Antonioni, Michelangelo [key], 1912–2007, Italian film director and scriptwriter, b. Ferrara, Italy. In the 1940s he made documentaries that contributed to the development of Italian neorealism. He continued to occasionally make documentaries throughout his life, e.g., the controversial Chung Kuo—Cina (1973), vignettes of early 1970s China. His later feature films, which turned away from neorealism to more personal statements, proved to be controversial among audiences and extremely influential with younger filmmakers. These slow-moving and often enigmatic works deal with the alienation, malaise, and loveless eroticism of modern life, with plot and dialogue often subordinate to visual and aural images. His works include Le Amiche (1955); a trilogy consisting of L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), and L'Eclisse (1962); The Red Desert (1964), his first color film; Blow-Up (1966), his best-known film; Zabriskie Point (1970), his first American film and a commercial flop; The Passenger (1975); Identification of a Woman (1982); and Beyond the Clouds (1995), based on a book of his short stories.
See C. di Carlo and G. Tinazzi, The Architecture of Vision: Writings and Interviews on Cinema/Michelangelo Antonioni (tr. 1996, repr. 2007); studies by I. Cameron and R. Wood (rev. ed. 1971), S. Chatman (1985), S. Rohdie (1990), W. Arrowsmith, ed. (1995), and P. Brunette (1998); T. Perry, Michelangelo Antonioni, A Guide for Reference and Resources (1986); E. Antonioni's Making a Film for Me Is Living (film, 1995).
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