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Also, for those interested, found this essay today about L'AVVENTURA:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/movies/12scor.html?mcubz=0
Available in the US on Google Play Movies & TV. 2.99 rental for 48 hours.
This is one of my favorite movies and film experiments. Traveling overseas I checked this out of a library and was really caught up in it.
From the opening music and camera movements this film has me mesmerized. I'm like Robert Downey Jr. in LESS THAN ZERO, unable to look away from the flame heating the crack pipe. The way this tragedy-mystery plays out backwards-frontwards just really strikes a chord with me, not least for the main character being responsible for the horribly bad way things turn out at the start and are revealed in reverse. The characters/actors all crystallize into their own lanes, users of Lenny all.
My favorite exchange in the film: Hearing muffled sounds in the motel closet, he opens it:
You did.
The noir elements just pile on. Love it, and I don't get tired of this film. Very rewatchable for me. I also very much like Nolan's INSOMNIA, not least for his compellingly positive final moment. A very smart way to do it, in contrast to the equally good original INSOMNIA with its unrestrainedly dire, hopeless end.
A very fine choice to start this exercise.
1 MEMENTO
2 L AVVENTURA
3 THE DETECTIVE
No love for The Muppets Take Manhattan?
If we're keeping a running tally then so far for me it's:
1. L'AVVENTURA
2. MEMENTO
Will be getting to THE DETECTIVE here in the next few days.
We shall see when we get there. Is that your film?
Why I do this to myself I don't know, but I think my inability to write scantly is a testament to @GoldenGun's choice of film and how much I was inspired by it or at the very least fascinated to dig beneath its layers. In the next week and a half I may find time to do a much smaller write-up for The Detective too, as it is my choice, but right now my head needs a rest to replenish some of my energy.
Until then, I'll post my full analysis of L'Avventura below for future reference or if anyone wants to skim it:
L’Avventura (1960)/ An Analysis
Full disclosure, L’Avventura is far from my favorite brand of filmmaking or what I find myself drawn to as someone who engorges himself with cinema. I’m all for existential narratives that lay out human experience and error in muted yet expansive detail via hollowed out, suffering characters seen through a monochromatic viewfinder, but that’s pretty heavy and I can’t watch these films in marathon.
Existential filmmaking appears to be of particular fascination to European filmmakers, and largely those of French and Italian centers, the latter of which the director of L’Avventura, Michelangelo Antonioni, fills. These are movies that are very raw in feeling, an open wound in the filmic style that fittingly matches the very real trauma and crises the characters inside them are experiencing. Not the kind of thing to watch on your own best day, these narratives hold nothing back, show human suffering at the lowest of the lows in hyper-detail and present the characters and their pain as slightly restrained through the actors’ more nuanced performances. Replicating real human contradiction and depth, the performers create in front of us characters who are actively repressing their feelings, sometimes making what they are going through an imperceptible quagmire caked in silent gazes hollow of happiness as their jaws clench against a world that seeks to bring them down to their knees. You won’t see a rainbow in an existential movie, and even if you did it’d likely be rendered in bleak and washed out monochrome, the perfect visual metaphor for how the sub-genre takes characters and degrades them through emotional turmoil until only the credits let up on the gas as we travel with them down the Hellscape Highway.
So, what exactly is L’Avventura about? There are a lot of films that leave mysteries to the air and questions on the table, but existential films in this league are particularly prone to open ended pondering. Because these films often leave you with an empty and searching feeling, you finish the experience in much the same place its characters happen to be, unsure of what you’ve just gone through and of how to navigate the emotions left stirring in you as two and a half hours somehow felt like four or five of them spent suffering without air alongside the cast of characters. This emotional exhaustion and feeling of being lost is a purposeful design choice and something Antonioni was no doubt playing from. The emotion expressed throughout the film, all leading up to a climax of human misery, and how he paced certain moments during the film create a structured exercise in mourning and self-loathing such that when the “Fine” screen enters our vision and the movie fades to black on the slouched figure of Sandro wrapped in Claudia’s arms, we feel exhaustion, emptiness, confusion, and a loss for words. In short, we feel what it means to be human.
Presence After Disappearance: Antonioni Keeps Anna a Vital Part of L’Avventura
L’Avventura translates to “The Adventure” in English, and what follows once you pop the film in is anything but that. The title already starts to deceive and emotionally manipulate the viewer, creating the expectation that Antonioni has prepared for them a carefree, exciting and perhaps picturesque narrative that sees characters experiencing the world on a thrilling objective-filled mission. Instead, this adventure is one into the pit (not the heart) of human suffering that is punctuated by strained mourning, denial, jealousy, apathy, malaise and desire that remains recklessly uncontained.
I discussed the design of emotion in filmmaking in my opening paragraphs and it’s largely with the presentation of Anna that Antonioni really makes his mark via this creative approach. One of L’Avventura’s heaviest themes is that of detachment, and by taking Anna away from us so swiftly and early in the film the director places the audience in a position to be manipulated. With Anna cut off from us so immediately we are in danger of losing sense of her, of even remembering her, in the same way that the rest of the characters appear to move on far too easily with their lives following her disappearance. In this way, the movie’s structure and pacing quite purposefully tell the story of men and women forgetting about Anna while we too lose a grip on our memory of her due to our short time with her and how the movie is back-loaded with drama to distract from the woman’s problems and earlier disappearance. We can feel the detachment occurring, and might sense its presence in ourselves.
Anna’s situation and ultimate end, whatever it may be, is replaced by a focus on all the other characters quite early on, often as they deal with anything but her death. In this way, Antonioni is making a statement about how we can often lose sight of things we shouldn’t following an emotional and/or traumatic event in our apathy or selfish concern for our own problems and how we can search for peace from the pain of loss through a detachment from the loss that creates that pain. It becomes easy to forget about Anna throughout the rest of the film with its never-ending depictions of warm and cold interactions between its cast and the heavy emotion that weighs it all down and distracts from the real issues they face, largely centered around communication and honesty.
And I think that was by Antonioni’s design too, to exhaust and lower the viewer to the place the other characters were inhabiting in the aftermath of Anna’s disappearance, shaping the film to manipulate us into feeling that same haze of emotion as we sink deeper and deeper into wondering what it’s all building to and what it’s all for. It wasn’t enough to feel just their detachment from Anna, we had to feel the characters’ emotional weight from all their other personal concerns on top of it, to get the full picture of their suffering beyond their reaction to the major disappearance. And this is because the movie isn’t just about Anna; the pain the characters experience is perhaps felt much greater in what they go through during the aftermath of Anna’s disappearance than anything they feel because of her being gone and that has everything to do with what choices they make to move on following the event, good or bad.
Looking deeper beyond these ideas of detachment and how L’Avventura designs us to feel the weight of emotional suffering, what can we make of Anna’s character, who she is, why she did or didn’t do what she did and what Antonioni meant to say with her? Ultimately, I think Anna is built up as a vessel through which the movie could explore the themes of attention/invisibility and what consequences can arise when we don’t communicate with each other and instead ignore or neglect each other and our emotional states.
When we go on to see Anna’s relationship with her fiancé Sandro, one predicated on passive aggressive slants and disruptive fights, we again see a woman who obviously feels neglected and forlorn. Anna literally feels empty, stone cold as the sun’s rays hit her and a lifeless puppet when Sandro goes at her in his lovemaking. If she’s mobile and upright it’s in spite of her skeleton’s desire to collapse upon itself and her muscles’ temptation to give way under strain (especially those working to make her mouth twist into a frown).
Anna is a visibly depressed and aching person from the first moment we meet her, reaching out in awkward and unnoticed ways to be noticed in her pain and loss for purpose or stability, met with no concern in return. Her fight to be heard, to be noticed, is most apparent during the approach to the island where she disappears from entirely. Those like Anna who appear to have suicide or other permanent ideas on their mind often signal their inner turmoil with a “cry for help,” a ploy to get attention to themselves and what they are going through as a last effort to be rescued from their situation. In L’Avventura this cry for help is the shark sighting Anna makes up, possibly in an effort to attract eyes to her because she feels unnoticed everywhere else, especially when around Sandro. Nothing can be certain, however, and we’re left in the cold as to what she was thinking with any kind of clarity.
Clueless and searching, we try to understand this woman we barely got to know with the scant character details and body language gained by observing her, but never with enough hints or clues to make anything resembling a definite conclusion. Anna holds a rock in her hand with a look of decision on her face after Sandro skips similar rocks into the water beside her moments before, so is she committing herself to taking a similar plunge into the depths? Or is the old man who lives on the cliffs right in his suggestion that perhaps Anna was like the lamb of the previous night who slipped and fell off the cliffs to its death? The comparison being made in that instance, of Anna to a lamb that is most symbolic of innocence and pity, certainly fits the metaphorical nature of so much in L’Avventura and how Antonioni often used images to conjure meaning between two separate entities.
Like Waiting for Godot, L’Avventura isn’t about the lead-up to a character’s return or the reveal of what happened to them, it’s all in the experience of waiting for something that can never come while the human desire to know the truth behind meaningless pain is constantly slighted and denied. Some viewers may watch the film and be beside themselves that Anna is never confirmed to be alive or dead, that she never appears again physically and that little is made of her disappearance in the events that come after. But of course, that was the whole point and must’ve been one of Antonioni’s biggest goals in making the film.
To paint a picture of true detachment in the wake of an emotional and traumatic event, Antonioni had to make his characters display that lack of attachment. For the movie to relay its message Anna had to be forgotten, a necessity according to the themes expressed in the narrative that were catered to by how that story is structured, doing everything in its power to wipe the memory of the woman away. The conscious repression of Anna’s suffering the film commits itself to making then creates a fascinating portrait alongside the unconscious repression of the woman the other characters succumb to throughout the rest of the narrative, Antonioni’s way of linking the film’s language and construction to the experiences of the figures he designed to relay those feelings of detachment to the audience.
Anna vs. Gloria Perkins: Invisibility vs. Visibility
When we first meet the young and accomplished Ms. Perkins, she’s being utterly showered with camera lenses, the lecherous gazes of rabid, horny men and the roars of the collective around her. She’s a poster girl, a front-page draw and attention seeker who gets what she chases. Antonioni makes sure to underscore our first impression of Gloria this way to contrast the woman’s experience with Anna and her own relationship with attention and notice, an amount that quantifies to the value of zero. By drawing this comparison between the two women, Antonioni shows us how one woman can be paid attention to for her looks by the raving masses (a sad fact Claudia expresses to a smaller extent in the film) while another who is facing issues beyond the surface that rattle her heart is wholly forgotten in front of even her lover and friends and overlooked by the eyes and cameras that gawk at Gloria Perkins.
What makes the comparison between Anna and Gloria Perkins all the more unsettling is that the latter’s influence doesn’t end after her debut scene in the film surrounded by the maddened crowd. Gloria returns for one last show-stopping appearance at the end of the movie, at the perfect time to manipulate Sandro as the man is in a “Why not” mood. Beyond being the symbol of attention that Anna never receives in time, as L’Avventura concludes Sandro spots Gloria at a party and is unable to resist the desire to pay her that notice which she is so accustomed to. His biggest sin of the film, even worse than his affair with a similarly wounded and emotionally raw Claudia, is to cheat again with a woman who he gives all his attention to in the way he was never able to with Anna beyond sleeping with her. If only he could have acted so engaged with Anna as he does with Gloria when it really counted, when Anna felt neglected and on her own. Maybe she wouldn’t have disappeared and saved the man the shame of cowering on a bench in the knowledge of the sin he had committed with the specter of Anna’s memory at his shoulder.
The largest tragedy Anna occupies in L’Avventura ultimately becomes not what is done to her, but what isn’t. Those in the film’s world are so ready and eager to give all their concern and attention to a woman like Gloria Perkins when she’s riding high on cloud nine, much in the same way those in our world attach so much attention to celebrities and their glorified existences, but when one of their own is suffering beside them they don’t take the time to reach out and take notice. Anna is forgotten because she’s not a Gloria Perkins, a fixture of lenses, a front-page story or a masturbatory image for men to lust after. Without those two necessary traits she’s left to crumble from the inside in a faraway corner, because her inner problems are no match for the outer beauty of Ms. Perkins that get all the attention. It’s melancholically fitting that Anna meets whatever end she does on an island, as she lived life like an island, cast off from others as those landmasses are from more expansive shores. The loneliness of that metaphor, of Anna’s problems being cast out to sea, out of view from the very shore the other characters are occupying, is a horrific one that nonetheless speaks exactly to her emotional turmoil.
In driving a wedge between the celebrity and attention of those like Gloria Perkins and the lowly status and associated invisibility of those sharing Anna’s suffering, Antonioni creates a strong metaphor for mental health. Through his comparison between the women he shows that the issues we have that we keep inside ourselves sub-dermally are doomed to be brushed over in the face of the outward fame and beauty of others who wear their strengths outside their skin. The characters of L’Avventura are only focused on the exterior delights of those around them and of their selfish desires to be satiated by the vision of a Ms. Perkins and her shapely form, while looking deeper into the interior of a person to rescue them from suffering, as Anna deserved, is complex, unpleasant and of no real concern to them if they even paid enough attention to see her in pain at all.
This feeling of separation Antonioni’s characters have from the problems of those around them that extend beyond the trivial or materialistic concerns that so often distract us speaks to the other major theme of L’Avventura that reigns supreme over all the others: detachment.
Detachment and Crumbling Relations in L’Avventura
In crafting the narrative of L’Avventura, Antonioni makes a pronounced effort throughout the movie to depict the feeling of coldness, apathy and, most prominently, detachment in the characters of the piece. This detachment is long and far reaching, impacting not only their relationships with each other, but also, to a more telling degree, their reaction to Anna’s disappearance. Instead of having his characters mourn their friend, gain an understanding of Anna’s sad situation and learn from their inability to connect and communicate, Antonioni uses the woman’s disappearance to portray humanity’s experience of mourning in a much more tragic and flawed manner.
What makes the characters of L’Avventura so interesting is their inability to truly care, a form of apathy or even selfish emotional diversion (in Claudia and Sandro’s case) that Antonioni is all too ready to portray without holding anything back. The detachment and inability of these characters to truly communicate with each other or even to notice Anna’s struggle are presented in a series of moments that beat like a steady heart throughout the entire film; instead of learning anything the characters continue making more of the same mistakes, continue to change for the worse and continue to forget Anna instead of remembering her and what makes one stick with those one loves.
