Best movie ever!

A Masterpiece!

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

The only guy I could relate to in this film is the guy that lives in the only shelter found on the rocky island which was brazenly trespassed by the wealthy socialite's informal search party. It is a film filled with such off-putting characters where one could easily make oneself a detached observer of the minutiae of their affluent lives, save perhaps for Claudia who at least shows some semblance of concern initially for the missing rich lady and it was kind of forgivable for her to have almost forgotten about it later on and easily moved on to life because let's face it, Anna is a such a brat or perhaps can be considered by some as a b****.But for a film filled with such unaffecting characters, it compensates for the scenery that is quite marvelous. Shots are brilliantly captured and for it to linger the way it did, even for a B&W film, I would have enjoyed it if the movie went on for six hours, the sort that I would leave on to play on a TV screen, to be left playing in the background like those aquarium channels on cable, catching a glimpse of it once in a while when my eyes linger away from whatever I'm preoccupied with at any given moment. It is a sumptuous film that is so easy on the eyes without the needing to immerse your consciousness in it much. My rating: A-flat.

"L'avventura" is the start of Michaelangelo Antonioni's unofficial trilogy about modernity and its discontents. That Anna's (Lea Massari) disappearance never gets solved highlights an important point: things do not always have a purpose. Sometimes, things just happen. It is amid this cynical outlook on life that Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti) and Claudia (Monica Vitti) start up a relationship. Alienated by a world filled with excesses, they find only each other.I can't help but wonder if "L'avventura" influenced Terry Gilliam's movies. A frequent theme in his movies is the desire to escape our overly commercialized society (as seen in "Time Bandits" and "Brazil"). Whether or not it did, this is an undeniable masterpiece. Like Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni took Italian cinema in a direction that would ensure the production of some of the greatest movies. This is one that you should see.

By the time Michelangelo Antonioni released "L'avventura" a lot of important and revolutionary European films were being released such as "Pickpocket" by Robert Bresson, "The 400 Blows" by François Truffaut, "Hiroshima Mon Amour" by Alain Resnais, "Breathless" by Jean-Luc Godard and "La Dolce Vita" by Federico Fellini, and "L'avventura" certainly deserves a high spot between those revolutionary European film. The film tells the story of Anna(Lea Massari)a young woman who can no longer endure her meaningless bourgeoisie life and simply fades away without trace, then a discouraged search starts to find her but it only leads to nothing, except an doomed relationship between Anna's best friend Claudia(Monica Vitti)and Sandro(Gabriele Ferzetti) her fiancé. One of the main things that can be said about the film is the beautiful images Antonioni creates, from the island to the last scene, and besides being visually stunning, they show in a way the great abyss that there is between those characters, we not just see it but we can feel that abyss or void (which can also be experienced in Antonioni's incredible, haunting and enigmatic L'eclisse). In contrast to the beautifully composed shots we have the 'ugly' part of the film, the characters, mostly arrogant, selfish,alienated and people only living to create a distorted image of them to others, the only character that doesn't seem to fit this description is Claudia (Monica Vitti), the only seeming character that doesn't want to forget Anna, who seeks for something deeper, not just sex, but in contrast there is Sandro, a futile architect seeking only for sexual pleasure, her new 'romantic' affair. And one of the main reasons why'L'avventura' stills such a fascinating, innovative and fresh film is that people still act like Claudia's 'friends', only seeking out for sexual pleasure, for futile things. Love in modern bourgeoisie society doesn't exist any longer, only an 'sex drive' that for those like Claudia will only find disappointment and heartbreak, as it is shown in the hauntingly beautiful and moving last shots of the film.

L'AVVENTURA was director Michaelangelo Antonioni's first international hit, winning the Special Jury Prize at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. Here a small group of rich Italian socialites takes a boat out to a volcanic island. Anna (Lea Massari) quarrels with her fiancée Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), and subsequently goes missing. The police are brought in and divers scour the waters, but Anna never turns up. One would expect the film to develop as a whodunit, either revealing Anna to still be alive or putting the finger on the person responsible for her disappearance.Instead, Anna never shows up, and the film goes off in a rather different direction. Anna's friend Claudia (Monica Vitti) is suddenly promoted from a background character to the very centre of the picture, with her interaction with Sandro driving the action. While the film lacks a traditional plot, and indoor scenes tend to be brief arguments between lovers, the main part of the film is held together with a series of long shots of landscapes. Appreciating Antonioni's style requires some work, but as in the lengthy late works of composers Morton Feldman or Toru Takemitsu, eventually the rewards come. The scenes of the ocean while the party is on the volcanic island are beautifully constructed and will have stayed with me after the film ends. Furthermore, becoming comfortable with L'AVVENTURA makes one all the more ready for Antonioni's later films, which further develop this theme of human beings unable to connect with each other or the changing world around them.Antonioni's casting of Monica Vitti was brilliant, for in a film that requires the female protagonist to stand as a witness to everything going on around her, Vitti's statuesque beauty is just the ticket. Esmeralda Ruspoli plays a ditzy young lady well, adding a touch of humour to what otherwise would have been a deathly serious film. And though the plot is untraditional, and the existential themes take a backseat to the composition, I'd say there is some closure, with Sandro's inner self stripped naked by the end.One further aspect of the film that I've only recently come to appreciate is its sort of exploration of Southern Italian culture. Antonioni was from Emilia-Romagna in the north of Italy, and his wealthy characters in the film come from Rome. The setting highlights the substantial divisions that exist within a supposedly unified country, as the south is significantly less prosperous, its people are of shorter stature, and of course Monica Vitti gets a lot of staring and wolf-whistles due to the south's culture of machismo. If you speak Italian, you can see how Antonioni uses the substantial difference between Italian dialect as another instance of people failing to communicate with each other.