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Gabriele Ferzetti, Monica Vitti, Lea Massari, Dominique Blanchar, Renzo Ricci ... see more see more... , Dorothy de Poliolo , James Addams , Lelio Luttazzi , Giovanni Petrucci , Renato Pinciroli , Esmeralda Ruspoli

This ground-breaking film won a Special Jury Prize at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival and established its director, Michelangelo Antonioni, as a major international talent. The plot concerns a yachting ... read more read more...trip by a small group of jaded socialites, including Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), an aging architect who sold out for easy money long ago, his mistress Anna (Lea Massari), and her friend Claudia (Monica Vitti), who doesn't fit in with the wealthy jet-setters' dissolute ethics. When Anna disappears during a tour of a volcanic island, Claudia initially blames Sandro's emotionally barren behavior toward her. As they search the island, however, Claudia and Sandro grow closer and -- when it is apparent that Anna is gone forever -- become lovers. Unfortunately, Sandro cannot find anything decent inside himself and betrays Claudia with a local prostitute. Caught in the act, Sandro has a heartrending breakdown on a desolate beach, but Claudia silently forgives him. L'avventura caught many audiences who were expecting a mystery by surprise; as in La notte (1961), The Eclipse (1962), and Red Desert (1964), Antonioni is interested less in developing a logical story than in exploring states of feeling and breakdowns in human connection. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

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27 critics

Unrated, 2 hr. 25 min.

Directed by: Michelangelo Antonioni

Release Date: June 29, 1960

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DVD Release Date: July 3, 2001

Stats: 624 reviews

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Monica Vitti as Claudia Monica Vitti and Gabriele Ferzetti L'Avventura Ferzetti - Massari in 'L'avventura'
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Flixster Reviews (624)

  • brooklynspo
    July 31, 2007
    brooklynspo
    Michelangelo Antonioni: 1912-2007
  • JonathanHutchings
    March 23, 2011
    JonathanHutchings
    Many films are called "classic." Very few advance and redefine the language of cinema. L'Avventura is such a film. What it showed was that films do not have to be structured around major events, that very little drama can happen and a film can still be fascinating to its audience... read more. It also showed -- and this was harder for audiences to grasp (and still is) -- that events in films do not have to be, in an obvious way, meaningful. L'Avventura presents its characters behaving according to motivations unclear to themselves as much as to the audience; they are sensitive to mood, to landscape, to things that happen, but they also behave in routine and conformist ways. None of them, except Claudia (who had, in her words, "a sensible childhood, without any money"), seems to have much consciousness of the lack of direction that afflicts them. They are, to use a word very fashionable at the time the film came out, alienated. But to say, as many critics did, that the film is "about" alienation is to miss the point. The film shows, it doesn't argue. It convinces by the sensitivity and accuracy of its observation, not by heavy signals to the audience to think this, that, or the other.

    More than any other film L'Avventura seems to define the spirit of a time in cinema when anything seemed possible and there was no territory into which it could not venture. (The more I think about it, post-war Italian cinema may be my favorite "genre." It didn't succumb to any filmic conventions, and approached weighty subject matter with grace and elegance.) Above all what it seeks to capture is the world of fleeting emotion, feelings which are unstable and crystallize only momentarily in the camera's gaze. After L'Avventura, Antonioni did not look back. He made three further films with Monica Vitti --The Night (1961), Eclipse (1962), and Red Desert (1964) -- each time pushing further back the frontiers of what cinema could explore. It's hard to say which of these films is the best, but L'Avventura is the one that started Antonioni on his quest, and remains the one that most clearly represents the unique nature of his art.
  • ajv2688
    November 22, 2010
    ajv2688
    I saw this movie for a class, but I'd like to see it again, I don't remember it well.
  • sanjurosamurai
    January 12, 2010
    sanjurosamurai
    often considered by critics to be one of the 5 or so greatest films in italian cinema history, l'avventura definitely has its strengths, the greatest of which are its striking images. the locations and cinematography are some of the best ever put on film despite the picture qual... read moreity being less than par for a film in this era. the actors also played their roles well. really all around the film delivers on an overall concept that is incredibly unique. initially i was disappointed in the anti climatic nature of the end of the film, but with time ive come to get over this as the film improves in my memory. monica vitti is always beautiful and antonioni might be my favorite italian director.
  • binky013
    September 24, 2008
    binky013
    Yes, I know, I said I wouldn't watch this first installment of Antonioni's trilogy, but what the heck. If you've already seen two of the three, why not? I mean, this is his reputed masterpiece, right? The film that the audience at Cannes booed but that the judges at Cannes awa... read morerded first prize. The film that changed the vocabulary, nay the very "grammar" of cinema for all future filmmakers. Ranked with the likes of Citizen Kane as one of the greatest of all time . . .

