Michelangelo Antonioni - biography

“Till now I have never shot a scene without taking account of what stands behind the actors because the relationship between people and their surroundings is of prime importance.”

“You know what I would like to do: make a film with actors standing in empty space so that the spectator would have to imagine the background of the characters.”

“When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it.”

“When a scene is being shot, it is very difficult to know what one wants it to say, and even if one does know, there is always a difference between what one has in mind and the result on film.”

“I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules.”

“Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing.”

“When man becomes reconciled to nature, when space becomes his true background, these words and concepts will have lost their meaning, and we will no longer have to use them.”

“I am neither a sociologist nor a politician.  All I can do is imagine for myself what the future will be like.”

“I meant exactly what I said: that we are saddled with a culture that hasn’t advanced as far as science.”

“Scientific man is already on the moon, and yet we are still living with the moral concepts of Homer.”

“I don’t want what I am saying to sound like a prophecy or anything like an analysis of modern society...  these are only feelings I have, and I am the least speculative man on earth.”

“We live in a society that compels us to go on using these concepts, and we no longer know what they mean.”

“All the characters in my films are fighting these problems, needing freedom, trying to find a way to cut themselves loose, but failing to rid themselves of conscience, a sense of sin, the whole bag of tricks.”

“A scene has to have a rhythm of its own, a structure of its own.”

“But, you know, Cronaca isn’t more innovative than what comes after.”

“I mean simply to say that I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible.  I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see them in empty space.”

“In Blow-up I used my head instinctively!”

“Normally, however, I try to avoid repetitions of any shot.”

Michelangelo Antonioni directed the following films:
Gente del Po (1943)
Roma-Montevideo (1948)
Oltre l’oblio (1948)
N.U. (1948)
Superstizione (1949)
Sette canne, un vestito (1949)
Ragazze in bianco (1949)
Bomarzo (1949)
L’Amorosa menzogna (1949)
La Villa dei mostri (1950)
La Funivia del faloria (1950)
Cronaca di un amore (1950)
La Signora senza camelie (1953)
I Vinti (1953)
L’Amore in città (1953)
Le Amiche (1955)
Il Grido (1957)
Nel segno di Roma (1959)
L’Avventura (1960)
La Notte (1961)
L’Eclisse (1962)
Il Deserto rosso (1964)
I Tre volti (1965)
Blowup (1966)
Zabriskie Point (1970)
Chung Kuo – Cina (1972)
Professione: reporter (1975)
Il Mistero di Oberwald (1981)
Identificazione di una donna (1982)
Ritorno a Lisca Bianca (1983)
Kumbha Mela (1989)
12 registi per 12 città (1989)
Noto, Mandorli, Vulcano, Stromboli, Carnevale (1993)
Par-delà les nuages (1995)
Sicilia (1997)
Lo Sguardo di Michelangelo (2004)
Eros (2004)


Michelangelo Antonioni contributed to the screenplay for the following films:
I Vinti (1953)
Blowup (1966)
Eros (2004)