni works offer surprising and rich insights at every turn. With a critical approach deeply informed by appropriate invocations of modern thinkers, writers, and artists, Pomerance situates the films in their cultural moment, even as his sharp, illuminating attention to detail and nuance expresses his admiration for the monumental accomplishments of one of postwar cinema’s most engaging if enigmatic directors. Pomerance is unsurpassed as an appreciative guide to one of the masters of the medium.”
R. Barton Palmer, author of Hollywood’s Tennessee: The Williams Films and Postwar America
320 pp.6 x 9Illus: 12 color illustrations
9780520266865$34.95|£30.00Paper
Mar 2011