Word: antonioni
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...films that have made any noise at the U.S. box office were not daring at all. Cinema Paradiso, Like Water for Chocolate, The Postman and their ilk gave viewers the warm fuzzies. They owed more to traditional Hollywood romantic dramas than to the trailblazing experiments of Bergman, Godard and Antonioni. As for the foreign films that critics championed, these tended to be minimalist to the point of inertia: static-camera portraits of glum people doing not very much...
Directed by Michelangelo AntonioniSony Pictures Classic5 starsItalian director Michelangelo Antonioni is undoubtedly among the elect of names that will cause any self-respecting film buff to break down and weep in ecstasy. Probably best-known in the US for his 1966 cult classic, “Blow-Up,” Antonioni masterminded and created films that left artsy boys and girls everywhere rooted to their seats in gloomy rapture. Amazingly though, he opens up the theme of alienation while still rendering his movies accessible to the general public, proving it is possible to stray into the realm of introspection...
...Doris Day and Jerry Lewis on the low side, Tennessee Williams and biblical spectacles on high. Meanwhile, artists in other countries were leading film to a robust maturity: Ingmar Bergman in Sweden, Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard in France, Akira Kurosawa in Japan, Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni in Italy, Luis Bunuel in Spain. As each director found a constituency, U.S. distributors would pick up his earlier films, as well as other movies from the same country. Americans got an informed sampling from the world's film banquet...
...allure of foreign-language films was twofold: they had class and they had sex. Ritzy Manhattan soirees were spiced with debates about what was real and what fantasy in Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad or Fellini's 8 1/2, about Antonioni's seductive use of existential ennui. And when foreign films didn't tax the brain, they stirred the loins. In pouty Brigitte Bardot, in statuesque peasant Sophia Loren, in the knowing rapture of Jeanne Moreau, Americans saw ideals of glamour more complex than Jayne Mansfield. Even Bergman gave you bosoms along with the angst. These films were invitations...
...dead, it was missing. Some of the best directors died (Truffaut) or retired (Bergman). Others kept working, but in the U.S. their work was shown sporadically at best. The last films Fellini and Satyajit Ray made never opened here; neither have the most recent films by Godard, Resnais, Antonioni and Kurosawa. The Netherlands' Paul Verhoeven (Spetters) joined a century-long exodus of European talent to Hollywood (where he made Robocop and Showgirls). Denmark's Lars von Trier (Breaking the Waves) stayed in Europe but made films in English. That leaves a new generation of world masters--Greece's Theo Angelopoulos...