Movie legend Antonioni passes away
Antonioni, who made only about 20 films, died at his home in Rome on Monday night with his wife Enrica Fico by his side.
By Agencies |
ROME: Film legend Michelangelo Antonioni, director of the 1960s hit Blow Up and one of the last figures of Italy’s golden age of cinema, has died at age 94, his family said Tuesday.
Antonioni, who made only about 20 films, died at his home in Rome on Monday night with his wife Enrica Fico by his side, a news agency reported. His body is to lie in state in the elegant Sala della Protomoteca at Rome’s city hall, the Campidoglio, on Wednesday morning to allow friends and colleagues to pay their last respects. Antonioni will be buried at his home town, in the northern city of Ferrara on Thursday, the town hall there said in a statement.
Rome mayor Walter Veltroni was among the first to pay tribute to Antonioni, saying that he was “not only one of the greatest living directors, but also a master of modern cinema. “Thanks to Antonioni’s cinema, we had another view of reality, another way to look at the face of a woman, the design of a car, even a cloud was not the same thing after having seen his films.” Italian culture minister Francesco Rutelli hailed Antonioni as a “lucid and very sensitive intellectual (who) was an acute observer of the ills of the 20th century... His disappearance closes a historical cycle of Italian cinema.”
France’s former culture minister Jack Lang hailed Antonioni as a “giant of world cinema”. He had “revolutionised the language of cinema by reintroducing literary intelligence to it,” Lang said. As culture minister, Lang had made Antonioni a commander of arts and letters. Director Paolo Virzi said “he was “an important reference for cinema and culture, and especially an innovator of language,” and made cinema “more adult”.
In addition to Blow Up, made in England in 1966, Antonioni’s major films included L’Avventura (The Adventure) in 1960, and his 1975 work The Passenger, starring Jack Nicholson. Blow Up won Antonioni the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival in 1967, while the Venice film festival honoured him with the Golden Lion for Il Deserto Rosso (The Red Desert) in 1964 and a career Golden Lion in 1983, followed two years later by a career Oscar.
Antonioni, who made only about 20 films, died at his home in Rome on Monday night with his wife Enrica Fico by his side, a news agency reported. His body is to lie in state in the elegant Sala della Protomoteca at Rome’s city hall, the Campidoglio, on Wednesday morning to allow friends and colleagues to pay their last respects. Antonioni will be buried at his home town, in the northern city of Ferrara on Thursday, the town hall there said in a statement.
Rome mayor Walter Veltroni was among the first to pay tribute to Antonioni, saying that he was “not only one of the greatest living directors, but also a master of modern cinema. “Thanks to Antonioni’s cinema, we had another view of reality, another way to look at the face of a woman, the design of a car, even a cloud was not the same thing after having seen his films.” Italian culture minister Francesco Rutelli hailed Antonioni as a “lucid and very sensitive intellectual (who) was an acute observer of the ills of the 20th century... His disappearance closes a historical cycle of Italian cinema.”
France’s former culture minister Jack Lang hailed Antonioni as a “giant of world cinema”. He had “revolutionised the language of cinema by reintroducing literary intelligence to it,” Lang said. As culture minister, Lang had made Antonioni a commander of arts and letters. Director Paolo Virzi said “he was “an important reference for cinema and culture, and especially an innovator of language,” and made cinema “more adult”.
In addition to Blow Up, made in England in 1966, Antonioni’s major films included L’Avventura (The Adventure) in 1960, and his 1975 work The Passenger, starring Jack Nicholson. Blow Up won Antonioni the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival in 1967, while the Venice film festival honoured him with the Golden Lion for Il Deserto Rosso (The Red Desert) in 1964 and a career Golden Lion in 1983, followed two years later by a career Oscar.
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