Monica Vitti suffers from ennui in Antonioni’s existential L’AVVENTURA
L’AVVENTURA (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)
MoMA Film
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Thursday, September 1, 4:00; Wednesday, September 7, 7:00
Series runs through September 7
Tickets: $10, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
Michelangelo Antonioni shows that being rich and fancy-free on the Italian Riviera ain’t all it’s cracked up to be in this fascinating study of a group of friends out on a yachting adventure. When Anna (Lea Massari) disappears, Claudia (Monica Vitti), Giulia (Dominique Blanchar), and Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti) search for her but can’t find her. Slowly life goes on, with Sandro and Claudia falling for each other as the mystery of Anna fades away. Aldo Scavarda’s beautiful cinematography adds beauty to this captivating, unusually told story of ultimately empty souls. Winner of a Special Jury Prize at Cannes, where it was also booed, the existential L’Avventura, the first of a trilogy by Antonioni that also includes La Notte (1961) and L’Eclisse (1962), is screening September 1 & 7 as part of MoMA’s “Hot and Humid: Summer Films from the Archives” series, which continues through September 7 with such seasonal dramas as Peter Hall’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s In a Year of 13 Moons, Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, and Adolfas Mekas and Pola Chapelle’s Going Home.