In the characters Antonioni creates, we can see him building this picture of fractured communication and human apathy as the island excursion proceeds. Raimondo in particular is a character predicated on a detached, cold and unmoved mood. No matter what seems to happen around the group it all seems to bounce right off him, like none of it matters. His dropping of a valuable vase is reacted to with an “Oh well” attitude, a perfect metaphor for how the disappearance of the beautiful Anna resulted in a similar “Oh well” mood in so many other characters. Patrizia is built as a character without a filter or sense of where comedy ends and earnestness begins, best seen in how she can joke lightly about things that are quite tender in nature. A head in the clouds, she never really feels in the moment or aware of what is really going on, or, as Raimondo surmises, she’s simply too lazy to care.
Even Sandro and Anna’s father, the two men you’d expect to be the most engaged in finding the lost woman, feel removed at times or at the very least too detached from her and the situation to offer any help. Sandro’s biggest issue, and really the entire overriding theme of the film that keeps him making mistakes, is that he never places his attention on the right things. He doesn’t burden himself with saying “I love you,” doesn’t engage with Anna beyond his sexual needs and overall attends to the surface of matters instead of going deeper to solve the issues in his life. When Anna disappears he’s useless because what does he really know of the woman when it comes down to it? Like all the other characters he is mystified about why Anna lied about the shark attack, unable to see that the woman was sending out a cry for help that fell deaf on their collective ears.
Even when the search party is ready to travel to and traverse the surrounding islands around where Anna disappeared to see if she had gone there, Sandro is prepared to volunteer Raimondo to go along instead of himself. Whether or not he does this to avoid the situation ahead of him and the consequences of Anna’s “wild moods” that he seemingly misinterprets as her madness is largely unimportant as the motivation behind it, to again not give his attention to the big problems in his life, tells us all we need to know about him.
In the same fashion as Sandro, Anna’s father is just as detached, quite overtly failing to communicate with his daughter in the same way her fiancé cannot, and even after her disappearance he’s the same lost and clueless character searching for a woman he never understood in life. Picking through his daughter’s stuff he’s left with nothing but a religious text to latch on to, surmising that maybe she has a belief in God, that maybe her beliefs would make her adverse to suicide, that maybe she was still around. Always a maybe, never a certainty. In crafting the relationships between Anna and her lover and father in this way, as detached or even more detached than any others in the film, Antonioni makes it clear just what his characters are lacking in their emotional fiber. If a woman’s father or the man she is going to marry can’t connect to her, to notice her pain, what hope do any of these other similarly detached characters have?
Claudia’s choice to give in to Sandro’s advances is a part of L’Avventura I’ll discuss later, but even in this choice we can find a woman seeking a sense of happiness in her life not because she feels nothing for Anna, but because she feels so traumatically affected by the woman’s absence and the way in which she was wiped off the face of the earth that she can’t bear facing it alone. The detachment created between her and Anna drives Claudia to dependently attach to Sandro, to a man who momentarily allows her not to feel so alone and so torn up inside. In short, to feel comfort.
Despite being a flawed man that only grows more flawed as the film goes on, for all these mistakes Sandro is the only one standing with Claudia in a search for Anna, and credit must be given to him. Whether he still loves her while seeking out Claudia is a mystery and something I’ll analyze in another section, but even if he feels detached from Anna and is no longer invested in being her husband, he is actively searching for her and wants to find her. He goes to the correspondent and is willing to pay anything to get him to help, travels to any hotel where a description so much as matching Anna’s is reported, and ultimately shows an effort to care that is lost on most of the other characters around him outside of the woman who fills the void in his heart Anna left behind. Even more telling is how violent and enraged he gets at the police station just following Anna’s disappearance where he launches upon a man who won’t give up information about his fiancé’s possible location, his true care coming out in his fury.
As much as a feeling of detachment reigns supreme in L’Avventura, we also hear a lot of talk about conformity through the viewpoint of relationships, where a pair of people are forced into a compromise and act as they are expected to as part of that couple even if they may not like it. This pressure, the heavy sword of marital commitment or engagement, weighs heavily on the characters in the film and ultimately leads many of them to acting out when they feel unnoticed by their lovers. Just as Anna was a character painted in the tragic brush of invisibility, she is not alone in feeling dissatisfied and ignored.
The movie often feels like an endless parade of sorry relationships that dispel the flowery notions of marital bliss and, in some ways, consciously or unconsciously make the viewer opposed to marriage after seeing the result of that commitment in the lives of so many characters. None of these people are happy, no hyperbole, and the feeling of discontent, slipping cohesion and yes, detachment, that we find in all the relationships of the film underscore and ground so much of what Antonioni seems to be saying about human nature throughout.
One of the first signs of strained relations and a reluctance of people to attach in love can be seen as Claudia and Sandro travel by train and come upon a man flirting with a woman in a compartment. While the man is head over heels in his passion for the woman, she is cold towards him in return and doesn’t buy his notion of love because she has decided that love is hard and other things are easier to find happiness in, putting a price on a connection between individuals that should, in an ideal situation, be priceless. Later on in the film another case of strained relations strikes between the pharmacist and his wife that Sandro is brought in contact with while on his search for Anna. The pair holds their own unique detachment, where the woman feels under the heel of her husband and the husband freely cheats with his eyes in front of her, to prove a point to the woman that his heart is wrestled into submission by no one. Every fine woman that walks into his store, like Anna or Claudia, is just another rear end for the pharmacist to gaze at and covet, a better sign than any that he is not committed to or even emotionally invested in his wife despite their marital bindings. Instead of openly communicating, they engage in a passive aggressive battle of verbal warfare that only distorts the issues they should really be facing as a united couple.
L’Avventura gets even more mileage out of the disconnection between Giulia and Corrado that quickly forms between them on and off the island where they take their recreation. Despite appearing at first as a father and daughter, we quickly find out that the pair share a far more intimate union, as strange as that concept is on the face of it when you see how separated they are in years from one another. I don’t know if Antonioni was trying to make a particular statement about age and time with this particular couple, showing what happens when young and passionate hearts mix with old and jaded ones, but it is impossible to deny the fractures between these two. Of particular importance is a moment coming later on in the film after the group is back on the mainland, when Corrado states that in old age you only feel the cold. Though he is referring to the temperature, the heat that Giulia feels outside and that he doesn’t, the obvious symbolism here is on their passion and view of life. While Giulia is the warmed and hot one, alive with passion and youthful electricity, Corrado is the cold one, not only in his detached emotion but also in his lack of fire to give Giulia the attention she goes seeking elsewhere.
The coldness that the passionate and fiery Giulia feels inside her finds her on a pathway towards cheating with a prince she collides with back on the mainland, connecting her to the suffering of other characters who feel ignored by their partners. It seems to me that, with the character of Giulia in particular, Antonioni was doing what he did with Claudia and had certain aspects of the young girl and her actions mirror those of Anna’s. Giulia feels like she is given no notice by Corrado, who belittles her for calling out things as beautiful, implying that she has nothing else in her mind to offer beyond mild pleasantries and remarks at the surface features of the world around her. While Giulia is certainly naïve and perhaps too focused on the outward life around her as opposed to the interior beauty that can exist too, the lack of connection and respect she feels emanating from Corrado in very much of the same brand that Anna feels is lacking between her and Sandro.
The coldness she feels from Corrado leads Giulia to taking drastic action to break away from her lover, the same breakaway that Anna makes, the only difference being that Anna didn’t seek to selfishly harm anyone or use herself as an object to get revenge. Giulia on the other hand parades herself in front of the prince, selling herself short knowing he’ll shower her with compliments that will make her feel beautiful and cherished like she never feels with Corrado. And to really dig in the blade of the affair, Giulia continues to parade herself, but this time in the arms of the prince and in front of Corrado himself and his company in some effort to show that she won’t take his neglect in silence. What is mystifying is that, just like Patrizia’s affair with Raimondo, nobody seems to care that Giulia is stepping outside her marital lines, much less Corrado himself who brushes it off with a comment about Oscar Wilde. The disconnect between the man and his spouse is such that he can’t even bring himself to feel jealousy, anger, regret or anything else in response to seeing his woman with another man. Such is the value he places in his marital bond and the vows he made to keep that unity strong with Giulia.
All these observations lead to some broad questions: What exactly is Antonioni trying to say with each couple here? What’s the point of it all?
I don’t think any viewer could walk away from their experience of L’Avventura without admitting to the lack of communication and attentiveness that the couples inside it suffer under. But with our awareness of where these characters misstep, what do we think causes these strained relations, what message is Antonioni trying to deliver through them and his narrative and, when all is said and done, is there a solution to avoid the pitfalls of Sandro and Anna, Corrado and Giulia, Patrizia and Ettore/Raimondo?
I think the answers to many of the questions posed via the relationships in L’Avventura can be found in how the film manages to weave its narrative of these disconnected and unfaithful couples into the surroundings around them, namely the architecture of Italy and the antiques that recall a bygone age so far removed from their modern struggles to emotionally cope under the weight of their martial obligations. Each instance where an antique or structure comes into the story is usually punctuated with some reflection on the nature of time, value and ultimate worth that carries a heavy metaphorical tie to the relationships we see crumbling in front of us as we watch the film.
The first antique that L’Avventura presents us with is an old vase or pot that the group finds amidst the barren cliffs in their search for Anna. The metaphor is heavy and obvious here, with Antonioni confronting his characters with an object that was forgotten and left unnoticed despite the beauty it once had; time did its work and neglect made it a lost antique left abandoned to be found at a later date. That the discovery of this antique comes right after Anna’s disappearance, an event seemingly brought on by the lack of notice she felt her pain was getting, is no accident. Much like the antique, the woman was left behind, refused proper attention and ignored despite her beauty and worth.
As the group pick up the object and inspect it we witness two very telling reactions to it that say a lot of the characters and their view on the antique and, unconsciously, Anna’s disappearance. The first reaction comes in the form of Corrado’s comment to Giulia when she asks to have it, stating that she’d only put a flower in it when she admits its beauty. From Corrado’s attitude we can tell that he sees little value in the antique beyond what it presents itself to be; like his wife, he only sees the exterior. The far more telling reaction to the object, however, is that of Raimondo’s because of how it grounds the major theme of the film. The butterfingers he has, Raimondo drops the valuable antique on the rock, cracking it and destroying its worth. His reaction isn’t to face-palm, apologize or regretfully take in the shattered pieces of the object, however. No, instead he utters a lifeless, “Oh well,” a statement that sums up the entire film and the detachment propagated by its cast of characters both major and minor. Again connecting the antique to Anna, the characters seem to share Raimondo’s “Oh well” attitude when it comes to the disappearance of the woman, as seen later in their ability to quickly get on with their own selfish interests and affairs (both in business and pleasure) as the film goes on. Just as they failed to take note of Anna’s own delicate nature and appreciate her value, why would they be moved to regret when an antique got smashed?
The rest of the metaphorical comparisons L’Avventura appears to make between relationships and bygone antiques and architecture are centered around the structures of old Italy that remain in the modern era of that day’s 1960s, presenting an inevitable then versus now comparison. While Sandro and Claudia are out investigating Anna’s disappearance in an effort to find her, they end up high in towers overlooking centuries old architecture, modern figures lost amidst what might as well be an ancient landscape. At this time we get a quiet look into Sandro’s professional life, a man who desired to be a builder of great structures but who ultimately settled for making estimates on the projects of others instead of making his own mark on Italy’s skyline.
Sandro’s idea that beauty can’t last must be inextricably enforced by the recent departure of Anna, a beautiful structure rendered in flesh, but this feeling also connects to the relationships he sees around him that don’t seem to last either. Sandro mocks marital bliss when he sees how the pharmacist and his wife act around one another, because marriage is built up to be beautiful and something worthwhile. When Sandro comes into contact with more examples that disprove this claim, of cheating spouses who don’t speak to one another beyond their shouting, his view of that same old beauty must also be marred with doubt. If the beauty that is Anna can’t survive the modern age, nor the once glorious image of marriage built upon its faithful commitments, what hope does the contemporary time have to sustain itself? In this way, Sandro’s doubts don’t just involve himself and his own mistakes or flaws, they concern the future and the state of the modern age as a whole, of what trouble we could spawn through how we’ve distanced ourselves from the way so many things used to be, including how we connected as people and how we built our symbols and structures to last.
Sandro sees no promise of love as it once was lasting, even when entranced by Claudia, and it’s quite poignant that he is metaphorically tying the failing relationships he sees around him to the wondrous architecture of Italy that captures a spark lost in his modern age. Relationships, like the buildings he finds rising over his head, are built upon steady foundation lest they tumble in upon themselves. Structures have support, pillars to hold the floors up and walls to give shape to the beauty being created that also reinforces the inside of the building from outside disturbance and gives additional support to the entire frame. Without these foundations and supports buildings are rickety, prone to hazardous damage and leave their beauty in danger of being brought asunder by time and its decay.
From a human perspective, relationships need the same sense of structure between partners, of fortitude through trust and an additional sense of support in the form of attention to what is being neglected. If you build a union under a rickety roof you are only dooming yourself to the crumbling of that marital structure and it’s this same mistake that the characters of L’Avventura make. If the relationships of characters like Corrado and Giulia, Patrizia and Ettore, the pharmacist and his wife and especially Sandro and Anna were rendered as buildings in a metaphorical sense, the tools made to build them would be cheaply produced, the mortar meek and unable to keep the walls together, the roof too eroded and prone to leakage to give the love shelter and the windows offering a view inside shattered and left to collect cobwebs in their neglect.
To finish the metaphorical union shared between the architecture of Italy and the relationships of the lost characters who inhabit the country in the modern world, Antonioni presents what is an altogether more pleasant and near carefree scene as Sandro and Claudia visit a steeple while on the search for Anna. In this moment the pair start to madly ring the series of bells situated atop their tower when they find out that they are being communicated with across the city by the bells in another tower. This scene was a fascinating one for me, as I was trying to think about just what Antonioni was trying to say with it, knowing how he’d created a connection between architecture and the characters before. After some thought I became settled on one of the themes that underscores so much of the pain in the film: communication.
