L'Avventura (1960) The Adventure I had seen "blow up" on the big screen while I was student at Texas Tech University and was very impressed at age 19 or 20. I was surprised to find this film was not nominated for best foreign film 1961. SEE MY 5 or 6 lists of foreign films nominated for Oscar best foreign film (by year). Antonioni experimented with a radical new style: instead of a conventional narrative, he presented a series of apparently disconnected events, and he used long takes as part of his film making style--This film L Avventura became his first success. The story concerns some aristocrats in italy gone for boating for several days. One of the three girls goes missing on an isolated island. they look for her and her rich father gets the miliary and navy to look and hires a helicopter. the boyfirend continues to look on the mainland in italty as other sightings of her are reported. During this period he falls in love with one of the other women and the mission woman mystery is never solved. The structure of this film was very different from films being made in the 50s and 60s. It was intially "booed" at cannes but won the Jury Prize. Monica Vitti and Gabriele Ferzetti star. It is filmed in black and white and lots of great scenes of the Italian cities and stark island. to me the film is kind of an existentialist look at the wealthy elite of Italy and how really boring or useless their lives (sex drinking adultery floating the Mediterranean in yachts) could become until something like this happens and one of their "own" goes missing. the adventure is not about this though the adventure is the so sleight involvement with his girl friends best friend for a while as a diversion before getting back to the usual choice of women-prostitutes.
this is a slow film and not much happens I dont know that your average film goer will be entertained. five stars highest rating