I saw this several years ago in a class. This was long before Criterion had a DVD, and the VHS we watched was simply awful. The subtitles were completely illegible, so I didn't get much out of it. I did like it, however. But revisiting it on DVD, the film is a revelation. It easily ranks as highly as any of Antonioni's other masterpieces. This may be his darkest, most frightening film. Monica Vitti plays a woman disillusioned with life. Her feelings are expressed in mostly abstract ways, via Antonioni's gorgeous visuals. I'm not sure any director expressed as vividly a person's feeling of being disconnected with the world around them. The story follows Vitti between two lovers, Francisco Rabal and Alain Delon. Both are self-obsessed jerks. As Vitti recedes from society, she leaves Rabal. She initially tries to resist Delon, knowing that fulfillment is equally impossible with him. But, in the end, she quietly fades back into a conventional life, giving up her existential crisis. It's a story of failure, really. And then comes the infamous finale: Antonioni separates us from the people we've become accustomed to, and we revisit the sites we've seen before. But we're alone. It's a severely ambiguous ending, and I'd guess that viewers have interpreted it any number of ways. My thought: Antonioni is challenging the audience with the same existential crisis that Vitti faced and then turned her back on. What is this strange world we live in? When I used to recall this famous ending after the first time I had seen it, I remembered it without human beings. Not true. There are people in nearly every shot. We just don't know who they are. They seem completely foreign (even though we've seen some of the people as extras earlier on), and it makes the world seem more alien, more severe. You go outside after seeing this film, you feel the same way. You feel all alone in the world. Like Tati's Playtime, it's the kind of film that can alter your perception of the world around you (of course, Playtime has the opposite effect you feel more connected to the world around you). When he died, I was long past my Antonioni phase. I had seen all his best films years ago. It feels good to fall in love again.