Perhaps Claudia and Sandro’s excitable ringing of the tower’s bells in tune to the answering bells across the way is meant to reinforce the ideas of communication that L’Avventura already sets forth? The characters of the movie have such difficulty truly speaking to one another, to even say “I love you” because they assume it’s already known by the other person, but when it comes to communicating with the harsh ring of bells it comes so easy to them. This harsh ringing is communication in another mode, a laborious but light one absent of the human element that makes relations between two people so hard. Depersonalized, communication is made easy and far more preferable than the delicate exchanges of “I love you” that require more clarity and intimacy, a pouring of the heart and not a beating of it.
At the heart of L’Avventura’s crumbling relationships lies a complex and faceted connection between the old world, of ancient structures made to last, and modern relationships that aren’t seen to have that same longevity. While Antonioni paints a sorrowful picture, of drifting lovers finding purchase in unfaithfulness and deceit once true honesty and commitment becomes too much of a burden to reach in that laziness, the director does offer hope of how one could face the modern age and create relationships to last as the old builders intended with their architecture. Sandro makes the point that like structures, people seeking love no longer build their relationships to last forever, no doubt because notions of forever don’t feel practical in the modern age with its own sense of cynicism and stressors. And people aren’t like buildings, where a leak can be patched or a wall restored with the assurance that the structure will sustain itself; leaks in relationships and cuts to the ties of faithfulness can be severed and leave marks when those divides aren’t properly healed. We’ve lost value in what’s beautiful, like Raimondo’s cold reaction to the broken antique, and because we’ve lost a sense of value we no longer place a value in going far, in truly lasting in our relations with each other.
By refusing to attach themselves and communicate openly, the characters of L’Avventura drove Anna to whatever fate she found herself resigned to, and in that same token the very same detachment and scarcity of honesty that led to that tragic event is the ultimate undoing of whatever the characters do afterward. Sandro spent his energy detaching himself and seeking pain free outlets in exchange for truly fixing what was wrong in himself, and when we see him broken at the end of the film we find a shell of a man who has finally come to terms with what he’s done to himself and others, of the effect of detachment and deceit. We see the same story with the other characters who detach emotion and travel corrupted paths in their lost states, either feeling the sting of invisibility that drives them to unfaithfulness or the pain that makes them succumb to a numbness that takes the edge off life.
Under Antonioni’s orders, to avoid the same pitfalls of those in L’Avventura it becomes vital to learn lessons before only mistakes can teach them to you, to ring loud and clear in our communications with one another like two bell towers shouting across a divide and to strive to achieve the kinds of beauty in cohesion and stability in our relationships that you would find between the old builders of Italy and the grandest piazza.
L’Avventura’s Doppelgängers: Claudia Becomes Anna, Then Takes Her Place
Despite Lea Massari’s Anna and the disappearance of her character being the event that the narrative of L’Avventura and its themes are built around, in many ways the radiant and emotionally aching Claudia (played by the expertly miserable Monica Vitti) could be argued to steal the show as the piece’s main focus alongside Gabriele Ferzetti’s Sandro. This is largely because Antonioni uses the character of Claudia not only as a vessel of mourning, but also as a most poignant symbol of change. This aspect of change that we see develop in Claudia goes beyond that of the heart and mind, as well, connecting even beyond that to the character of Anna that L’Avventura charts off from.
From the very beginning of the film, Antonioni is making a distinct attempt to mirror Anna and Claudia, and at times make the two women one. We see this in visual ways quite often, like when Claudia chooses to wear Anna’s clothes because Anna says they look better on her, leading her to being viewed as encroaching on Anna’s property in the same way she goes on to with the property of her heart, Sandro, during their affair later on. When Anna’s father sees Claudia in his daughter’s clothes during the search for her he’s at first struck, like Claudia is almost taking his daughter’s place, and in the construction film this is no doubt an intentional creative choice. Antonioni most prominently uses the character of Sandro to show the lines between Claudia and Anna blurring, as the man replaces Anna with Claudia to avert himself from the pain of the former’s loss. In his heart and mind he’s literally and figuratively replacing Anna, substituting a woman who has her same emotional rawness.
When the investigation of Anna’s disappearance takes Sandro and Claudia to the pharmacist’s shop, Antonioni delivers yet another instance where two women are melded into one in the eyes of those focusing on Claudia. The pharmacist is quite piggish and overt in his attraction to Claudia, admitting to his appetite for Anna (or the woman he thought was Anna) and how he stared at the swinging of her hips as she walked out of his shop during the time she visited. All this man wants is to peep at women he desires, and in doing so his mind treats every one that walks into his shop as nothing but another rear end to gaze at, detaching any personality or individuality to them. Unconsciously, then, Anna and Claudia once again become viewed as the same woman in eyes that only view them as objects.
Additionally, when Sandro asks if the woman who came into the shop fitting Anna’s description was brunette or blonde, the pharmacist replies that she was brunette, while his wife butts in to say she was blonde. Although the woman may’ve likely been pulling Sandro’s leg in an effort to get back at her husband for acting out, the message relayed, of a blonde and brunette being confused with one another, again connects to the way in which Anna and Claudia have blurred into one at this stage of the film. This same effect occurs in Sandro’s mind too, as just like the pharmacist and his wife his heart and mind have caught themselves between a blonde and brunette and his circuits have become crossed as a result.
Though Claudia and Anna initially start out as blurred doppelgängers of each other, two emotional women seeking love, attention and affection, over time we eventually see Claudia drift away from filling the role of Anna in both Sandro’s mind and in the eyes of those around her. When Anna was missing and her fate still uncertain, Sandro sought Claudia as a fill-in for Anna, meaning that Claudia herself had no identity of her own and instead melded into the role and personality of her lost friend. Over time, however, Claudia again becomes her own woman, her own self, and this correlates with the time in the film where Anna’s fate seems to be laid to rest and the surrounding characters move on with their lives when all seems settled. No longer needed to fill Anna’s spot, a spot that Sandro must believe can never be filled anyway (perhaps he’s confident she’s dead), Claudia marks her own territory and becomes a true replacement for Anna in Sandro’s heart as he views her as her own person.
While Antonioni started the film by constantly forming comparisons between Anna and Claudia, dressing the latter in the former’s clothes and having Claudia wear Patrizia’s wig to overtly establish her as Anna’s doppelgänger, he eventually shifts to actively drawing a line between the two that up until that point he’d only blurred. We can see this just in how Antonioni chose to shoot the two love scenes between Sandro and Anna at the beginning of the film and the one between Sandro and Claudia much later on when Claudia finally takes on her own identity. The camera is brought in close to shoot Anna’s face with little beyond a sliver of torso contained in the frame as Sandro ravishes her chest and neck, a moment crafted to be purposefully intimate and designed to be a private moment we feel uncomfortable witnessing because of the close-up. In receiving Sandro’s love, Anna’s face is a blank slate, lifeless as if the man is kissing a corpse already entering rigor mortis.
Claudia’s transformation from a doppelgänger of Anna to a woman in her own right only continues as L’Avventura goes on, until she fully takes the woman’s place with pride and happiness. Shockingly, the innocent and loving Claudia ends up feeling so at ease with her new position in Sandro’s heart that she’d do anything to keep it, fearing Anna’s return, a woman she cared for, because it would have the chance to break up her and Sandro. The woman who started the film as the most emotional and caring of all the characters, the one truly bereft and in regret of her failure to help Anna, a woman who often becomes confused for the woman in the hearts and minds of those around her, finishes the film wishing her friend to stay gone.
Claudia’s Metamorphosis: Guilt Leads To Detachment
Part of L’Avventura’s greatest impact as a piece of existential filmmaking is the way that Claudia, a woman we start to see as a pleasant and good-hearted individual who is truly concerned for Anna, goes on to change and becomes unrecognizable amidst the liars, cheats and detached souls of the film instead of being the exception to those vibrant and poisonous personalities.
I made a point of underscoring above just how Antonioni was attempting to blur the lines between Claudia and Anna in this film, to make the two women at times mesh into one person, and I call back on that observation now to discuss how Claudia starts off feeling guilt in reaction to the connection forming between herself and Sandro. Claudia cared for Anna and at the start of her and Sandro’s affair she feels like she is wrongfully marching in on her friend’s territory before she’s even been confirmed as dead, and we can see the pain she feels that mixes with the happiness she elicits when around Sandro. She loves being cared for and noticed with a tender touch and soft kiss, but she makes pronounced steps to end what is developing between her and Sandro knowing the trouble it would cause if Anna returned to find her and Sandro in a deep romance while she was still missing. The relationship Anna and Claudia had would be irrevocably ruined, with nothing left to salvage.
As the film goes on and the cast of characters return to the mainland, we can again see Claudia’s guilt spilling out as Sandro refuses to relent in his desire for her. When Giulia acts out against Corrado and attempts her seduction of the painting prince, not having to try too hard, we first see Claudia laughing as the young girl and artist roll around on the table in the studio, kissing. Then, when the moment is taken in and Claudia becomes aware that she is experiencing an affair firsthand, she quickly snaps at Giulia for what she is doing. She must’ve thought of her own situation in those split seconds, having the same childish and unadvised affair with Sandro that Giulia was trying to have, and her own inner loathing and guilt snapped out as she projected her situation onto the couple in front of her.
In one moment of the film in particular, when Sandro thinks he’s found Anna’s hotel and is prepared to confront her about his relationship with Claudia, the woman who had finally taken her place in his heart, we see firsthand the guilt Claudia feels under the gaze of attention. This section of the film is already stressful for Claudia because she knows that, if Anna is alive, she may never speak to her again when she finds out what she and Sandro had done behind her back when they should’ve been spending all their time finding her. But what punctuates the instance with even more sadness is that, even when she wanted to be invisible, as invisible as Anna always was to people, Claudia can’t escape the attention of others. Men crowd her in the square in the dozens, swarming her in a manner that unsettled me when I first saw the scene.
You can feel the immense sadness in Claudia in this scene, realizing more than ever that the beautiful and outgoing are fawned over with cameras and the applause of crowds, but those like Anna who suffer in silence are given no notice and are never placed in the spotlight to feel their worth vindicated, to feel beautiful and worthy. Despite Claudia having no effect on how men react to her, it speaks to her deep heart that she takes the positivity of her beauty as something to loathe or feel guilty of, knowing that she would rally a larger search party than Anna ever could if she went missing. Unlike Gloria who needs the attention to feed on and feel special, no doubt to hide a deep insecurity, Claudia would do anything to force off that notice selflessly, all with the yearning that Anna would get the attention instead.
Near the end of L’Avventura, Claudia completes her transformation from the woman she once was, invested in Sandro and, through her happiness, actively replacing Anna while consciously or unconsciously taking steps to forget her friend (it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where this change occurs). The happiness with which Claudia lights up while around Sandro, however, is colliding constantly with the guilt she feels even as she knows Anna is slipping further and further from memory in both their hearts. Claudia seems to truly love Sandro, but she at first seems worried about him reciprocating the feelings to her ear, perhaps because it vocalizes and makes true their shameful affair in concrete terms. Because their love was built upon Anna’s disappearance, Claudia may begin by avoiding Sandro’s advances because she knows that she would be encroaching on Anna’s territory, a woman she still seems to think will return to find them in sin any minute at that stage in the film.
But everyone has their breaking point and Claudia’s too arrives, the narrative drawing a line in the sand where we find the woman finally beginning to detach herself from pain or concern like all the other characters already had to achieve her own form of happiness, a shadow of the regret-filled woman she once was. Fully committed to Sandro, Claudia comes to be in a position to make her lover say anything about her she wants him to say, he is so taken with her, and she uses that manipulative hold to get romantic and passionate words out of him. Claudia may do this because she is searching for a way to stave off the pain and shame she feels in taking Anna’s place, knowing that her heart will believe Sandro’s words whether he means them or not. She does this with the guilt that comes from knowing that the words she is manipulating Sandro into saying are those that were owned by Anna just days earlier, just as his heart used to be, and over time we find Claudia taking full ownership of all that used to be held by her friend. Claudia does all these things in lieu of facing what she is doing openly and honestly, repressing and neglecting her state of pain instead of working to cure the emotional turmoil she is in that has driven her on a path towards the affair and her eventual detachment from Anna’s memory simply because the alternative is too painful for her to bear.
Claudia’s final ounce of guilt she elicits before she seems to refuse to take any more comes when she and Sandro reconnect with Patrizia and Ettore at a party near the end of L’Avventura. Claudia seems to be partially overcome with a hint of guilt in light of how close she’d grown to Sandro without knowing of Anna’s fate, and perhaps feeling the sting of not wanting to know it. As she sits down with Patrizia, the woman looks to Claudia and makes the observation that she seems well, words that she instantly beams at hearing before her heart butts in and we again see the happiness in her drain to the background of her mind.
When it comes to judging the morality of what Claudia and Sandro are doing via their affair, I think Antonioni largely leaves it up to the viewer to decide, as is common with the removed hand of the director in existential filmmaking. These kinds of films are known for their approach to moral issues, and largely give you free reign to formulate your own perceptions, impressions and final judgments on the characters implicated in the action being depicted. And yet, despite this restraint of Antonioni in accordance to the sub-genre, I think one minor moment does present a moral judgment on Claudia and Sandro, right at a time when they are first warming to one another in the wake of Anna’s absence. As Claudia and Sandro search for Anna around Italy we find them coming upon a desolate town devoid of life, a section of the film I noted above for its ability to make the pair of characters truly alone in their care for whatever had happened to the disappeared woman. As the two walk around this abandoned town, their echoes falling deaf on ears that aren’t even there to hear the shouts, they eventually give up and drive off. As they enter their vehicle, the camera does what it doesn’t do for the entire rest of the film until we reach the final image of the piece: it stalls.
The camera stalls upon the image of a church situated prominently amongst the other buildings in the town, identified by a distinguishing cross that hangs high on its front, the lens moving at a snail’s pace towards it from what looks like a back alley. The camera continues to creep forward gradually and with stealth, like spying eyes following Claudia and Sandro as they continue to commit the sin that Antonioni may be actively using that moment to punctuate, his moral statement of the rightness or wrongness of what his characters are doing. I don’t think it’s any accident that right after delivering this shot of a church with all the implications of sinfulness and morality that that kind of image creates, Antonioni next cuts right to Sandro and Claudia making love in the grass, proving a direct follow-up to the shot of the church in what could be a moment of highly intentional visual linkage. Is this his way of subtly judging them and their affair, of inviting upon them some coming penance? Judging from the very karmic ending of the film, perhaps he is.
