I gave this movie a Ten...does this mean it's a masterpiece? Because it's not - or let's say it a different way: it is a masterpiece because it isn't a masterpiece. Antonioni's Trilogy - these are great films, known to all serious cinephiles. They have a consistent take on the Human Condition. They have lots to say about failure. But here, Antonioni was still developing his language, and so the "philosophy", if you want to call it that, was not so omnipresent and all encompassing. In some ways, this is just a melodrama - and I love that! It's the beautiful suffering that women, particularly, do in Antonioni's films that led Andrew Sarris to speak of "Antoniennui". But did Monica ever suffer more beautifully than Lucia Bose does here? Let me say it again...Lucia Bose! The film - so relevant to our time - has to do with the capricious nature of stardom. A little Milanese shop-girl has the good fortune to be a world-class babe and gets the Schwab's Drugstore Italian Style treatment...but by the age of 22, she sees that it's all illusion and jive. In her teary- eyed words, she spends Three Months trying to become a Real Actress and no one takes her seriously! And, well, Bose can act - but who remembers her? In some ways, her fate is like that of the character. She was the Euro "it" girl of a particular moment, but that moment has not loomed large in the history - she was later than Garbo and Dietrich, earlier than Loren or Ekberg. Antonioni, on the other hand, would develop further, taking many of the patterns and tropes already found in this film and building on them. A couple of examples: Bose and her would-be lover discover that they cannot connect in the shadow of Mussolini's soulless modern suburb EUR (L'Eclisse); Bose's lover (Ivan Desny) is revealed as a weak individual, lacking in conviction, but in desperation Bose clings to him (L'Avventura). And speaking of L'Avventura (where Sandro is a failed architect), you have to love how architecture is destiny in this film. The house that Clara (Bose)'s husband builds for her is a nouveau - riche monstrosity, with all of its anachronisms and longueurs shoved in our face. A Rococco little dressing table is placed up against a Danish modern staircase...Hieronymous Bosch wallpaper competes with Fragonard curtains. All the emptiness and pretentiousness of Clara's husband Gianni (Andrea Checchi) can be seen in the house. This leads to the hilarious yet tragic set piece where the film he has directed, with Bose starring as Joan of Arc (!) is presented ("a failure, but a noble failure") at the Venice Film Festival. Oh, I could go on all day - all the uses of the Pathetic Fallacy (Antonioni waits for rain and miserable weather the way other directors wait for the Golden Hour). And Bose statuesque and miserable in her furs framed in the spooky shadows of old movie theaters - pure cinema magic! That Antonioni - has any director been able to critique and revel so much at the same time?
Review of The Lady Without Camelias
