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L'Avventura statement at Cannes
by Michelangelo Antonioni
1960
There exists in the world today a very serious break between science on the one hand, always projecting into the future and each day ready to deny what it was the day before, if that will enable it to advance its conquest of the future even by a fraction. . . . between science on the one hand and a fixed, stiff morality on the other, the faults of which are perfectly apparent to man, but which still continues to stand.
From the moment. he is born, man is burdened with a heavy load of feelings. I do not say these feelings are old or out of date, but they are entirely unsuited to his needs; they condition him without aiding him, fetter him without ever showing him a way out of his difficulties.
And yet man has not succeeded-so it seems-in unburdening himself of this inheritance. He acts, he hates, he suffers, impelled by moral forces and myths which were already old in the time of Homer. Which is an absurdity in our day, on the eve of man's first journey to the moon. But that is the way things are!
Man, then, is ready to unburden himself of his technical or scientific knowledge when it proves false. Never before has science been so humble, so ready to retract its statements. But in the realm of the emotions, a total conformity reigns.
During the last few years, we have examined, studied the emotions as much as possible, to the point of exhaustion. This is all we have been able to do. But we have not been able to find any new emotions, nor even to get an inkling of a solution to the problem.
I do not pretend to be able, nor would it be possible for me, to find the solution. I am not a moralist.
My film L'Avventura is neither a denunciation nor a sermon. It is a story told in images, and I hope people will be able to see in it not the birth of a delusory emotion but the method by which it is possible to delude oneself in one's feelings. For, I repeat, we make use of an aging morality, of outworn myths, of ancient conventions. And we do this in full consciousness of what we are doing. Why do we respect such a morality?
The conclusion which my characters reach is not that of moral anarchy. They arrive, at best, at a sort of reciprocal pity. That too, you will tell me, is old. But what else is there left to us?
For example, what do you think this eroticism that has invaded literature and the performing arts really is? It is a symptom, and perhaps the easiest symptom to discern, of the illness from which the emotions are suffering.
We would not be erotic, that is, the sick men of Eros, if Eros himself were in good health. And when I say in good health, I mean just that: adequate to man's condition and needs.
Thus, there is discomfort. And, as always happens when he feels discomfort, man reacts; but he reacts badly, and he is unhappy about it.
In L'Avventura, the catastrophe is an erotic impulse of this order: cheap, useless, unfortunate. And it is not enough to know that this is the way things are. For the hero (what a ridiculous word!) of my film is perfectly aware of the crude nature, the uselessness, of the erotic impulse that gets the better of him. But this is not enough.
Here then is another fallen myth, the illusion that it is enough to know oneself, to analyze oneself minutely in the most secret places of the soul.
No, that is not enough. Each day we live through an "adventure," whether it be a sentimental, a moral or an ideological one.
But if we know that the old tables of the law no longer offer anything but words too often read out and repeated, why do we remain faithful to those tables? There is a stubbornness here that strikes me as pathetic.
Man, who has no fear of the scientific unknown, is frightened by the moral unknown.
If you have an enemy, do not try to beat him up, do not insult him, do not curse him, do not humiliate him, do not hope that he will have an automobile accident. Wish, quite simply, that he may remain without work. That is the most terrible hardship by which a man can be struck. Any vacation, even the most marvellous of vacations, has meaning only if it forms a counterweight to one's fatigue.
I consider that I am especially privileged in this matter - I do work that I enjoy. I do not know many Italians who can say as much.
That work is the most important thing in my life. It would be superfluous to ask what it gives me. It gives me everything. It gives me the possibility to express myself, to communicate with others. Considering the difficulty I have in speaking, I would feel as if I were nonexistent without the cinema.