We see the city in reflection. Moving down the body of the tower, the camera?s gaze remains fixed on the tangled loose threads of Milan?s post-war urban fabric, but the context keeps shifting. It?s not really Milan we?re looking at, but rather its fractured reflection in the glass of a skyscraper as we journey into the city below. Then, the camera pulls back from the building, and we see the city twice: reflected and real. These are the opening moments of La Notte, by Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007), one of several films that encapsulate the Italian director?s architectural sensibility. Characters and dialogue may advance the narrative, but buildings and landscape form the vessel that shapes it.
Still from the 1961 film La Notte, with Monica Vitti and Marcello Mastroianni. Flanked by 1960?s seminal L?Avventura and 1962?s L?Eclisse, La Notte forms the central episode of a trilogy that marks the apex of Antonioni?s formal experimentation. This summer in Toronto, the films anchor the TIFF Cinemateque retrospective ?Modernist Master: Michelangelo Antonioni.? With a programme that illuminates Antonioni?s understanding of architecture and urban space, a month of screenings and talks have offered windows into the work of a cinematic modernist.
As the New York Times?  Stephen Holden put it, L?Avventura, La Notte and L?Eclisse make up Antonioni?s exploration of ?modernity and its discontents.? Drifting through the alternately half-finished or half-destroyed landscapes of Milan a...