Although Antonioni never makes a firm statement on Claudia and Sandro’s affair or manipulates the viewer into thinking anything about the characters to fit his own view of them (assuming he was even willing to judge them), I think the visual relationship and juxtaposition of the church with the consummation of the affair is telling and presents a moral issue that pervades throughout the film. As the viewer we are left to pick through our own hearts and minds in reaction to what Claudia and Sandro are doing, to engage that part of ourselves that offers judgment to determine how we are to view this particular entanglement. Is it wrong for Claudia to step in on the territory owned by Anna’s heart without even knowing her fate? Is it wrong even if we, the viewer, can perceive how much better a match she makes with Sandro? And what of the happiness Claudia feels, and the guilt that naturally poisons it? Is she right to feel sinful, or is she being too hard on herself for reaching out in her pain to capture that feeling of love and satisfaction so many try to find in their lives?
These questions of morality and decency surrounding the affair of Claudia and Sandro continue until the very end of the film where Antonioni makes it clear how much his characters have changed and delivers to them the natural consequences that’ve come out of that change, still without making judgments as a director behind the veil. Claudia’s function as a character and the statement she is used to make, of a woman who takes Anna’s place before gradually replacing her in full, cohesively and poisonously intertwines with the overt guilt she has felt for her actions across the entire film. In the last ten minutes of the movie we find Claudia beside herself with worry, knowing that Sandro has been off without contact for many hours. Seeking him out, she finds no sign of him with Patrizia and Ettore, her heart continuing to paint a picture of anxiety. While we are to assume that she may be feeling a lover’s concern and a yearning to have her mate back in her arms again, a passionate and poignant image, the truth is far nastier and underscores who Claudia has turned into.
Despite being built up as Anna’s doppelgänger through and through, Claudia ends L’Avventura no longer resembling Anna or even the woman she used to be, unselfish, emotionally honest, capable of guilt and regret. The point in the film where Claudia ends her role as Anna’s doppelgänger and takes on her own identity as Sandro’s new lover coincides powerfully with her experience of guilt, linking them. When she felt like she was taking Anna’s place, Claudia’s guilt was fully engaged, but as the film goes on and she replaces Anna, wading deeper into the sin of the affair, we see that feeling of guilt and regret slowly slip away until she is eroded of those signs of her screaming conscience. Because of this, we could interpret Claudia’s efforts to take Anna’s place in Sandro’s arms as not just an escape from the pain of loss, but as an escape from the guilt she was being exhausted by. While there is a noticeable sympathy in the woman’s struggle to cope with life’s hurdles, I think Antonioni makes the wise decision of depicting Claudia’s situation warts and all, leaving us to make our final judgment on her moral standing.
In Claudia and her fall from grace as a woman of good-heartedness and virtue, we can see the way in which Antonioni is playing with time to show just how quickly we can switch our hearts off in the wake of traumatic events to avoid truly contemplating and accepting the pain attached to them. In an attempt to escape that pain, we detach. Claudia symbolically mentions on the first train ride she takes with Sandro that she is uncomfortable with what has gone on since Anna’s disappearance, not only because of the affair and the deceit of their entanglement, but also because she is deeply aware of the metamorphosis going on inside her. After holding Anna as a friend and feeling turmoil in the wake of her disappearance that she regretted being unable to stop, Claudia can sense her heart gradually losing its grip on the memory of her friend in her effort to avoid despair and instead find purchase in love and comfort.
This melancholic development of Claudia that makes up the centerpiece of L’Avventura, of a woman who grows distorted, corrupted and detached as guilt, regret and concern leave her heart is haunting. In depicting the journey of Claudia, Antonioni takes the best and most redeemable of the characters in the film and brings her down to the level of a Sandro, Corrado, Giulia, Raimondo or Patrizia. The woman with a heart on her sleeve learns to detach that heart, the loyal friend becomes the unfaithful mistress, and the selfish side of her works to remove all regret as she forgets the woman she once felt so much guilt for. Time quite swiftly has done its work and to match the disappearance of Anna from the world, the old Claudia too departs into thin air while her beautiful shell continues to live and breathe.
Just as L’Avventura paints a picture of change, guilt and detachment through the character of Claudia, the second character that shares the existential focus of the film, Sandro, charts a similar journey predicated on mistakes as he faces what he’s done and hasn’t done in the wake of Anna’s disappearance. Whereas other characters in the film seem unwilling or unable to feel guilt or regret in the face of Anna’s tragic situation outside of Claudia, Sandro actually shares the same capability to be tortured under the weight of those human responses. But just as the attention of the characters are diverted where they shouldn’t be, away from Anna and on trivial concerns, Sandro’s own feelings of guilt and regret are held only for himself. His inability to look pas his own selfish concerns, of what he has or hasn’t done and his life situation, is very telling for the kind of flawed character we grow to see more and more of as the film goes on. Sandro has the capability to change, but he always gets into his own way and never makes those same changes through fear, laziness or disinterest. In the same token, he seems unable to learn anything, of what is right and wrong, before he makes the mistake that really kicks him in the ass and sends him flying towards forced enlightenment.
We see all these complex and conflicting experiences of Sandro, of his regret, guilt and proneness to mistakes, in the life story of his that we get peeks of throughout the film. He desires to be an architect, a builder, to bring his own touch to Italy’s surroundings with his building designs, but he aims low and becomes content as Ettore’s lackey, doing estimates for that man’s own projects instead of working on his own. In his heart he wants to be an artist, but in reality he’s a glorified moneyman and number cruncher because he never shoots for the sky or commits to what could make his life better, to realize his potential because it might be too hard and he likes the safe position he fills under Ettore. Later in the film, Sandro shares with Claudia even more of his story, of his dreams to be a genius in a rented room, to live as an artist through the freedom of the work, but again shares how he never reached those goals for himself and instead found himself exchanging his creativity for the security of money and the comfort of a safe job. As he says these things Claudia is exhausted and getting ready for bed, perhaps Antonioni’s way of saying through the visual metaphor that Sandro is also exhausted and retired to the bed he has made in life, giving up even though inside he wants to aspire to more, to truly “wake up” to his calling.
A lot of the hindrances that have impacted Sandro and held him back have to do with the “Why?” lifestyle he seems to subscribe to, instead of a “Why not?” one, an aspect of L’Avventura I’ll detail in the next section of my analysis. Instead of actively seeking out his dreams, of making an effort to try, Sandro roots himself in the same position by constantly asking himself, “Why?” Why bother building structures when he makes a comfortable and sustainable wage simply looking over Ettore’s projects? Why put himself out? Nobody makes buildings to last anyway, so why bother even trying to make his mark in a modern world that wouldn’t appreciate his artistic eye and bygone style? Each time Sandro asks “Why?” he digs himself deeper in place, further and further removed from achieving anything in his fear, laziness and false contentment.
Though Sandro never approaches the archetype of a redeemable character perhaps in the same way the more emotionally intelligent Claudia does, part of what makes L’Avventura a fascinating watch is how we can see the potential of this man peeking out, of his capability for progress and how he could be learning from his mistakes if he could only move out of his own way. In a quietly played moment that may be my favorite of the film, we see Sandro taking a walk outside around a piazza, a grand structure of the old guard built to last that he laments the absence of in his own age. In front of him is the representation of that bygone age of longevity and, just out of the corner of his eye, he spots a pad of paper, ink bottle and pen pointed right in its direction. Moving closer to it, Sandro knows all too well what he is seeing, the mark of an architect like himself, like the man he could’ve been, surveying and sketching his surroundings. In a silent moment, Sandro engineers the ink to spill on the paper in an effort to make it look like an accident after something strikes him inside. Noticing what has just happened, the architect in ownership of the pad races to confront him, daring to try and throw a punch. He doesn’t know who Sandro is, nor could he ever understand how the man’s actions were Sandro’s way of stopping the young man from making the mistakes he made when he was the boy’s age.
Following Sandro’s decision to intervene in the young artist’s life, an effort to set him on a “Why not?” road instead of allowing him to be doomed to his own “Why?” lifestyle of barren creativity and dissatisfaction, we can notice a change occurring in Sandro too for the first time. The interaction he has with the young artist, a kid who ostensibly may as well be a twenty-three version of himself, seems to ignite a spark in Sandro, the promise and potential of a “Why not?” lifestyle. It took him seeing the ghost of his past self to notice the rut he was in, and I think he is compelled from that moment on to make the fullest of his life, to stop questioning things with “Why, why, why?” and instead start asking “Why not?” The real tragedy of Sandro’s decision here, to stop making excuses, is that he doesn’t learn the right lesson from his run-in with the artist and takes his “Why not?” lifestyle too far.
“Why nots” can be vital for reaching our goals through fear, but “Whys” are important too, because they clue us into why we might not want to act in a specific way; they are our judgment and critical analysis tool. Because Sandro felt that he could ask “Why not?” for everything in his life he never thought to wonder why he shouldn’t sleep with Gloria, and because he didn’t think through the consequences it would deliver him, like Claudia’s despair at seeing him cheat on her, Sandro is doomed to yet another sizeable and long-lasting mistake.
Through the character of Sandro, Antonioni is not only presenting the interesting portrait of a man with potential who doesn’t push himself towards improvement, but also makes him a vessel of the battle between a “Why” and “Why not” life. As I will go on to present, I feel L’Avventura reveals not only the dangers in a “Why” or “Why not?” life, but also why a life without both of them or just one is impossible to live healthily.
L’Avventura & Love: The Dangers of Asking “Why” Instead of “Why Not?”
One of the more tragic and powerful aspects of L’Avventura is that Sandro isn’t alone in his battle with the “Why?” and “Why not?” questions of life. It’s a common theme of the film that characters will constantly repeat the words, “why, why, why” in response to any number of things, of why they should do this or that, why they should or shouldn’t act in this or that way. Each of these questions, asking the world and larger universe or even yourself why things happen or why they don’t is at the very heart of existentialism and the journey characters go through to understand the events and circumstances that impact them.
Perhaps the most immediate “Why?” question that permeates L’Avventura is the very existential one of, “Why do things happen as they do?” Characters lost in the aftermath of Anna’s own disappearance ponder the questions of life, of how we can move on from mourning and how we can find happiness again in a fashion that connects the movie to the very sub-genre it occupies in cinema. It is the goal of existential filmmaking to pose these kinds of questions in an effort to uncover the secret formula to existing in the age in which the film is made and all the particular blockades that era puts up to stop one from moving on and surviving as an emotional being.
There is little out there more existential than questions of “Why?” because as humans we are more often than not lost in our ability to understand what is happening around us, searching for meaning in the meaningless and seeking a pattern in the random chaos of life. It is too much to assume things just happen, so in fear and turmoil we see a why, a reasoning through which all of life’s big and small traumas, ups and downs can be explained.
We see these existential questions popping up all throughout L’Avventura, always in “Why” inquiries that give us a glimpse inside the characters. Sometimes the “Whys” are from an emotional place, like when Claudia is questioning what has happened to Anna and why she has disappeared. In the aftermath of Anna’s absence the characters are left shifting through whatever impressions they made of the woman to try and understand what has happened and why. Why did Anna leave? Why did she lie about the shark attack? In asking these “Why?” questions we can see just how out of touch and clueless the characters are with Anna and her problems. They are certain of nothing, and can only ask questions because they have no answers to any of what has happened.
Sometimes the “Why?” questions are a commentary on mourning and moving past trauma, a cornerstone piece of L’Avventura predicated on how the characters react to an event with tragic undertones. The emotional heart of the film, Claudia is the one to eventually ask after experiencing immense guilt and regret, “Why should I cry?” She has been so exhausted by the high emotion of her experiences since Anna’s disappearance and what consequences have arisen from it that she eventually resigns herself to a cold detachment from that despair best underscored in those lines. And it’s those same words that propel her into forgetting Anna entirely, as she finds no need for mourning and the heavy weight of it all, instead choosing to repress it and salvage what she can with Sandro.
The most salient and profound “Why?” of L’Avventura that connects heavily to its pervasive theme of detachment comes when Sandro and Claudia playfully debate how humans share their love. Claudia, like Anna, is a woman yearning to hear a man profess his love, because just feeling the love isn’t good enough; the passion, attraction and care must be given an identity with those words. Sandro is of another opinion, however, reluctant to repeat or show his love for Claudia in words because he assumes that her simply knowing how he feels for her is enough. In reply to her request to say the three words, all he can say is, “You know. Why should I tell you?” Like no other line in L’Avventura, this one gets to the heart of everything presented in the film that connects not only to that feeling of detachment so many of the characters suffer under, but also to Anna’s tragic suffering.
The idea of only showing love while withholding the words “I love you” is an error in human emotion that seems generational for the characters in L’Avventura. Those of Sandro’s time were less likely to vocalize their feelings, to say “I love you,” audibly for another to hear, an experience of love that seems to fit the mood of the 50s and 60s that the movie was produced around. At that time adults with children were warned against coddling the kids and suffocating them, so the offspring weren’t held or shown love to the degree we see these days in a truly progressive and aware world. This creates a culture where sharing love and speaking that love out loud is viewed as strange and uncomfortable, at odds with the cold conformity of the period. Sandro’s reluctance to show Claudia his love, and the inability of other characters to be honest and open in their own relationships as their significant others step out of line to cheat fit this picture of the day, of preferring coldness to warmth. But being of a more developed and progressive time, those of us in the now can see where these characters are going wrong, and why their inability to say “I love you” is such a pervasive issue with heavy consequence attached to it.
What the characters of L’Avventura fail to see or understand is the value, importance and necessity of sharing love openly and speaking the words out loud to your partner whether you believe they already know how you feel or not. The alternative is being like Sandro, a man who doesn’t say “I love you” because he assumes his partner already knows how he feels and he doesn’t like reminding a mate about such a simple thing they are already aware of. It’s this same inability to share those feelings with Claudia that connects to Sandro’s own relationship with Anna. He treated her the same way, assuming she knew how he felt, so he never vocalized his feelings. He didn’t tell her “I love you, Anna” because he simply presumed that she knew he loved her, so why waste time repeating the obvious? Sandro can’t grasp that sometimes love isn’t obvious, that sometimes people need the words to crystalize the feeling they hope is there but can’t be certain of. While Sandro is certain that Anna and eventually Claudia know how he feels, both women live in constant doubt about how he feels about them, creating a dangerous situation where a man won’t repeat “I love you” because he sees no point in repeating the obvious, leaving the women on the other side lost in their search for that vindication and certainty of love.
