Michelangelo Antonioni, who died in 2007, was one of cinema’s greatest modernist filmmakers. The films in his black and white trilogy of the early 1960s—L’avventura, La Notte, L‘eclisse—are justly celebrated for their influential, gorgeously austere style. But in this book, Murray Pomerance demonstrates why the color films that followed are, in fact, Antonioni’s greatest works. Writing in an accessible style that evokes Antonioni’s expansive use of space, Pomerance discusses The Red Desert, Blow-Up, Professione: Reporter (The Passenger), Zabriskie Point, Identification of a Woman, The Mystery of Oberwald, Beyond the Clouds, and The Dangerous Thread of Things to analyze the director’s subtle and complex use of color. Infusing his open-ended inquiry with both scholarly and personal reflection, Pomerance evokes the full range of sensation, nuance, and equivocation that became Antonioni’s signature.

"Murray Pomerance's close readings of selected Antonioni works offer surprising and rich insights at every turn. With a critical approach deeply informed by appropriate invocations of modern thinkers, writers, and artists, Pomerance situates the films in their cultural moment, even as his sharp, illuminating attention to detail and nuance expresses his admiration for the monumental accomplishments of one of postwar cinema's most engaging if enigmatic directors. Pomerance is unsurpassed as an appreciative guide to one of the masters of the medium." R. Barton Palmer, author of Hollywood's Tennessee: The Williams Films and Postwar America

An analysis of the life and work of the Italian director, Michelangelo Antonioni.

Introduction -- Road trips to a new Hollywood : Easy Rider and Zabriskie Point -- Christopher Jones does not want to be a movie star -- Four women in Hollywood : Jean Seberg, Jane Fonda, Dolores Hart and Barbara Loden -- Charles Manson's Hollywood -- Epilogue.

In December 1967, Time magazine put Bonnie and Clyde on its cover and proudly declared that Hollywood cinema was undergoing a 'renaissance'. For the next few years, a wide range of formally and thematically challenging films were produced at the very centre of the American film industry, often (but by no means always) combining success at the box office with huge critical acclaim, both then and later. This collection brings together acknowledged experts on American cinema to examine thirteen key films from the years 1966 to 1974, starting with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a major studio release which was in effect exempted from Hollywood's Production Code and thus helped to liberate American filmmaking from (self-)censorship. Long-standing taboos to do with sex, violence, race relations, drugs, politics, religion and much else could now be broken, often in conjunction with extensive stylistic experimentation. Whereas most previous scholarship has examined these developments through the prism of auteurism, with its tight focus on film directors and their oeuvres, the contributors to this collection also carefully examine production histories and processes. In doing so they pay particular attention to the economic underpinnings and collaborative nature of filmmaking, the influence of European art cinema as well as of exploitation, experimental and underground films, and the connections between cinema and other media (notably publishing, music and theatre). Several chapters show how the innovations of the Hollywood Renaissance relate to further changes in American cinema from the mid-1970s onwards.

A groundbreaking and extensively researched account of the 1960s London art scene In the 1960s, London became a vibrant hub of artistic production. Postwar reconstruction, jet air travel, television arts programs, new color supplements, a generation of young artists, dealers, and curators, the influx of international film companies, the projection of “creative Britain” as a national brand—all nurtured and promoted the emergence of London as “a new capital of art.” Extensively illustrated and researched, this book offers an unprecedented, rich account of the social field that constituted the lively London scene of the 1960s. In clear, fluent prose, Tickner presents an innovative sequence of critical case studies, each of which explores a particular institution or event in the cultural life of London between 1962 and 1968. The result is a kaleidoscopic view of an exuberant decade in the history of British art.

"Containing many illustrations from Michelangelo Antonioni's own archives, this text explores his life and career from his earliest documentaries to his latest collaborations"--Publisher's description.