    Well, it is good. I enjoyed it much more than L'Eclisse, though not quite as much as La Notte. The characters in La Notte are more engaging -- ironic in a trilogy about, among other things, alienation. The plot of L'Avventura is the most interesting piece of the puzzle for me. It is clever the way Antonioni draws the viewer into a mystery that falls by the wayside. The classic mystery disappears, like Massari, and the true mystery becomes not Masari's soon forgotten vanishing, but the troubling mystery of how far human beings have come from being human. The interconnectedness of people, that communal sharing and caring that allowed civilization to evolve and thrive, is fast slipping away under the pressures of modern life. Still, I think this idea was better rendered in La Notte.

    I rarely listen to those Criterion Collection commentaries. They really can get in the way of enjoying a film. But for my third viewing, I played it. Brother. This is like the worst kind of literature teacher you could ever not want to have teach you. Instead of opening up the possibilities for interpretation, you get:

    These images are not metaphors. They are not suggestive of the old vs. the new. They are concrete images of the old and the new. They are what we call metonymic, not metaphoric.

    That's a rough quote. Mama mia, you would not want to spend a whole semester in a literature class where you are lectured in absolutes like that, believe me. Professor says this is this. You'd better agree. Do not argue. On exams and in papers, please parrot back what I say, if you know what's good for you. Sheesh.

    If I were teaching the class, I might say something like: It has been argued that Antonioni plays with the ideas both of metaphor and of metonym in this film. I can see that the ancient cathedral and the modern condominium in this scene can represent the past and present -- metonyms for "the past" and "the present." But I could also argue that, in the context of this scene, ancient and modern architecture, side by side, are a metaphor for the clash between past history and present circumstance which Antonioni's characters constantly find themselves sandwiched between.

    Begin digression . . .

    "Excuse me, sir, can you please tell me who I can talk to?"

    "Ahem, young man, you know you should never end a sentence with a preposition."

    "Okay, can you please tell me who I can talk to, a--hole!"

    . . . End digression

    Here we see how the two characters, father and unmarried daughter, view her upcoming vacation with her boyfriend -- a clash between the moral codes of the older and the younger generation -- the two are framed by the cathedral and the condominium -- wedged between the old and the new. Much like a pretentious elder who lives by the rules of a grammar which is actually evolving.

    After all, discussion of art should foster a multiplicity of expressed viewpoints. The possibilities should open up, if it's art worth talking about, not be shut down. But what do I know.
  • kenstachnik
    October 9, 2007
    kenstachnik
    I'm not really sure what happened...but it sure was nice to look at.
  • tsigur
    September 24, 2007
    tsigur
    Italian women are gorgeous.
  • Beefy
    September 23, 2006
    Beefy
    Classic and influential.
  • michaelcorleone
    January 12, 2010
    michaelcorleone
    The kind of haunting masterpiece that is capable not only of changing perspectives, but of changing lives. Antonioni's epic-length character drama is held together with intimate resignation, straying away from conventions whenever possible. This is one of the most observant and d... read moreepressing films about love that I have ever seen. Throughout the course of the picture, the degree of its complexity becomes clearer and by the ending it leaves an unforgettable imprint. Gorgeously made in all areas of production, with a cast of phenomenal performances. This is a cinema milestone.
  • simeondeutsch1
    November 24, 2010
    simeondeutsch1
    Intelligent script and great acting, but nothing happens. 83/100

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Critic Reviews

Jonathan Rosenbaum
July 31, 2007
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

It's a work that requires some patience -- a 145-minute mystery that strategically elides any conventional denouement -- but more than amply repays the effort. Full Review

Bosley Crowther
May 20, 2003
Bosley Crowther, New York Times

Like a breathless storyteller who has a long and detailed story to tell and is so eager to get on to the big doings that he forgets to mention several important things, Signor Antonioni deals only wit... Full Review

Roger Ebert
January 1, 2000
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

L'Avventura becomes a place in our imagination -- a melancholy moral desert. Full Review

Cole Abaius
February 11, 2009
Cole Abaius, Film School Rejects

If you've ever hoped for the fusion between classic visual art and film, the last scene of L'Avventura is one of the most beautiful things you'll ever get the pleasure to lay on your eyes. Full Review

Anton Bitel
June 10, 2008
Anton Bitel, Film4

a bleak, even blank, portrait of humanity failing to find again the values it has so carelessly allowed itself to lose. Full Review

Ken Hanke
September 12, 2007
Ken Hanke, Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)

Objectively, this is an important film -- maybe even close to a great film. Full Review

Dennis Schwartz
August 14, 2007
Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews

It's a slow paced personal film that welcomes tedium as readily as mainstream films welcome action. Full Review

August 29, 2006
TV Guide's Movie Guide

One of Antonioni's finest films, and a landmark in the devlopment of cinematic narrative. Full Review

Michael E. Grost
August 22, 2006
Michael E. Grost, Classic Film and Television

One of the key works in film history. Full Review

Geoff Andrew
February 9, 2006
Geoff Andrew, Time Out

If it once seemed the ultimate in arty, intellectually chic movie-making, the film now looks all too studied and remote a portrait of emotional sterility. Full Review

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    • Claudia: Tell me you love me.
    • Sandro: I love you.
    • Claudia: Tell me you don't love me
    • Sandro: I don't love you
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