We see this crying out for love and attention most prominently in Anna, and that lack of love she feels reciprocated and vocalized kicks off the entire film, but we also see Giulia going through the same experience with Corrado. Corrado, much like Sandro, is unwilling or ignorant to the love that Giulia wants to hear professed, and we see him repeating the same mistake Sandro makes with Anna, of asking why things must be said. On the island Giulia is admiring the surroundings and constantly calling out how beautiful it all is, observations that are met with the barks of a crotchety and old Corrado who wonders why she must vocalize the beauty and value she sees around her all the time. Despite Giulia being an immensely flawed and naïve character who fails to learn how to mend the division between her and Corrado the right way, her attitude of giving attention and appreciation to what she sees, her tendency to vocalize her love of things, is well intentioned and is lost on the other characters.
Giulia is right to defend her attitude with Corrado, responding in a “Why not?” manner when she fails to see what is wrong with saying something is beautiful when it is, giving something value even when that value is already obvious. And here we have the heart of the matter, the hidden puzzle piece that creates the full picture of L’Avventura and the disconnection and detachment between the characters. Sometimes people deserve to hear the truth, no matter how obvious it appears to be to the person giving them that attention, because sometimes what is obvious to us isn’t obvious to the other person. In pointing out the obvious beauty in things Giulia is able to do what Sandro and Corrado are unable or unwilling to, not telling their women how much they mean to them, of how much they love them, because to them the obvious doesn’t need pointing out or vindication. They never once think that maybe the women in their lives aren’t aware of how they feel, and this disconnect and misunderstanding leads their relationships to a shallow grave. Anna’s emptiness and the lack of love she got sent her off and Giulia is driven from Corrado in the same way after she tires of not being loved openly, searching for an affair with the prince because he will lather her in the compliments she needs to hear to be assured of her worth to another’s heart.
Without the existence of this openness between hearts, an unmistakable clarity, there can be no communication. Anna received no clarity or vindication from Sandro and she became lost in every sense of the word just as the characters around her break apart and find love in unfaithful affairs because they are unable to find that same clear communication. Instead of taking a “Why not?” attitude in sharing their love, the characters ask “Why?” and find an excuse to avoid sharing their feelings instead of simply acting and not asking, a decision that eventually leads them all to karmic despair. Sandro’s tendency to ask why leaves him cold and distant towards those he loves, women who wonder about his true feelings because he avoids making them clear. Claudia asks “Why?” she should cry instead of asking herself “Why not?” as there is no shame in her going through the loss of Anna in the normal fashion in which people mourn, especially when asking too many “Whys” to herself eventually turns her cold to her friend’s memory.
That isn’t to say that L’Avventura only argues for a life lived with “Why not?” however, as Antonioni presents the dangers of that question and how the assertive and freeing nature that it creates inside a person can lead them down a path as consequential as that of one who only asks “Why?”
Freedom & Restraint: The Necessity of Asking “Why?” and “Why Not?”
While watching L’Avventura we can see how the characters’ decisions to constantly ask “Why?” hold them back in feeling and expressing their love, but Antonioni is smart to show that not even a “Why not?” lifestyle can save one from the demons that plague the modern world and the emotional battlegrounds that are relationships. Just as the characters are wrong to ask “Why?” when they should find any reason they can to act on communicating and sharing their love before they lose those they hold dear, at times the care free attitude of asking “Why not?” or having no limits and ultimate freedom of the spirit, can lead to a lot of bad too. It’s a “Why not?” attitude that drives Giulia to cheat, that makes Patrizia toy with Raimondo, that makes Sandro sleep with Gloria Perkins, because their own unhappiness drives them to act out in their moment of carelessness.
In these instances L’Avventura shows us the dark side of “Why not?” to match the dark side of a “Why” lifestyle, showing that in all things we must act responsibility and decently in our choices, to use our “Why not?” decisions to positively impact those around us and not to feed our own inner demons even more. Sandro missed the point in this and, instead of dealing with his problems and using his “Why not?” mood to profess his care for Claudia, he once again went out of his way to selfishly cave to his own desires with no regret for who he was going to harm by acting that way. He was servicing his own needs in the end, instead of enriching another’s heart, and all it gets him in the end is pain and loneliness because he has created no sturdy structures in his life built on strong foundation.
In this way, L’Avventura is able to dually analyze the decisions we make in life and the questions we ask ourselves to either realize our dreams or recede from them in a very even-handed way, showing both sides as not all right. While the film seems to partially reinforce that it is important to live a “Why not?” life when it comes to our interactions with those we love, to give us the strength to hold nothing back and reach that clarity of communication the movie depicts as the ideal, at times it’s also wise to ask why you shouldn’t do something instead of jumping to a “Why not?” judgment that isn’t thought through. In the end, it comes down to restraint and positivity, as in all things: “Why not?” decisions are ideally supposed to be positive ones, so it’s important to avoid acting selfishly with our freedom of spirit, but in the same token “Why?” decisions show us restraint and make us ask ourselves what the reasons may be to avoid doing something, often saving us from making rushed mistakes.
Ultimately, I think the point being made in L’Avventura is that no life can be led with just “Why?” or “Why not?” choices, and we can’t make those choices with only ourselves in mind because when we lose sight of others we are at our most selfish and cold. We need the freedom of the “Why not?” to put ourselves out there and communicate with clarity to be better than Sandro, Corrado and Giulia when it comes to mitigating our problems and sharing our love, but also the restraint ingrained in the “Why” to consider our actions in an effort to ensure we are acting responsibly and positively in a manner that enriches ourselves and others. We must do these things, to find that compromise and balance in the questions of life, to avoid falling to the same places these lost and detached characters find themselves in and, ultimately, to stop us from making their same mistakes.
L’Avventura’s Ending- Have Lessons Been Learned?
Every decision the characters of L’Avventura make, every “Why?” and “Why not?” and certainly every mistake and misstep along the way lead us to the conclusion of the film where the camera hangs over the broken and slumped frames of two lost human beings facing the consequences of the actions they’ve taken since the moment Anna disappeared.
With their individual choices made and the consequences of those choices set in motion, we find Claudia and Sandro drifting towards each other as their sins converge and the pair realize how far they’ve fallen and how much they’ve changed as they huddle around a bench. Claudia has realized the metamorphosis that has taken her over, of how she has gone from a caring and attached woman to a selfish and detached one, in much the same way that Sandro discovers the dangers of acting irresponsibility when one is in a “Why not?” mood and how his actions effect those around him. The visual of these lost figures is a powerful one, with the film finishing right as the camera stalls on their bodies brought close together despite the emotional divide between them created by deceit and pain.
The moral statement about these characters is clear, from their journeys of change right down to how they’re dressed, as Antonioni symbolically wraps both Sandro and Claudia in dark colors to match their consequential and unwise actions. Despite spending the majority of the movie dressed in a light-colored suit, Sandro dresses in black to commit his second big mistake of the film, cheating with Gloria Perkins and driving a wedge between himself and Claudia. In the same token, Claudia finishes the film dressed in black right beside him, the lightness of her features muted beyond her blonde hair billowing in the wind. They become visually linked in their dark choices, and are symbolically rendered as sinful people without a light of hope shining within them.
Antonioni focuses a lot on choice in L’Avventura, often depicting his characters laboring to make their decisions when they’re not outright regretting the choices they’d make in the past. An inherent question behind every character interaction is an inquiry of if the characters can change, or if they want to change. Sandro makes constant reference to the life he wished he had, an artist of his own making, but he never does anything to realize that dream. When Claudia presses him about his future and the potential she sees in him, Sandro quite ironically replies with, “Aren’t you going to change?” The man is actually asking if Claudia is going to get in a dress and go downstairs to a party with him in this moment, but the juxtaposition of the question immediately after one asking about Sandro’s life choices and future as an artist is no doubt an intentional design choice by Antonioni.
And what of Sandro’s other mistake, his detachment of emotion and his inability to communicate? His coldness to Anna and unwillingness to tell her, “I love you,” to show her he cared in a fashion that was unmistakable and impossible to doubt, may’ve led her towards making a permanent escape in her loneliness and depression of heart. Not realizing the flaws in his communication, Sandro again repeats his mistake with Claudia and doesn’t actively vocalize his feelings in the genuine way he needs to, being more playful than earnest with his emotions in such a way that doubt is placed in Claudia as it was Anna. And just as he repeats his detachment, Sandro cheats with Gloria Perkins in the same fashion that he used Claudia to fill a void inside of himself once Anna was gone. In doing so he is apparently under the assumption that lusting after women will block out the pain he doesn’t want to feel for Anna, the same pain Claudia avoids by pushing her old friend from her mind.
Despite spending the film growing more distant from Anna, in the last minutes of the film Claudia finally appears to understand what the woman was going through as she finds Sandro with Gloria. Claudia, the woman who succumbed to an affair, is ultimately cheated on herself and this moment of agony and pain is the only way she could truly feel the sting of betrayal that Anna would’ve felt if she were around to see how Claudia and Sandro were moving on without her even while her fate wasn’t assured. Like Sandro, Claudia had to first make a mistake to learn her own lesson, of stepping outside moral lines and falling to the temptation of cheating and detaching emotion instead of mourning properly. Like two sides of the same coin, Sandro and Claudia chart the same course in many ways as they find themselves further and further detached.
The element that might’ve driven Anna to suicide, of not being paid attention to, is a mistake that is constantly repeated as both characters ignore their own pain in their own unique ways and attempt to snuff it out by suffocating themselves with easy and unfaithful love, doing anything to avoid feeling what they do alone and in silence. Instead of saying “Why not?” and opening themselves up to communication and trust, they ask “Why not?” in response to the temptation for affairs as the former makes them confront their pain and the latter merely distracts from it, a false sense of comfort that never truly deals with the problem. As best seen in Sandro, even Claudia joins him in focusing her attention and choices on the wrong things.
It’s fitting and tragic that the desolate and lost figures of Sandro and Claudia end up finding each other around that park bench, very much representing the picture of two people who would rather be lonely together than apart. Their suffering, perhaps even more than their love, binds them, as does their guilt and their mistakes. Seeing them at the pit of despair, as low as you think they could fall, makes you wonder if it is possible for them to look at what they’ve done and see the error of their ways, to truly alter their course for the better. To close off L’Avventura, Antonioni seems to present to the viewer another question as laden with existential pain as “Why?”: “Can people change?”
Why does Claudia reach out for Sandro, we ask, to give her support to a man who doesn’t deserve it? In that moment I think Claudia understood that, no matter how upset she was with Sandro, she wasn’t perfect either; far from it, in fact. They had both used each other to avoid the pain of facing Anna’s disappearance, rationalizing their affair as a way to mourn. Sandro attached himself to Claudia perhaps because she reminded him of Anna and he needed someone to fill that void with whom he felt attracted to and at peace with; he wanted Anna back. However, Claudia’s guilt at stealing Anna’s fiancé from her gradually drives her to wanting the opposite of Sandro; she wants Anna to stay gone because if she came back she threatened the love she was finally able to feel, the happiness that she understands to be elusive and hard to retain. Claudia is aware that she did all this, and as she reaches out her hand she lets in the guilt and regret she repressed and then tried to do away with to be honest with herself. In Sandro she sees some of herself, as they both walked the difficult path of loss and mourning and made the same mistakes that landed them in that place on the bench.
In reaching out her hand to hold Sandro, Claudia becomes the one character in L’Avventura who we can perceive and confirm as truly changing. By extending her touch to Sandro in his time of need, whether he is worthy of it or not, Claudia is giving him the all-important attention that she failed to give to Anna when she unconsciously ignored her pain and cries for help. It might as well be Anna on the bench in Sandro’s place, the two of them become so intertwined in her mind as she forgives in silence and opens up the doors for support and communication, ensuring that Sandro won’t have to end up like his old lover, driven to drastic and permanent action in his pain. In short, she learns and changes one last time, only now for the better. It remains to be seen if Sandro can change to match her, but I personally rest easy in the knowledge that he has Claudia there to pull him through and to inspire him to reach for a better version of himself. To finally stop thinking about making his life better and instead working actively to create that change.
By ending his film this way, with the promise of change, Antonioni folds his themes back in on themselves to complete his examination of human suffering through trauma. It’s not a sunny or endlessly promising ending, with no rainbows in sight or the assurance that Sandro and Claudia’s problems are behind them. Instead we are left not knowing what comes of them and their next choices, or if they rise to the occasion and learn from their missteps to improve themselves.
L’Avventura is not what I would call an enjoyable film. That’s an understatement, actually. It’s a haunting and unrelenting journey into the consequence of human error, where storms brewing around the characters match the emotional storms that brew inside of them, where very little of the characters you see have anything redeemable about them whatsoever, where questions are left unanswered and you are left exhausted by the end of it after experiencing it all.
As modern cinema fans it might perhaps be easy to look back at L’Avventura and devalue it without viewing it in the context of its time. Because although you can now find an entire sub-genre of existential filmmaking now, of quiet character studies punctuated with human misery and a fight to survive the doldrums of life, back in 1960 the movie was anything but familiar. L’Avventura first got its notice not with plaudits and endless film awards, but by Antonioni being booed out of the first Cannes screening the film had. Even at the time the experiment in filmmaking he’d created had caused a reaction, an intense feeling of aversion amongst the movie-going population who were experiencing a new kind of filmic storytelling not as tested as the war movie, Hollywood romance or comedy. L’Avventura wasn’t recognizable or familiar, so it was greeted aggressively and resentfully by audiences who were averse to the new revolution it presented in cinematic storytelling.
While movies of the day still held on to the familiar filmmaking style of a story told within a defined structure of acts accompanied by a gung-ho ending that concluded the narrative on a high note with all the loose ends tied up in perfect knots, Antonioni actively subverted all expectations. L’Avventura is relaxed in its pacing and could be described as an act-less film; instead of a beginning, middle and end being perceived, what results of its timeline is a sea of images that fit into no easy storytelling format. Even the film’s opening and closing credits are sterile of any life or identity, bland black and white screens repressively sharing with you the cast and crew who made the movie’s melancholic story come to life. And on top of it all, in lieu of ending his movie with a sunny and uplifting ending, Antonioni chose to again divert from the common style and present us with a conclusion that still places doubt in the viewer after it ends by refusing to tie up the loose ends.
