1) Roma – Antonioni

12 REGISTA PER 12 CITTA’ is a 1989 compendium film in which twelve Italian film directors, per the title, tackle twelve Italian cities. Nobody much talks about this film and it isn’t available commercially as far as I can see, so let’s go through it in detail for the hell of it. In twelve parts.

Compendium-films are notoriously uneven but the Italians made a lot of them. Usually in any collection of loosely related shores, somebody’s not trying very hard, somebody else has a good idea and doesn’t need to, somebody’s there for no reason you can think of. What did Roger Vadim ever do to get placed alongside Fellini and Malle?

Michelangelo Antonioni opens the film with his profile of Rome — well, that’s a pretty big subject to handle in under nine minutes. One can argue he drew the short straw, his mission is impossible. For any normal man. Antonioni is not normal. On the other hand, in 1983, Antonioni had suffered a stroke, leaving him aphasic — he couldn’t speak. A considerable handicap. That might account for some of his directorial choices here — on the other hand, they’re smart choices, however they were motivated.

Working with regular cinematographer Carlo Di Palma, Antonioni films Rome without words, focussing only on structures of the Rennaissance. Only once do human beings appear, in extreme long shot, crossing the Tiber. I suspect he would have excluded them if he could.

A silent, depopulated city, frozen four centuries back, a city in amber. The people we see are all painted or sculpted. Only the camera moves, in a MARIENBAD glide, through arches and doorways, caressing painted ceilings, circling marble giants. Classical music (uncredited – don’t ask me who it is) plays.

The danger of this kind of thing — well, do you remember The Landscape Channel? But the little filmlet is awe-inspiring. I gasped. Antonioni has sculpted his film, chiselling away all the aspects of Rome he couldn’t fit in, concentrating on the Eternal City, a cliché of course but one that holds a truth that can be illuminated. Antonioni, whose films are associated with a chilly modernity, offers an equally cold but stunning antiquity.

David Lean, describing his approach to Venice, said that of course you had to include the tourist views, but you had to transform them and make them fresh. Antonioni gives us the ceiling of the Sistine and makes us SEE it. He groups his images: a sequence on fountains, rooftops, ceilings. Just tracking towards a doorway can take your breath away.

It seems to me that Antonioni, whose compendium entries weren’t always up to his usual standard — his bit I TRE VOLTI is utter tripe — had something to prove. And proved it.

Next up: Lina Wertmuller!