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Colloquo con Michelangelo Antonioni
June 1958
Blanco e Nero
The technique I use (which is an instinctive one, for I do not decide a priori to shoot in any given way) seems to me to be directly tied up with my desire to follow the characters in order to unveil their most hidden thoughts. I may perhaps be deceiving myself in thinking that one can make them speak by following them with the camera. But I believe it is much more cinematographic to try to catch a character's thoughts by showing his reactions, whatever they may be, than to wrap the whole thing up in a speech, than to resort to what practically amounts to an explanation.
One of my preoccupations when I am shooting is that of following the character until I feel the need to let him go . . . I follow him not because of any theoretical notion, but because it seems to me important to catch those of the character's thoughts which appear-but are not at all-the least significant. .
When everything has been said, when the scene appears to be finished, there is what comes afterwards. It seems to me important to show the character, back and front, just at that moment-a gesture or an attitude that illuminates all that has happened, and what results from it.
It is in this spirit that I try to shoot the scenes of my films. I do not read what I am about to shoot each morning-I know the scenario by heart; thus I do not need to study it every morning at my desk. When I arrive at the studio, I ask everyone to leave for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes, the time required to try out the camera movements, to soak myself in them, to run through the sequence from a technical point of view. I do not shoot several times over, I do not change, I have no doubts about the position of the camera. Obviously, these are problems I set myself, but I resolve them at the beginning and then do not change afterwards.
Naturally I cannot work out camera movements at my desk, I have to think about them at the studio. . . . I always use a dolly, even when I am going to shoot an important scene (besides, I prefer vertical rather than horizontal movements). I follow the characters with the movements I have already worked out, and I correct them later if need be. I compose my scenes from behind the camera. Certain directors-for instance, Rene Clair-work in a different way. I do not say that theirs is not a legitimate system, but I cannot understand how they manage to shoot from little designs and plans they have drawn on paper ahead of time. I feel that the composition is a plastic, figurative element which ought to be seen in its exact dimensions.
It is obvious, and this is a general truth, that everything which has happened to me in life has impelled me to create certain stories rather than certain others. That much I can say with confidence, but it is impossible for me to give an exact account of the cinematographic or extra-cinematographic experiences that have contributed to my development. It is difficult to say how a story is born, how I got the ideas for Cronaca di un Amore and Il Grido. Films are born in me like poems in the heart of a poet (I do not mean to pass for a poet, I am only making a comparison).
Words, images, concepts force themselves onto the mind, they are all mixed together, and the end result is a poem. And so it is, I believe, With films. Everything we read, feel, think and see takes on concrete form in images at a given moment, and from these images the story is born.
It is often real incidents that suggest stories, but this has happened to me only rarely-in fact just once, with I Vinti.
I could not really say whether I am a neorealistic director. It is not true that neorealism is finished; it is evolving. A movement, an intellectual current, is never finished so long as it has not been replaced by a later development. There is never a gap in the continuity.
The neorealism of the postwar period, when reality itself was so searing and immediate, attracted attention to the relationship existing between the character and surrounding reality. It was precisely this relationship which was important and which created an appropriate cinema. Now, however, when for better or for worse reality has been normalized once again, it seems to me more interesting to examine what remains in the characters from their past experiences.
This is why it no longer seems to me important to make a film about a man who has had his bicycle stolen. That is to say, about a man whose importance resides (primarily and exclusively) in the fact that he has had his bicycle stolen. We do not seek to find out whether he is timid, whether he loves his wife, whether he is jealous, etc. We are not interested in these aspects of his character, because the only thing that counts is the theft of the bicycle which prevents him from working, and so we must follow the man on his search.
Now that we have eliminated the problem of the bicycle (I am speaking metaphorically), it is important to see what there is in the mind and in the heart of this man who has had his bicycle stolen, how he has adapted himself, what remains in him of his past experiences, of the war, of the period after the war, of everything that has happened to him in our country-a country which, like so many others, has emerged from an important and grave adventure.
The problem that arises most often for a director is that of creating a harmonious whole while using actors of widely differing origins. One must never lose sight of what one wants in the long run. A foreign actor is chosen because he has the face of the character one wishes. If the character is Italian, the actor will become Italian. There is not a great deal to be done about it either he does become Italian or he doesn't. The problem is to get rid of everything about him that suggests his native country, to give him Italian gestures, Italian behavior, an Italian walk. This is an instinctive thing, it has to be polished up little by little.
I could give you many instances of occasions when I had to resolve serious problems in my relationships with actors. I should like at least to mention one of them in order to return to the question of intelligence in actors: the case of my relationship with Betsy Blair [who plays Elvia in Il Grido]. She is a very intelligent actress, who demands very elaborate explanations. I must confess that it was with her that I spent one of the most agonizing times in my career as a director; it occurred when she wanted to read the scenario of 11 Grido with me. She wanted me to unveil the meaning behind every speech-which was, of course, impossible.
Speeches are the fruit of the instinct; they are suggested by imagination, not by reason, and they often have no other reason for existing than the need felt by the author for' just those words and no others. This is a perfectly natural fact, inherent in the nature of literary creation, and for that very reason often inexplicable.
Thus I had to invent purely imaginary explanations for Betsy Blair, which corresponded in absolutely no way with what I meant to say in the film, and at the same time try to understand what she 'wanted to know. Only thus could I try to bring her to the point where she could play the character better than if I had explained it to her.
With Steve Cochran [who plays Aldo] I had to use the opposite procedure. He had come to Italy thinking - who can say why? - that he might try to become a director, which was quite absurd. And so he refused from time to time to do something, the necessary motivation for which, so he said, he could not feel. Thus I was forced to direct him with gimmicks, never letting him understand what I expected of him, but working with methods the existence of which he never suspected.