And what to make of the loose ends that this film leaves us trying to tie up manually? We see Claudia extend her support for Sandro, but will either of them be able to change for the better in the future, to communicate and love as they so failed before? Antonioni never shares their fates and instead cuts us off from the characters such that we can never know the end result of their life story and if they turn it around. It’s a haunting film with a narrative that festers in the head, troublesome and exhaustive because there is no payoff or ultimate revelation. While many viewers may’ve expected for Anna’s fate to be revealed at the end, or for the story to either confirm or deny her death, Antonioni again withholds this. And that’s because the movie is more about what results after Anna’s disappearance than the disappearance itself, as if even the film is intent to forget the woman like all the other characters. It does all these things and haunts the viewer with the questions about life and existence, of choice and mourning that it poses because it leaves it up to you to answer much of them for yourself.
I for one am happy movies like L’Avventura exist amidst the escapist spy epics, action movie fare, sci-fi spectacles and fantasy yarns of filmmaking, as it represents a section of cinema that I find to be very important. But even beyond that importance, movies of all kinds should never be discounted simply because they choose to tell their stories differently than the others. The vital thing about cinema is that it can encase every tonality and motive of film, any story and creative mind in the director’s chair. Existential films can be intimidating, because they do demand a lot of the viewer to observe and understand what exactly is going on, to decipher the nuanced performances of the cast to perceive of a meaning that the script will elect to never tell you. They are the exact opposite of a Sunday morning film you can sit down to with a bucket of popcorn and unwind with your mind half dozing asleep, but that isn’t all movies can or should be and we should rise to appreciate the variety of approach that this film represents via its story and structure. We cannot look at L’Avventura and act as its characters do while viewing it, detaching ourselves from existential filmmaking to avoid experiencing their distinct emotional weight. Instead, we should reach out a hand to them as Claudia does Sandro, to see what we can gleam from what are a refreshing catalogue of films that stand on their own amidst the sea of genres and sub-genres that make up all of cinema.
I appreciate existential filmmaking’s motivations and, as a modern man who often finds himself languishing underneath the weight of his own existential crises and worries of his place and future, the struggles of those in these films never feel too far removed from the human experiences they are trying to accurately depict on the screen. These kinds of experiences aren’t for the faint of heart or for those who prefer films to remain casual entertainments, and at times they are uncomfortable stories to experience. But when all is said and done, it’s good when movies can be brave enough to dare to be uncomfortable, to dare to unsettle a viewer and their tidy notions of life, because that’s when we know there’s a truth in the message being delivered.
It’s this image of human potential, of a hand reaching out indiscriminately without a promise of anything in return, that will stick in my mind long after my experience with L’Avventura ends because the visual speaks to the hope that exists in all of us to rise to a higher quality of communication and sympathy. To support those even if it’s not deserved because we’re all in this together and that’s what we must do. To realize that we are all flawed and contradictory by nature and that, although we will make mistakes, we are not ruled by them and should always seek out second chances to improve ourselves. To live life communicating with clarity and sharing love openly to those in our circle to avoid the viscous cycle of Sandro and Claudia’s despair, to stave off the feelings of loneliness, guilt and emotional turmoil that can come after a traumatic event or death by mourning openly and honestly. To crystallize in the mind that life can be an adventure when you open yourself up to it, best experienced if you aren’t on your own.
Like the bygone buildings of Italy, we all need to create this kind support and foundation with one another, a feeling of security and a place to call home, even if that home is a symbolic one made inside the heart of a mate who will tell us that they love us even when we already know they do. Because sometimes it’s not always obvious. Because sometimes we need to hear it.
This watch of the film was almost exactly a year since the last time I saw it, but a little over, so the timing was very interesting. I come away from the film far more critical than I was initially, and have a few general issues to report. First off, the script has many interesting elements and ideas it's exploring, but overall it seems to try and do a lot while not committing to much of it instead of doing a few things in a major degree and having other content as subtext or underlying content. The script tries to portray a detective balancing his job and marriage, the hate crimes against homosexuals, race issues, economic disparity, an elite conspiracy and a few more things, but it gets a bit busy and I don't think the movie focuses enough on a smaller number of these and instead tries to hit them all, resulting in what feels like a scattershot final product.
It would've been interesting to get a better sense of what the RAINBOW conspiracy was and who the unseen players were, but I think that because they knew the story wasn't really about that, the filmmakers didn't bother showing us characters that we'd never really get to see anyway. The issue is that, because the filmmakers knew it wouldn't matter in the end who the elites were or what they did, they didn't really do anything to build up the RAINBOW group and as a result the explanation of their scheme is rushed and not fleshed out. The film is telegraphing before the end that the real story isn't about that conspiracy, and by how the movie undersells the conspiracy we can see that there is more to the mystery Leland is after than what we think just by how the film is written and the story structured.
The strength of The Detective will never be in its twisty-turny mystery or the more classic noir detective elements in it, however, as those aren't really what the most impact is garnered from. I go to the film, and still really enjoy it, because of its characters and how they are presented and developed, especially Sinatra's Leland who steals the show and really shines as a regular guy trying to do good in a bad city. It's his story and his struggles that capture my attention and that make me engaged, in much the same way that the mystery of Chinatown falls deaf to me in comparison to what Jake and Katherine are facing and how the movie develops them as it goes. The same could be said for Spade's journey in The Maltese Falcon and how the colorful cast take precedent over the plot that even in the end falls under the weight of the character drama unfolding irrespective of the falcon being there or not.
The Detective simply impresses me for how it fills the neo-noir slot, but does things that most noirs don't even bother to do, or couldn't depending on what time they came out and how powerful the Hays Code was at that time. In so many famous detective films the leading character is usually a retired cop turned private eye, so we never get to see what about being a cop made them go independent. Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe's frustrations with those carrying badges are presented in those films to a small degree, but never really take precedent beyond some biting dialogues. In Chinatown Jake makes reference to his bad experiences on the force in his old jurisdiction, but we never get to see that corruption firsthand or exactly what drove him away at the end of it all.
In The Detective, however, we get an up close and personal look at Joe Leland being a cop as he faces riots against cops, racial tensions, pressure from his captain to perform, intrusion by the city into his turf and the corruption inside his own department. We see all the muck and slime of his job, the police brutality and how the cops cross lines to how they dehumanize their suspects to get results. Part of what makes Leland immediately stand out is the way in which he refuses to be party to any of it, and treats even the criminals around him as human no matter what they've done because he has decency and cares for dignity over results at a no matter what cost.
Noirs also don't go into the private lives of the detectives all that much, especially from a love perspective; the detectives are often fast and loose loners who don't have a girl on the arm they are committed to. What makes The Detective different is how it strives to show not only a married detective, but one who tries and fails to balance the job he has with that part of his life, showing the very real divide a cop would feel in that situation. It's not often a noir will donate so much time just to portraying a detective trying to keep his wife sheltered from his work to save her worry, or show how the work of law enforcement is degrading, heart-breaking and far-reaching in its ability to drive wedges between people.
I just love how the film builds up Leland as the lead, and how we learn so much about him from scant scenes. His distaste for plays that aren't joyfully written and celebratory of the good in life tells us that, because Joe sees the worst of humanity in his job, it’s important for him to find positives where he can to avoid being jaded or cynical. After a hard day of work dealing with the worst of his city, the last thing he needs is to see more of the same violence, despair or corruption on the stage after his shift is over. He also takes umbrage to being insulted intellectually, as Karen’s friend and even the doctor later on seems to view policemen as mindless workers who are meant to be tools, and not individuals with their own thoughts or feelings. There's a real lack of respect for law enforcers that run throughout the film, either because they are viewed as fascist arms of the system that uses them for their biding or as corrupt enemies to the common man. In addition, Leland's view on therapy, that we should solve our own problems and not try to adapt to a sick world, underscores his desire to fix the world so that we don't have to adapt to what it's degraded into, tying into his whole job as a cop and why he tries his damnedest to do his best no matter the cost to himself. He's not interested in changing for the sick world, he wants to find its cure.
All this isn't even to make note of where The Detective stands in censorship history. It is stuck smack dab between the end of the Hays Code and the beginning of the MPAA rating system we now know of today (PG-13, R, etc.). The film came out months before the MPAA officially began rating films in a new way, so from one perspective it is in a ratings no man's land. The movie is one that is still jarring to watch knowing when it was made, for how it has its actors saying words like "penis" and "semen" out loud in dialogues, how often God is used in vain, how much content is sexualized and how gay men are depicted in romantic entanglements on top of numerous references or full on displays of prostitution, adultery, police brutality, murder, castration, drug use, nudity and public executions that are all featured in its run time, all things that were impossible in the Hays Code era. The Detective was marketed as an adult film for a new age that wanted to show how things really were with unflinching honesty, the special ingredient that makes the noir genre spectacular, and its content backs up that message.
For fun I thought I'd post the full list of concepts, behaviors and actions that the Hays Code demanded film studios not portray in their films, just to show how far The Detective broke away from the rule book for the new age of filmmaking. It was just one of many amazing trailblazing films that experimented with what films could show and what messages they could carry uncensored, giving audiences the reality that was so steadfastly watered down for them previously. It's because of films like The Detective and how critically and financially successful they were that the Hays era died and the new age of MPAA began after studios saw the audiences lying in wait for more adult storytelling, creating a path for the next decade of films in the 70s that if often regarded as the greatest for how every genre experienced a series of films that pushed the new boundaries of film to tell their more adult and consequential human stories in the medium. We don't get there without the era of film that The Detective occupies.
Those unfamiliar with the Hays Code should look it up (it makes for fascinating history), but for a general idea of what it is, it's named after Presbyterian elder Will H. Hays who was hired by the studios of the 20s film industry to clean up movies after a string of features were coming out that were scandalous in nature. Everybody was getting riled up about where films were going and what they were showing, so it became apparent to Hollywood that their industry needed regulation to avoid further backlash and issues with distribution across the world, as different standards in different states or nations would mean numerous cuts would have to be made of the same film to get past censors. Instead, they chose to censor themselves and set about to have Hays creates the classic "Don'ts" and "Be Carefuls" that filmmakers would have to be wary of presenting in their films. Note that many of these items are religiously charged, and this is because Hays and the man who he later appointed to enforce the code, Joseph Breen, were devout religious men that took their faith earnestly. It's clear to see that in creating and executing the code, they made sure they put a stop to any anti-religious messages in Hollywood's films of the day.
(I've crossed through all the rules The Detective would've been argued as breaking if it was made during the Hays era)
Don'ts
Resolved, That those things which are included in the following list shall not appear in pictures produced by the members of this Association, irrespective of the manner in which they are treated:
1.) Pointed profanity- by either title or lip – this includes the words "God", "Lord", "Jesus", "Christ" (unless they be used reverently in connection with proper religious ceremonies), "hell", "damn", "Gawd", and every other profane and vulgar expression however it may be spelled;
(For its time, The Detective would've been a massive rule breaker for this one for its wide range of language from religiously suggested swears to the more conventional ones)
2.) Any licentious or suggestive nudity– in fact or in silhouette; and any lecherous or licentious notice thereof by other characters in the picture;
(I think the implied nudity and undressing of Karen Leland would've gotten censors all worked up, as would the implied nudity of the murder victim whose genitals had been cut off and the murder suspect from later in the film who is stripped naked for interrogation in a moment that purposefully recalls concentration camps during WWII)
3.) The illegal traffic in drugs; NOT DEFINITE
(Not sure of this one because, although no drugs are depicted as being used or sold, frequent mention is made of them and their deathly impact on the society and youth in the movie)
4.) Any inference of sex perversion;
(One of the most trailblazing aspects of The Detective is its depiction of gay culture and gay hate crimes with a sympathetic viewpoint, making this one a massive rule-breaker)
5.) White slavery;
(Prostitution is both referenced and openly presented)
6.) Miscegenation (sex relationships between the white and black races);
(Not only are gay sexual relationships depicted, but also gay interracial sexual relationships. A two-for-one!)
