Secret Violences: The Political Cinema of Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960-75

Although Michelangelo Antonioni became one of the icons of ＂modernist＂ cinema in the 1960s, his position in the pantheon of great directors has never been quite secure. Unlike his famous contemporaries, such asIngmar Bergman and Luchino Visconti, whose essential contribution to the art of cinema is hardly ever questioned, Antonioni’s work has been repeatedly denigrated from many angles for both aesthetic and political reasons. Though the historical importance of some of Antonioni’s films as an incarnation of certain attitudes and problems characteristic of the 1960s and 70s is not denied, they are often considered passé, artificial and boring.

Contesting prevalent readings, which focus on existential and psychological motifs involving anxiety and the malady of sentiments, this book offers a re-evaluation of Antonioni’s most important films interpreted as political cinema engaged with issues which are still crucial in the 21st century. Far from being politically neutral, Antonioni’s oblique and ＂abstract＂ approach makes possible the prising open and devaluation of the morally and politically constrictive ＂organic＂ narrative structures. HIs approach overthrows the primacy of character and plot, on the one hand, by showing them to be emanations of the spectral materiality of capital, and, on the other hand, by allowing for an opening into the utopian dimension, implying engagement in the rethinking of our attachments to the world.

Slawomir Maslon is Associate Professor in the Institute of Literary Studies at University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland.