One of the modern cinema's most important and influential works, and frequently cited as one of the greatest films ever made, Antonioni's landmark L'Avventura represented a radical break from the narrative conventions of dominant filmmaking. The film has a yachting party of wealthy Italians landing on a deserted volcanic island, where Anna (Lea Massari) disappears after quarrelling with her fiancé Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti); Sandro and Anna's friend Claudia (Monica Vitti) then spend the rest of the film looking for her. Antonioni eschews traditional notions of plot, narrative, and resolution in favour of a new, reflective aesthetic that uses cinematic time and space to impart psychology and metaphysics. The film's impact on art cinema has been such that what seemed elusive and incomprehensible in 1960 seems overloaded with meaning today; even so, few subsequent features have pushed anti-narrative to L'Avventura's limits.
The film was voted one of the top ten films of all time in Sight and Sound's 1962, 1972 and 1982 polls of international critics; with La Notte (1961) and L'Eclisse (1962), it forms part of a celebrated Antonioni trilogy on "the great emotional sickness of our era." Don't miss seeing the film that made Antonioni an international sensation. Print made from materials restored by Mediaset-Cinema Forever, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Compass Film and Société Cinématographique Lyre.
"Of all the memorable works in film history, only a relative few have pioneered . . . and shining amongst these few is L'Avventura"-Stanley Kauffman