7.) Sex hygiene and venereal diseases;
(I cross this one out as being broken because homosexuality is discussed in the terms of an illness, a disgusting, disturbing mental condition or sickness that is contagious or degrading to the mind and body by how the characters react to and perceive it)
8.) Scenes of actual childbirth – in fact or in silhouette;
9.) Children's sex organs;
10.) Ridicule of the clergy; NOT DEFINITE
(This one may or may not be broken, as the religious leaders/church of Leland's city are implicated in the RAINBOW conspiracy)
11.) Willful offense to any nation, race or creed; NOT DEFINITE
(Again, depends on how the religious would view the constant ways God's name is used in vain, or how the religious are implicated in conspiracy; knowing Hays and his devout belief, he'd probably hate the movie)
Be Carefuls
And be it further resolved, That special care be exercised in the manner in which the following subjects are treated, to the end that vulgarity and suggestiveness may be eliminated and that good taste may be emphasized:
1.) The use of the flag;
2.) International relations (avoiding picturizing in an unfavorable light another country's religion, history, institutions, prominent people, and citizenry);
(I think the corruption of Leland's department, the city and its mayor, the crookedness of the media and the ridicule of psychology would set this one over the line, including how many different kinds of people are viewed as morally ambiguous, from the city officials and cops to different races and people of different class backgrounds and ages)
3.) Arson;
4.) The use of firearms;
(Leland is depicted murdering two different men in the parking garage with his service firearm)
5.) Theft, robbery, safe-cracking, and dynamiting of trains, mines, buildings, etc. (having in mind the effect which a too-detailed description of these may have upon the moron); NOT DEFINITE
(Not sure about this one, as theft/robbery is mentioned/referenced and Leland himself breaks into the doctor's office to snoop around, all while being a decorated cop without a warrant; that may well have pushed it over the line)
6.) Brutality and possible gruesomeness;
The acts of murder depicted, including murder by gun and later beating with a blunt object and a reference to castration would do it, not to mention the police brutality)
7.) Technique of committing murder by whatever method;
(We see how the murder of the film was carried out, so this would do it)
8.) Methods of smuggling;
9.) Third-degree methods;
(Third-degree methods are those defined as actions involving the "inflicting of pain, physical or mental, to extract confessions or statements" so Leland's methods to make Felix Tesla confess may qualify and Robbie's later method of stripping a man nude while terrorizing him certainly would)
10.) Actual hangings or electrocutions as legal punishment for crime;
(We actually see Felix Tesla being executed through the electrocution chair)
11.) Sympathy for criminals;
(MacIver is viewed somewhat sympathetically, in that he isn't totally vilified; his situation is offered sympathy because of how being gay at that place and time resulted in gays not feeling welcome or normal in regular society, the stigma that led him to his bad decisions and suicide. On top of this, Tesla is viewed/identified as someone who needed help by Leland, but who was sent to the electric chair as a scapegoat, giving him a sympathetic angle. Even the black criminal/s shot by the cop are given sympathy for how ineptly the cop did his job in dealing with them)
12.) Attitude toward public characters and institutions;
(Leland has an "I don't give a damn" attitude throughout the film, and derides the city officials and his own department for how they refuse to do the decent thing, leading to him constantly being in their crosshairs; the result is the institutions being the big enemy and villain of the piece, as well as society as a whole)
13.) Sedition;
(I'm not as sure about this one, but I'm siding more on the positive side because Leland's ultimate view that the right work can't be done with a police badge could easily be seen as a statement of insurrection against the authority of law enforcement, where our police are so corrupt good men are unable to operate as they should be while in uniform)
14.) Apparent cruelty to children and animals;
15.) Branding of people or animals;
16.) The sale of women, or of a woman selling her virtue;
(As mentioned above, a prostitute is shown being caught by the cops hooking herself on the street with her pimp beside her)
17.) Rape or attempted rape;
(Though not depicted on screen, rape and the abuse of women through rape is made mention of in the film)
18.) First-night scenes;
(We see Joe and Karen consummate their initial attraction to one another, and well before their marriage)
19.) Man and woman in bed together;
(We see Joe and Karen getting into bed once, then see them in a prolonged scene in bed together later on after that)
20.) Deliberate seduction of girls;
(While Joe could be said to be seducing Karen, I think her age removes any danger of this rule being broken, as what the movie depicts are two adults in a relationship)
21.) The institution of marriage;
(Not sure why this item is on the list, but one of the biggest parts of the film is how it depicts a cop balancing his job with his crumbling marriage in a way that avoids glorifying either law enforcement with its corruption or marriage with the possibility of infidelity; BONUS POINTS)
22.) Surgical operations;
23.) The use of drugs;
24.) Titles or scenes having to do with law enforcement or law-enforcing officers;
(Yikes, a movie with a law enforcement job title in its name AND a plot that depicts said law enforcement being corrupt and cruel; BONUS POINTS)
25.) Excessive or lustful kissing, particularly when one character or the other is a "heavy".
(I'd say some of Joe's forceful and passionate kisses with Karen would draw this close enough over the line, then the depiction of gay men kissing would really kick it over)
If my judgments held up, we'd find The Detective violating at least 22/36 rules in the Hays Code, or 61% of the total in both lists. That isn't to add in the "NOT DEFINITE" judgements I made when I wasn't sure what way a ruling would swing, though knowing who the code was enforced by I wouldn't be surprised if I was a lot more lenient with the film than those of the time would be and the final percentage for the movie would be even higher if it was under the watch of Hays or Breen.
The only rules The Detective avoided breaking across the board dealt with children and animals, as there aren't any children or animals in the film (easy pass). Most everything else, however, was quite widely broken open by its content and the quantity of that content in the film. It's almost like the filmmakers carried around the old Hays Code and purposefully went about checking off as much items to violate as they could with the film. ;)
Well, we're using this week to watch Vampire's Kiss, and people can post initial reactions if they want. I just thought I'd keep it to the format we've been on, where the discussion of a film carries from its spoiler discussion into the week that the next film is to be watched, giving two weeks of discussion total. There's been little discussion of the films during the week where we all watch them, as we're searching for the right time to view the film, so it makes more sense to have the discussion for them start in the spoiler week and then have those talks carry into the week after when the next film is to be watched leading into its own spoiler discussion.
I hope that doesn't sound too confusing...
Love the score. Clever camera work with the few seconds of static and then the pan up to reveal that we’re actually sitting on top of Leland’s 1966 Plymouth Fury. Wait until you see this one, indeed. Note clever bush placement to cover up cut off penis, much like the butt of Jill Masterson in Goldfinger. “I think I’m gonna be sick.” “No, you’re not you’re gonna tense your muscles and get out the notebook.” I rather like the joke about the newspaper and the penis, as morbid as it is. Everything in the medicine cabinet? That partner’s got a lot of work ahead. One heck of a “lover’s quarrel”. So, the landlady is a beard. Hmm. I agree that she doesn’t seem to be feeling much grief. “If he gives you any trouble: cuff him, frisk him, and run him downtown”. Hard. The benefits of LSD are numerous. Classic shot of a detective stewing over a case in the car, back projection included. “Why do you try to sound so tough?” “I am tough.” Which play was it? “I’m going home because you and your friends give me a pain in the ass.” “How many have you had right here on this couch?” Rather direct. Cop tree of lineage. Is she evil? She’s wearing a black bra. Do something about it, Franky. Kiss her. Are they breaking the fourth wall? Civil rights bastards? A bit racist, perhaps? “Don't ‘honest’ me, sweetheart. You need a pop right now.” “She's a whore, she's a pusher, she's an addict, and she's 19 years old.” Franky did make it big. “A buff is a guy who hangs around the police? Correct.” I really can’t help but think of Jack Ruby with that line there. Could Nestor tone it down a notch? Someone say “Police brutality”. “Oh, yes. The strange one.” That line made me laugh for some reason. Did they speed up the beach chase footage? Multiple uses of derogatory comments for gays in a 1960s movie? Wow. Boundary pushers they are. Is Felix crying or having a seizure? Dude’s mentally ill I think. What a cool helicopter. She’s cheating on him :O Would this be rated R nowadays? Gatsby’s restaurant: that makes two Fitzgerald references in the last two movies we’ve seen in this club. Divorce him already. You know you want to. I love the noir-ish music and the slow dissolve cuts together. “No, Karen, it would cost me too much to try it again.” Well, forgetting is the only option then. Are they going to actually show Felix getting electrocuted? Yes, there’s the answer. Interesting way of showing a death, they must have literally thrown the camera off the roof. Hey, it’s Miss Goodthighs. My goodness, is she ever bad looking? “Found her in a vacant lot, raped and murdered. Mother and father just left.” Heavy stuff for a movie of this day. “Threw up three times in the car coming over.” I threw up twice the other day. “If I ever blow my cool, buster, I'll kick your ass right out of this building.” Wow. Don’t mess with Frank. Another derogatory gay slang. Hayes Code would hate this film. Can I have Jacqueline Bisset narrate my life? “Your wife came to me for treatment.” Bombshell! What’s Rainbow? Ha! That’s just what I asked. Frank can sure throw punches and shoot people while still maintaining his coolness. Valuable vs. important: isn’t that pretty much the same thing? What’s the connection between the board and knocking people off? “If you swallow your gum or run out of cigarettes, call me.” :) “I knew you were gay the moment you walked into the bar.” Erm….that seems kind of obvious, it’s a gay bar. Whoops! Leland killed the wrong guy. Rainbow = gay. Rainbow = Plot. Coincidence?
Every time I watch the film I love Leland more and more, as he constantly sticks up for people society has turned their back on. He's a cop who understands people and doesn't judge them for how they live or what they're upset about, because he knows he's not perfect and he hates the way the system is too. Whenever he is giving derisive retorts to his racist or homophobic cop colleagues the camera goes right in to him, like he's speaking to us about what's wrong with the world, much like his ending monologue on MacIver is told right to us. The movie makes us confront the issues we're facing as a species, and doesn't allow us to escape their notice.
One of the things that really takes me aback is the content of the film that is picked from today's headlines, from hate crimes to police brutality and cops shooting unarmed black men. So much time has passed, but little ever changes. It's also pretty shocking that Leland leaves because he thinks he can't help the world with a badge, showing that the authority that is recognized in society is little more than a pawn of elites. He could never climb rank because he has dignity and principles, unwilling to turn his eye to crime or conspiracy, and he constantly puts a target on his back simply because he's trying to be a good man. I imagine that, when all is said and done, Joe would start up his own office and be a private eye in the league of a Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, men who fix the world's wrongs on their own terms without the limitations of a cop's badge that they know is only a hindrance.
I'm glad you caught the RAINBOW correlation, and how these days it's a gay pride symbol. I don't know whether the naming was intentional or not, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was.
Let me just say right away I rather like crime dramas, as I find they can have fairly engaging plots to hold one's attention, while at the same time providing a foundation on top of which to explore a number of social issues. The Detective fits into this mold. The film, as a whole, uses its murder mysteries to portray a number of social malaises: homophobia, careerism, compromised values, the impossibility of holding a meaningful relationship, and greed. I think it manages to accommodate and comment on most of these issues in an effective way. While gay characters are mostly in the background, I feel the film is level-headed in how it portrays them: as human as anyone else, with some --the ones hiding in the truck-- just having the same need for love as any heterosexual person, and others --Tesla, MacIver-- being driven to crime and murder. (As an aside, I thought seeing those men in the truck was fairly striking. Forty years later, it's fair to say humanity has come a long way in its treatment of gay people.)
On the subject of careerism and compromised values, the movie also acquits itself generally well, with the topic being explored mostly through Joe Leland and his boss. Leland wresting a confession out of Tesla is perhaps intended to be the most significant expression of this aspect, though I wish the film had been a tad more explicit (Sinatra more expressive?) about how he felt about what he was doing right in that moment. At any rate, what he does in that scene leads to his quitting the police force. His reasons are thought-provoking: "there are things to fight for, and I can't fight for them while I'm here." Personal values and moral codes are crushed by the weight of institutions, by red tape, by peer pressure and by the disheartening prospect of aging. My personal take on humanity is that most of its problems boil down to that fact: man just doesn't live up to his rhetoric. The film's most provocative bit regarding this subject is when Robbie talking about using Gestapo methods to intimidate a suspect. While there is something to be said about police brutality, that moment just seems a tad overdone and clumsy, and at any rate, the film doesn't flesh out Robbie enough to make sense out of his decision to act in such a way. Still, the scene fits in a good way into the refreshingly provocative nature of the movie. (Let me just say in passing that Robbie being black is another sign of the film's progressive attitude; coincidentally, The Boston Strangler, which I mentioned earlier, has a black District Attorney.)
On the subject of relationships, the movie mainly deals with it through Lee Remick's Karen, who has a number of solid scenes with Sinatra's Leland. I find the film is reasonably successful at portraying a kind of aimlessness and unsatisfaction in relationships (shades of L'Avventura here), but I think it tells too much and shows too little. Lee Remick, a damned good actress, makes the most out of her character, but too much of Karen is revealed through lines she herself utters. The problem with that is you can't really express that kind of emotional stupor through words. You have to show it, and I'm not sure the film shows enough. Still, as I said, the scenes between Remick and Sinatra are engaging and well-acted.
Let's talk a bit about the narrative. At the halfway point, with the murder "solved", I felt that for a couple of scenes, the film threatened to unravel; it didn't seem to have anywhere to go. Then Jacqueline Bisset came into the picture, with another murder to solve. I must admit that, in terms of the structure of the film, the fact the movie switches to another case for its main plotline makes the film seem a bit meandering; the second case feels like it's too much to relegate to just half a movie, with its subject matter of far-ranging, wide-reaching corruption. Also, the fact the psychiatrist had treated Leland's wife is a bit too coincidental for my taste. But the case is interesting, and its subject matter is hinted at in a previous scene, so it doesn't feel too disconnected from the rest of the film. Most significantly, the lingering doubt about whether they had caught the right murderer is used as the basis of a satisfying reveal, one that almost redeems any weaknesses the second half might've had and provides the character of Leland with the ultimate test of his values. Going back to Leland's words as he quits the police, I am left with a small degree of doubt regarding his future intentions: does he intend to follow his vocation as a cop, but just from the outside? Or does he intend to leave all that behind? I think it's most likely the former, given his previous words on feeling useful and constructive as a cop, but his switching the police radio off at the very end of the movie hints at something else...
I haven't said much about Sinatra. He is an effortless screen actor; in fact, he doesn't act, he just is, and as Leland, he is just cool. Sinatra has a naturally commanding presence, but he is also quite terrific at portraying that jadedness, that disillusionment that his character has. His lined face and tough-sounding voice help him a great deal in selling all these qualities. The script also helps him, with his dialogue being short and the point, as well as honest, a reflection of the fact he is a person in charge, and for better or worse, he marches to no one's beat but his own ("people should try to work out their own problems", he says at one point regarding psychiatry). My only qualm with him would be that in a couple of scenes --getting a confession out of Tesla and talking with Karen at home--, I wish he showed just a bit more outward doubt, a bit more vulnerability. Anyway, the movie has a solid supporting cast. Apart from Lee Remick, there is Robert Duvall, Al Freeman Jr., Ralph Meeker and Jack Klugman, all having their own little moments to shine. I only found Jacqueline Bisset a bit lacking; while I definitely enjoyed watching her performance, I thought she was a bit mannered (perhaps that was the intention?).
The Detective is a very stylish film right from the very beginning, with that great shot of the urban landscape reflected in the water, set to Jerry Goldsmith's yearning, anguished, sordid and gritty jazz music. The movie's cinematography is pretty damn good, with some terrific camera placement. Most distinctive are the shots with Sinatra and Remick looking straight into the camera, Jonathan Demme-and-Sidney-Lumet-style. They help to sell the scenes between these actors by placing you right in the middle of their interactions. (And may I say Remick looks alluring when looking at the camera!) The movie has a cool soundtrack, courtesy of Mr. Goldsmith, and sounds great; in each scene, it really feels like you're there in the room with these people.
Anyway, good-to-very-good film, well acted, well written, very stylish, very enjoyable.
