Antonioni and Bergman, RIP

[ToddBaesen]

Glenn:

Thanks for that link. It was great to hear Antonioni talking in English, even if he didn't feel comfortable with the language. And our friend David Thomson certainly likes Antonioni much better than you do, so maybe you should check out one of the films he highly recommends, like ‘The Passenger.’ Thomson says: "It leaves no doubt about Antonioni’s mastery," calling it “one of the great films of the ’70s.”

However, just a brief clarification to your first post. You wrote that Antonioni says that "the climactic 'love scene in the desert,' " when it actually should be "the climatic love scene in RED Desert." This is rather important, because ZABRISKIE POINT actually features a climatic love scene in the desert of Death Valley. So when you leave out the word RED, people like me may think you were confusing RED DESERT with ZABRISKIE POINT. Maybe it was just all those gin gimlet's you were plying me with the other night at the Palomar Hotel Bar.

It's also interesting to note that at the same Palace of Fine Arts theater in San Francisco, where Antonioni answered questions in 1969, he returned to in 1993, when there was a special screening of ZABRISKIE POINT, where I saw the film for the first time. Maybe it was the fact that Antonioni and his leading actress Daria Halprin where in the theater, along with several other crew members of the film, but at the end of the screening, the sold out house of 1,000 plus people all seemed to really have genuinely liked the film, and stood up and gave Mr. Antonioni quite a long standing ovation. Unfortunately, by this time Antonioni couldn't answer any questions, as it was after his stroke, but his wife Erica and Daria Halprin answered many questions for him. One of the amazing things that I remember quite clearly, was it seemed like everyone in the audience wanted Antonioni to explain the ending of the film, where the incredibly designed "desert house" created by Dean Tavoularis (ironically in Cave Creek, Arizona, where Welles shot THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND), blows-up.

Now, seeing ZABRISKIE POINT in 1993, a sophisticated audience of film buffs (including myself), thought there was enough ambiguity in the ending to wonder if this apocalyptic climax was supposed to be imagined in the mind of the heroine, or was supposed to be reality. In retrospective, it seems obvious it was Daria's desperate fantasy of blowing up the fucked-up world of the then "establishment," which at that time would be President Nixon, who was waging the hopeless war in Viet Nam, and would also have included California's then actor-Governor, Ronald Reagan. Now if you watch the film today, it's still very relevant, since the anti-establishment message would be aimed at a President who is even worse then Nixon, George W. Bush, who is waging the hopeless war in Irag, and a California actor-Governor, Arnold S.

So in retrospect, it's no wonder the film was "badly received." Here was an Italian director, taking the side of the "hippies" and directly attacking the lifestyle of the United States. Considering what the FBI had to say about Orson Welles in the forties, when he was so outspoken, I wonder what might be contained in the FBI file on Antonioni and ZABRISKIE POINT.

Anyway, for myself, seeing the movie in 1993, I really enjoyed it's gorgeous widescreen cinematography of Death Valley, shot entirely on location. It was also Antonioni's only film to use widescreen Panavision. So, I really became obsessed with the film, and even went to Death Valley to visit the locations, a few years later. But I couldn't understand why everything I had heard about the movie beforehand claimed it was so awful! Well, for one thing, at the time the film was made, Richard Nixon was President, and J. Edgar Hoover was still in charge of the FBI. And there was actually a ridiculous FBI charge lodged against MGM about the film transporting woman across state lines "for immoral purposes" (i.e. to have simulated sex in a movie). It seems that transporting woman across state lines was against the thirties era "Mann act." And now we have "the Patriot Act." Nuff said.

The joys of ZABRISKIE POINT led me to completely rediscover Antonioni as a great director, and it's still my favorite Antonioni movie, and I've now seen all of his films. Before 1993, however, I was very much an anti-Antonioni person, but after seeing ZABRISKIE POINT, I revisited most of the director's films, when the Cinecitta retrospective came to San Francisco a few years later. Seeing such early masterworks as THE GIRLFRIENDS and IL GRIDO really opened my eyes, and I was much more impressed with L'AVENTURRA, ECLIPSE and RED DESERT after seeing Antonioni's earlier films. A very good example of the auteur theory at work. Then last year I caught up with all the Antonioni films I had missed when there was yet another Antonioni retrospective in Berkeley, where the rare I VINTI was screened.

But getting back to RED DESERT, I think you have a very good point to make about that film, because if Richard Harris walked out on Antonioni, I wonder if that was because of how he was treating Harris. Maybe it was just like Jake Hannaford treats his leading actor in OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND.

