My experience with Intolearnce is that I've always had late screenings that go well into the next day due to the film's length. Even at the Film Forum screening, August 2, speeches, comments, etc., etc., went long adn the film concluded nearly 1 a.m.
A nice thing they do at Film Forum is place free bags of unsold popcorn in the lobby so customers can take what hey want as they leave the theater. Why throw out perfectly good popcorn? Lillian would approve.
Also, in September the Castro is screening L'Avventura (1960). I missed it at Film Forum, but the Castro is a larger theater and I am eager to it again. First time I saw it was with Charles Champlain in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Many times since I've seen the film "about nothing and about everything."
From my notes:
A group of wealthy Italians go boating in the Mediterranean and dock at a rocky island near Sicily. Upon arriving, they notice that Anna is missing, and everyone searches for her amidst the endless crevices and wave-battered cliffs. It was filmed on location in Rome, Aeolin Islands and Sicily.
Her best friend, Claudia (Monica Vitti), teams with Anna's lover, Sandro, in the search, which is eventually abandoned in the hope that Anna simply left the island. Inquiries are made in a town as to her whereabouts, and several people claim to have seen her. In the process, Sandro becomes increasingly involved with Claudia, who becomes his lover and substitute for Anna.
L'AVVENTURA is one of Michelangelo Antonioni's finest films, and a landmark in the devlopment of cinematic narrative. The seemingly pressing question raised by the film's opening--"What happened to Anna?"--becomes increasingly irrelevant as we learn that there is no "adventure" of this type, just a shifting, unsettling meditation on emptiness, contemporary alienation and the opacity of human relationships.
The acting is minimalist and the blank-faced, passive Monica Vitti is marvelouly Garboesque in the role that deservedly made her an international star.
One character will be in deep "back" focus of an image, seemingly ready to call out to the person in the foreground, but communication is all but impossible. Even sex is a feeble attempt to escape the oddly charged ennui of this milieu. Careful pacing and unusual narrative structure make for interesting viewing.
As with all Antonioni films, the cinematography and composition are unsurpassed. He scatters his existential characters over the landscape, brilliantly emphasizing empty space over the trappings of plot.
L'Avventura was photographed largely outdoors, shooting took months to complete and sent the original production company, Imeria, into debt. Cino Del Duca came to Antonioni's aid and filming continued, though many of the summer shots actually took place in the winter.
The film received the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1960. L'Avventura set box-office records on premiere in Paris. Its US premier was marred by scandalous reviews. According to an Antonioni obituary, the film "systematically subverted the filmic codes, practices and structures in currency at its time." The newly restored version, filmed in black-and-white, runs 145 minutes. Stars Gabrielle Ferezetti, Lea Massari and Lex Barker, a 1950s era Hollywood Tarzan, who, as this film demonstrates, could really act.
James Patterson
415 516 3493
JamesPatterson705@gmail.com
Adviser, Dorothy and Lillian Gish Theater
Co-chair of Development
For more information and to contribute to the Gish theater see www.bgsu.edu/gish
For information on the $300,000 Dorothy and Lillian Gush Prize, an annual award, see www.gishprize.com
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