Shadow and false brightness on Michelangelo Antonioni’s cinema

Abstract

Michelangelo Antonioni’s films are the epitome of darkness: not the phenomenal, but one other that, although it also cannot be seen, lies upon the interiority of the characters and the abstraction of the spaces: obscured and tormented individuals mostly operating in double layered environments. In Antonioni’s films, darkness is a state of mind, an existential condition, expressed not only through action and characters (The Passenger), but also through titles (The Night, The Eclipse). This presentation will establish a connection between the inner shadow of Antonioni’s characters and their metaphors through architectures and locations (The Adventure, Red Desert, Blow Up, Zabriskie Point), demonstrating a concomitant bright vision and dark version. Blankness is a way of not seeing, such as of darkness or blindness themselves. To conclude, the presentation will start addressing a scene at the end of “The Passenger” in which the protagonist David Locke says to the girl: “I know a man who was blind [but] when he was nearly 40 years old, he had an operation and regained his sight. (…) After he regained his sight… he became afraid. He began to live in darkness.”