Jeanne Moreau said about working with Antonioni in LA NOTTE: "Antonioni gave me no direction, he rarely spoke to me, and he drove us all beyond the point of exhaustion. I never believed in the crisis of my character and it was useless to talk to Antonioni." So if Richard Harris felt the same way, no wonder he left the set! But as Antonioni says, he still had to shoot his climatic love scene between Monica Vitti and Harris, without his leading man! It sounds just like how Welles had to shoot most of OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, without most of his major actors. Of course, it also relates to Jake Hannaford shooting his own Antonioni-like sex scenes for OSOTW. Jake has to finish his movie and it's love scenes without his leading man, John Dale, because he has walked off the set!

[Glenn Anders]

Todd: I have this vision of you stumbling like McTeague in GREED across Death Valley, a half-canteen full of warm "Carl Kickery Gimlets" sloshing on your hip to sustain you. Your mind is clouded by dreams of beautiful, rich, dissolute women who attempted to lure you away from cinematic purity at the Fifth Floor Bar of the Palomar Hotel, in San Francisco. Then, in the distance, you see . . . your nemesis, your old buddy, Carl Kickery. He has followed you, to bring you back to civilization . . . .

We have not begun to make the "connections" between Michaelangelo Antonioni, RED DESERT . . . or ZABRISKIE POINT, for that matter. Believe me.

But first:

Glenn wrote (as we say here): "Antonioni, granting his difficulty with English, appears limited in his outlook, in terms of influences, and very guarded in his replies to questions from the audience. But near the end of the interview, he is asked about his "use" of Richard Harris in RED DESERT. Antonioni rears back, and as politely as possible, criticizes Harris.

"He tells us that Harris left the film before shooting for the last third of it was complete. He says that the climactic "love scene in the desert," as it appears in the finished movie, had to be conceived in one night because "Harris was already gone." He estimates that the sequence was composed of "45 -- 47 shots." He invites the audience to examine the sequence again because Harris appears in only seven of them."

Now, I admit, that in quoting from memory (always a bad idea for me, these days), I did not quote accurately that Antonioni repeated the title RED DESERT in his anecdote. [And he actually said: "Harris was already left."] But it would take an inattentive reader of my account, indeed, not to understand that the director was referring to RED DESERT. In addition, Johnson, who sounds on the audio clip remarkably like Peter Bogdanovich (just to add to the possible confusion -- so I left that out), begins the interview with a question about the use of color in RED DESERT, and keeps coming back to the film, always rebuffed or answered vaguely by Antonioni. At the end, Johnson repeats an audience member's question, and prompts Antonioni to comment on RED DESERT.

How anyone might have confused my direct reference to RED DESERT as one to ZABRISKIE POINT, I don't know. [Perhaps, those gimlets, the heiresses to be exploited at the Palomar Hotel, memories of Antonioni.] But you might have added that some critics of the time suggested that ZABRISKIE POINT was possibly an effort by Antonioni to transfer the vision and milieux of RED DESERT to the America of the late 1960's.

Interestingly, as you will know, the question Johnson asks Antonioni is specifically about how he handles actors in films. Contrary to what you quote Jeanne Moreau saying (which I'm sure is perfectly accurate), Antonioni insists that actors must be very carefully held in rein, or they will begin to do things which are not in the best interests of the picture. Then, with a truncated reference to something Richard Harris was alleged to have said about his experience in RED DESERT, Antonioni launches into his anecdote.

In fact, according to the evil IMDb, Richard Harris walked off the set of RED DESERT, then long over schedule, because he was due to report on Sam Peckinpah's MAJOR DUNDEE. [Charlton Heston is said to have found Peckinpah so insulting and abusive to actors on the latter film that he threatened the director with a saber. Looks like we have another -- forget it!] On the other hand, David Hemmings was supposedly warned by Harris that Antonioni punched him in the nose and fired him from the set of RED DESERT. In either account, a suggestion of another inspiration for THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND is made.

And, thus, to the point of my post, I'm glad you are supportive of the idea that Antonioni's memory of Harris's behavior might serve as a further insight into the inspiration for the plot of THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND.

But to continue the "connections" to ZABRISKIE POINT (since you aptly brought it up -- and to add, you may charge, to the confusion), according once more to the evil IMDb, neither Mark Frechette nor Daria Halprin, the stars of the film, had made an American picture before. Both made one other film after ZABRISKIE POINT, neither of which appears to have been released.

[Neither Robert Random nor Oja Kodar had a much better record in American-made films.]

Frechette robbed a Boston bank in the year ZABRISKIE'S POINT was released, 1970, went to prison, and died there in an accident (lifting weights), in 1975. (And so, he would join in early misadventure death Montgomery Clift and James Dean, his more illustrious counterparts [from the George Stevens' connection]). The cherry on the cake is that Daria Halprin was married to TOSOTW participant Dennis Hopper from 1972 to 1976, the years in which much of that film was shot.

Onward: Welles, Ernest Hemingway, George Stevens, Michaelangelo Antonioni, Peter Bodanovich, David Thomson and Todd Baesen, marching arm-in-arm together, toward a vindication of THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND!


Glenn