The Detective finds itself between the Hays Code being dropped and the MPAA beginning their own rating system, an exciting time for movies that created a stark before and after period in cinema history. Without these kinds of movies and how successful they were Hollywood might not have been motivated to move away from heavy regulation, leading some of the greatest films of the 70s to never being made. But with these trailblazing films came MPAA ratings where all movies could be made no matter their content, unlike under the Hays Code where the R rated movies of the MPAA takeover never would've gotten into the scripting stage. This includes The Detective, and as I posted on the last page, the film would've been public enemy number 1 for Hays and his cronies, just for how many "goddamns" there are in it. Add in the sympathy it treats to "sinful" gays and how much violence and brutality is in it and now we're really talking. @mattjoes, you're definitely right on the money when it comes to The Detective's storytelling. It ticks many noir boxes but the mystery ends up not being what we think it is at the start, and the plot never goes where you expect it to. Instead of Leland chasing after another serial killer type with a bunch of twists and turns, the movie instead develops into a very touching and brave retort to societal hatred and division in its second half. Part of why I like sharing it with people is to gauge their reaction to how the movie turns into something totally different than what you think of a detective film by the end, where the twist is not about some criminal conspiracy but instead revolves around sexual repression and the fear of being gay, the real motivation behind the murder.
With the character of MacIver the movie was able to portray the viewpoint of a man who loathed who he was, because he was told it was unnatural and wrong to be gay, and what he's driven to do through what society has taught him about the gay culture says it all. When everything is revealed and Leland is giving it to the doctor for being a coward as he begins his monologue about why MacIver's truth needs to come out, it's like he's talking to us as he stares into the zoomed in camera. A film that started out as a noir detective yarn quickly becomes social commentary and that's really The Detective's most ample identity. More than any mystery it has or any noir tropes it hits (there really aren't many, if you look at it), it stands out as a different kind of noir than you'd expect to find, where all the time usually spent on the detective character's search for clues is instead utilized to show the division and corruption of police, the difficulty of balancing relationships, the difficult lives of gays, the social hatred of society, the economic disparity of cities and how the 2% dictate the lives of the other 98%, all very relevant themes for those days and ours today, despite not being things you'd expect to find in a noir film to this degree of emphasis.
If anything, The Detective is fascinating and refreshing for this reason, challenging expectation and using its time to really present those watching it with questions you didn't commonly see in films in its genre or out of it. Even today with so many more noirs released since 1968, it still feels interesting, experimental and powerful for how it uses its run time to deliver new and unexpected messages. And as you say, it also shows how far we've come in just a few decades in our awareness of societal wrongs and in our ability to be egalitarian, where the image of gays being wrongly treated angers us and the treatment of suspects has the ability to upset us. Those reactions very much point to how progressive society is now, and how much more rehabilitative and sympathetic we can be to criminals of a certain kind. Most interesting. The collision between Leland and his department is probably my favorite part of the film, if only because I get a kick out of Frank giving it to all the characters in his snappy way. It's in this area of the film that really builds Leland up as a hero to me, because his morals are contrasted constantly against the codes of the other men. When one of the cops uses the word "Fag" and pushes a gay man around, Leland steps in to say, "Cool it." When a cop shoots an unarmed black man and the department prepares to hide the truth Leland is there to say, "Watch out for me, bub." He's a great counter-culture character, a figure the movie is using to represent what society could strive to be, but what it wasn't at the time.
Though Leland is by no means perfect (it would be boring if he was) his then progressive values are really striking and his willingness to step in to defend gays, blacks, addicts, the poor or dejected and even criminals themselves tell us that he has an amazing ability to be compassionate even through all the dark things he sees on the job. From the story he tells about his dad and how the man cried after failing to save a suicide jumper, Leland writes off his father crying "like a baby" without realizing how alike he is to his dad. Like his old man he has a human reaction to what he sees and it bugs him; he can't just slide off what he sees, it gets inside of him and sets him off. We can see parts of his father in his when he raises his voice to shout at corruption or hatred and judgment, that part of his behavior he learned from his father that can't resist standing up and yelling, "No!"
The role of Leland really was perfect for Sinatra, who was a man ahead of his time in the same way. This was an entertainer that refused to perform at venues that wouldn't hire black singers, and who had the ability to have a grand time with anyone no matter what they looked like or how they lived. Perhaps a lot of anger in Frank's performance as Leland is partially motivated by the real anger he had for the way the world of the time was?
You say you wanted Leland to have more of a discernible reaction to some of what he was seeing or doing, but I've always felt it was in there. I think that in the dialogue he shares with his boss following his interrogation of Tesla, we can see exactly what Leland is feeling. He walks away with a sorry look on his face, knowing exactly what he's done. He knew that Tesla was unsettled and that he could get a confession out of him (he admits to this at the end of the film, too) and we know why he does this: he is told from the beginning of the film that he needs to get results, because he knows he put the department in a bad spot and needs to make up for it. There's also a promise of a promotion on the cards, and a greater chance for him to do more in a higher rank, so when Joe heads into the interrogation he has all those voices nipping at him. He is motivated to manipulate Tesla to pay back the department for the trouble he caused and for his own sense of greed he wants for the promotion. When it comes time for Tesla's execution, the man looks right at Leland with a "You put me here" look on his face, making Leland come face to face with what he's done. The way Sinatra plays the moment, with his eyes closing as Tesla's death comes, tells us that he knows he's sent an innocent man to death.
Leland's decisions and actions regarding Tesla ultimately pay off later because it teaches him why working within the system is poisonous and dangerous. People can be easily pressured under the weight of their work and feel motivated to selfishly work to their own ends by cutting corners, as he cut corners with Tesla. Leland acted too much like the ladder climber he sees in all his other colleagues and it ultimately bites him in the ass and shows him why he's better off doing his own thing and working without a badge. He knows exactly what he's gone, and what he's guilty of the moment Tesla confesses, and we see it. Later on when Leland's boss tells him to demote Robbie for telling him off (when he tells Joe that he only got his promotion for making Tesla confess) Leland refuses to demote him because he knows Robbie is right about what he did. He did use Tesla, and he did climb the ladder wrongfully.
Leland's awareness of his guilt and what he's done is one of the most interesting things about the film, because he is unwilling to repress that guilt and his "sin." He uses what wrong he's done to make right, and shares the truth about MacIver and what he did to Tesla because it's what needs to be done. It will fry him and ruin him, but he can't live with what he's done and speaks out through his conscience. I don't think any other cop we see in the film would do that, so even through his biggest mistake on the film we see how Leland is the exception to the rest and how the guilt and anger he feels with himself compels him to make good on a gigantic wrong.
I'll respond to your thoughts on Robbie quickly. I agree that more could've been done with the character, but I think his role was pretty simple: he was meant to display how institutional pressures can turn good men bad. When we first see Robbie he's bright-eyed and enthusiastic, happy to work and get his stripes the right way. That quickly changes, however, and it's easy to spot the change in him. There's a scene at the bar after Tesla is arrested where Robbie perks up and tells Joe that headquarters will be pleased with the three murders they solved all in a line, a response that makes Joe turn to him and shake his head as he leaves the bar, ashamed. Joe can't stand what Robbie has turned into, a man like the others who only looks at the work as a chance to get a promotion or to show the bosses how great they are. All Joe can think about is the consequences of the job, however; instead of trying to impress the mayor or anyone else he's depressed by the dead around him, and the actions he must take in the face of a crumbling society. And that's because Joe takes pride in his job and truly cares; he doesn't do it for power or for renown, he really wants to help and is depressed whenever he sees another citizen turned criminal or a criminal that can't be reached. In the same token, when he screws up he doesn't want to hide it to save himself the trouble like we see the other cops do (like the cop who shoots the black man), his massive guilt and anger forces it out of him because he can't bear to live with that hidden mistake.
After Robbie makes that comment about impressing the department we only continue to see how much he changes through his time in the job. The other cops show him the faster ways to get things done instead of doing it the right way as Leland prefers. Robbie also sees through what happens with Tesla how easy it can be to get a promotion or by getting your name in the papers, and the biggest tragedy is that it's Leland who teaches him that. He watches Joe start scandals and how he makes a name for himself, and how he pressures a confession from Tesla, seeing nothing wrong in doing the same thing when he strips that suspect naked to get a similar confession. When Joe sees that he not only witnesses how a good cop had fallen into a rush for promotion and power through greed, but he also sees how Robbie has learned from his interrogation of Tesla and taken things too far. Robbie's change in behavior, as much as Tesla's death, ultimately shows Leland why he can't act like the ladder climbers and cut corners. He has to do the right thing, treat criminals like humans and be honest with what he's done wrong. I very much agree here, and Karen is an unsatisfactorily under-written character. We only get one scene where she comes clean with what she's doing, but I never feel like I know what that means. We find out that she acts out sexually, but never find out why. Maybe, because she's a foster kid, she felt trouble getting attached to people and when she started to feel strong attachment to Joe she got scared and acted out with other men to end the relationship because the commitment was too much for her? A lot of what we can make of her character is left for us to imagine, and how she is tackled in the script is very similar to how a European film would handle it, like L'Avventura, for example. We don't get much explained about Anna, Sandro or Claudia, so it's up to us to perceive things. I just think that The Detective could've done a little more to paint a picture of Karen's character and what she was all about. It would've made other moments more impactful if we knew her better, and we'd care that Leland can't make it work with her because we like her too or because we at least understand why they can't come together. It's quite common for noirs to use two subplots or cases that come together at the end in a moment of revelation, so this aspect of The Detective's structure never felt odd to me. I like how the first half does as you say, making Tesla's death a part of everything that happens later. We watch Leland move on and move up in the department, and enough time passes to make you think things have cooled off, until all of the past comes back to bite him. It's a bit karmic, in a way, where Leland's mistake tying to the first case gets back at him in the second case he doesn't perceive an conspiracy in.
As for what Joe does after the film, I think it's more likely he'd start up his own office and be a private detective. Sinatra plays an investigator named Tony Rome in two other films by the director of this one, Gordon Douglas, who has the same backstory: he's an ex-cop gone private eye. I think that Leland doesn't like the darkness of the job of a cop, but realizes that someone has to do it to keep society stable. He sees the dangers of what happens when good cops go bad and ignore the problems in society, or selfishly try to hide their own mistakes, and knows he can't be part of it. I think the relationship he has with being an enforcer is too deep, not only because it's all he knows but also because it's what his entire family have devoted themselves to. I don't think he could stand on the sidelines and quietly watch as society went on as it did. He'd feel compelled to get back into it, privately this time, to make the change without a badge that he couldn't in his old job, knowing that he wouldn't have to follow the same rules or face the pressures of the institution on his back at every turn on top of the corruption and red tape. His words to his captain at the end confirm this to me, where he basically admits that he must leave that job, but that the work of protecting society will never leave him; he just needs to find a new way to do the same thing.
When Leland switches off the police radio at the end of the movie I think that's more a symbol of him turning his back on the old life of being a cop than him turning his back on being an enforcer forever. It underscores that now he's truly on his own, going "radio silent" on his past and working to do something new in the future. I wish we'd have gotten a sequel showing Joe getting back into being an investigator, possibly using his old captain as a secret partner to get scoops. Before the film Die Hard became what it did, it was based on the sequel to a book that The Detective was based on and Frank was actually considered to reprise his role as Leland in that film with the same plot. That would've given Frank the chance to show us how Leland had changed since the years after The Detective but because he was nearing 70 years old at the time he turned down the offer, in came Bruce Willis and everything after that is history...
I'd be interested to know if people think Leland would get back with Karen in the time after the film as well. I personally don't think he would, not only because he could never trust her the same way again, but because he learned the dangers of trying to balance a job as a cop with being a husband. If he became a private eye after the film to continue his old work I think he'd stay single and focus on the job, as Karen stomped on his heart and made him see that even the one woman he thought was different hurt him. That's a very lonely life, but I think that's more likely what Joe resigns himself to. Like Bond, he'd focus on the job and the job would become him, leaving little room for anything else beyond flings (though I don't think Joe would even bother with flings). I very much agree here, and think that Frank steals the film. He just had the perfect makings of the other noir legends, Bogart and Mitchum, with his ability to talk rough and fast and to portray the soul-erosion of that kind of life with so much danger and death. He portrays discontent, anger and guilt so perfectly, but never does it overtly or comes on too strong. He perfectly plays the kind of man Leland is, hiding bits about himself that come out in particular looks or body language.
He is such a draw to the eye in so many moments as he talks honestly about what he sees, whether it's in his fights with his captain, his angry outbursts in response to bad cops or his final monologue at the end of the film about MacIver. His eyes, beautiful as they are, also have a history in them that he's easily able to make you feel, and we can sense all that Leland must've been through in his life as he speaks. It's quite easy to be lost in Leland and Frank's performance of him as the POV camera shots present just his face to us, and those blue eyes.
As I argued above in another response, I feel that vulnerability in Leland throughout, even beyond his guilt surrounding Tesla's death. When he goes to Karen's and finds himself melancholically falling into her arms in response to what he's seen on the job and the guilt he feels for what he's had to do is powerful, and we see a truly broken man in those kinds of moments. Leland is a response to the typical kind of man of the period you'd expect to see in these kinds of films; he's a fast talker and can give as much as he gets, but he's also an emotional man and lets that vulnerable side of himself show despite his masculinity, showing that one can be a man and be caring or emotional at the same time. I love those moments where Leland just can't go any more and becomes burdened by the work and the life he has, or when he puts his head in his hands and feels the despair of the mistakes he's made and how corrupt the world is. I feel so much for him in those moments, a good man who realizes how hard it is to stay good or to do anything to make the right changes and really improve things. It's a very honest portrait of life as it is, and though Leland probably will end up losing the court case involving Rainbow and the truth of MacIver will bite him hard, making Leland more vulnerable than ever before with a giant target on his back, that's just the kind of man he is. Good to a fault, unwilling to compromise on what's important and brave enough to speak up when everyone else is silent no matter the cost to himself.
The kind of emotion and depth Leland has easily makes him one of my favorite detective characters because he lacks the unflappable nature of other figures you'd see in some of these films. He's in the league of a Spade or Marlowe, men who were tough but who also showed their vulnerabilities when the world dealt them a bad hand. Spade ends Maltese Falcon lost and hurt, his heart bleeding off his sleeve, and Leland has that same sort of feeling here, a man who puts himself on the line and pays a heavy but necessary cost to do what's right. I think the POV shots are really interesting too, where we switch places with either Leland or Karen in the middle of their intimate talks. The shots really place us directly between them and their discussions, often private ones, and the effect makes me think I'm seeing and hearing things I shouldn't be. A very interesting effect that you don't see in films of the kind, and that adds a fascinating mood to the scenes. Sometimes the POV shots are unnerving or uncomfortable to experience, other times they are easy to be struck by, especially when Sinatra or Remick's bright blue eyes are in the center of the frame.