a lift shaft. Connoisseurs of the special kind of newspapers films tend to show (a form of prose beset by mysterious transforma- tions) may note that her last name is printed as Belloni, though she’s referred to as Carlini throughout the film.
Paola leaves a party to meet Guido at a planetarium (that great symbol of human insignifi- cance, here as in REBEL WITH- OUT A CAUSE). The party scene is Antonioni’s first, and unmistak- ably his—a slice of the stratum of society in which Paola is trapped, and where she performs a dance hardly livelier than a marionette’s as the guests display their wealth verbally and visually. At the planetarium, Guido pro-
Massimo Girotti and Lucia Bosé star in Michelangelo Antonioni’s directorial debut.
tests that he and Paola did nothing at the lift shaft— precisely their crime, of course, and quintessentially Antonioni. Paola offers Guido money to help with his financial problems and eventually persuades him to organize a car for Enrico to buy for her birthday. Money looms behind all the relationships in the film.
The demonstration of the car and the revival of Paola’s affair with Guido are filmed in a single crane shot, which begins with a vista of a road dominated by twin billboards in the form of giant bottles. It’s a shot that suggests how the director’s later narratives and characters will be overwhelmed by the landscapes they inhabit (which incidentally suggests that Antonioni might have been the ideal man to adapt J.G. Ballard). By contrast, the scene where Paola takes delivery of her new car starts with a noirish silhouette of Carloni, an image that wouldn’t be out of place in Joseph H. Lewis or Anthony Mann. As he drives after her, urban de- tails—two men looking for the way somewhere, for instance—invade the generic pursuit. She eludes him and meets Guido in a cheap hotel where, in a single scene, their relationship moves through passion to guilt and jealousy, now aimed at Enrico. In a scene prefiguring the bathroom insight in La notte, Guido finds Paola’s earring but drops it on the bed rather than puts it on her. The moment evokes the spectre of money as well as indifference.
At home, Enrico reveals he’s behind the en- quiries, a revelation Paola may find erotic (though she later denies this to Guido). Enrico curtails the investigation but is persuaded by the detective
agency to carry on—money’s their motive, of course. Guido tries to persuade Paola to leave with him, but she objects that “money is everything in love too... Money is stupid. Between you and Enrico, it chooses him.” She claims she’s only jok- ing about murdering Enrico and plays at stran- gling Guido. At times in this film, costume as much as landscape seems to overwhelm the character (her increasingly elaborate hats are a motif in them- selves, if not a running joke, however serious) and while choking him she wears a single black glove— a giallo image, indeed.
She and Guido visit a road where Enrico could be murdered. Their complicity in Giovanna’s death is finally admitted, but they’re beset by doubts about an actual murder. Enrico reads Carloni’s report, which perhaps leads to his fate. A party at the Fontana mansion takes place entirely unseen by the audience. Paola and Guido share a last embrace, during which Guido caresses a nearby pillar (an uncanny prefiguration of Lo Sguardo di Michelangelo, Antonioni’s penultimate film, in which he reaches for statues as if to penetrate their essence; indeed, you could sum up one of his themes that way). Guido leaves for the station, but he has done so once before. Perhaps they’ll prove unable to stay apart, although the final shot looks like a journey into endless night. NoShame’s transfer looks fine but sounds very compressed: for instance, the elevator noises in the scene at 63m 20s are unrecognizable. A sec- ond disc includes several documentaries about the restoration and revival: the most substantial lasts almost two hours.
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