Le Amiche

To defend Antonioni is impossible: his foes call him a bore, and all the talk in the world can't convince them they haven't been bored. On the other hand, those of us who enjoy his work ought to be able to explain why. Unfortunately, most favorable critics slaver with adjectives, like the Brattle brochure, which tells us that Le Amiche has "great visual elegance", that it is "social criticism of a Marxist order ... constructed from a mosaic of incidents trivial and tragic ... I'univers antonionien--arid, alienated, isolated."

Even the "ever-brilliant" Pauline Kael points out that Antonioni finds it possible to "accept the socialist criticism of society without endorsing the socialist remedy." Well, even Homer nods, and Miss Kael, one perceives, has her off days too.

Her comment shows how dangerous it is to generalize without first considering a film's style in concrete terms: both she and the Brattle arrive at an erroneous conclusion, and they are forced by their methods to couch their mistakes in terms so weightless that they would vitiate the gravity of any statement, however true it was. To say that Antonioni accepts the socialist criticism of society implies, I suppose, that he is for the poor and against the rich. I would argue (and I acquire thereby the advantage of being able to explain why a "socialist" doesn't advocate socialism) that Antonioni is not merely a critic of the rich but a critic of human nature in the social setting, and that he makes bitter films about Society because it is the most exaggerated example of the evils inherent in society at large.

In Le Amiche, (1955), as in his later films, Antonioni shows couples, nominally in love, who cannot communicate with each other privately. Only in public does their love have any kind of meaning. People see them together and gossip about their "relationship" when they are gone. But in private they are a failure. As Rosesta says: "Two people can't stay alone together without love."

In public, in society, their love is impossible. Antonioni underlines this with virtually every shot. In the film's most intricate scene nine "friends" go to the beach. Some of them steal off in pairs; others track them down and watch. Even the pretense of love withers under this constant observation.

Near the end of the film, Clelia (Eleonora Rossi-Drago) and Momina argue fiercely and end their friendship. Antonioni makes this scene almost unbearably crude by setting it in the midst of a fashion show crowded with gawking strangers.

Such is the style of Antonioni. He presents us with men and women who cannot succeed in a private love and enter society only to find themselves under constant surveillance by great crowds of prying bystanders. In privacy, there is emptiness; in society the emptiness is exposed.

Clearly, Antonioni chooses a milieu of wealth because the rich have more leisure for being "in public," for reducing each other's wives, and, generally, for picking at each other" psyches. Although he is conscious of class barriers, his analysis of human nature is by no means limited to the upper classes. One could apply it with less force, to any group. Antonioni doesn't do this because High Society is the clearest case for his moral insights. At any rate he is hardly a Marxist.