L'Avventura

Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura has a lot in common with Jean Renoir’s Rules Of The Game in that both films were stylistic breakthroughs that weren’t initially well received. L’Aventura premiered at Cannes and audiences booed and walked out, however, the critics championed it. Furthermore, like Rules Of The Game like L’Avventura is an attack on the idle rich and their meaningless exploits that results in a sense of alienation. It is a simple tales of a woman who disappears and how her best friend and boyfriend fall in love while they are trying to track her down. The film was groundbreaking in the way that Antonioni used landscapes, long takes, and deep focus cinematography to express the psychological feelings of characters and the mood of the film. The well presented Criterion edition is a two disc set with audio commentary by film historian Gene Youngblood, Antonioni: Documents and Testimonials, a documentary, Writings by Antonioni read by Jack Nicholson, as well as a new essay by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith.