Description
A reinterpretation of Antonioni's most important films as political cinema, engaged with issues which are still crucial in the 21st century.
About the Author
Slawomir Maslon is Associate Professor in the Institute of Literary Studies at University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland.
Reviews
Secret Violences offers a thought-provoking interpretation of the political charge of Michelangelo Antonioni's films from the Sixties and Seventies, placing emphasis on their depsychologization and consequent "devaluation of the patriarchal plot" through brilliant close readings that query the role of supraindividual discourses that render characters "mouthpieces of the dominant ideologies". Maslon's makes a unique contribution to the field through a nuanced analysis of the explicitly political nature of Antonioni's MGM films, shedding light on an aspect of his production that has long begged for engaging scholarly attention. * Giancarlo Lombardi, Professor of Italian, Comparative Literature, French, and Film Studies, College of Staten Island/CUNY & The Graduate Center/CUNY, USA *
Antonioni's cinema from L'avventura (1960) onwards is either praised or critiqued for turning to formalism and tearing narrative apart, and it is rarely, if ever, seen as political. Challenging these three tropes at once, it is on narrative and form that Slawomir Maslon focusesto reveal the political aspects - as well as, at times, the politics - of Antonioni's feature films of the 1960s and 1970s. The result is an insightful, and at times exhilarating, account of Antonioni's engagement with contemporaneous problematics of gender, sexuality, race, colonialism and post-colonialism - problematics which are often overlooked or deemed absent from Antonioni's cinema as a whole. * Matilde Nardelli, Associate Professor, University of West London, UK *
Book Information
ISBN 9781501398278
Author Slawomir Maslon
Format Paperback
Page Count 200
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic USA
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing Plc