Generative apogee and elegiac expansion: European film modernism from Antonioni to Angelopoulos

Michelangelo Antonioni's early 1960s cinema has long been recognised as one of the key influences on Theo Angclopoulos' filmmaking. The director himself has often been quoted as describing Antonioni's epochal <i>L'avventura</i> (1960) as a seminal moment in his development, reportedly watch­ing it thirteen times while a student in Paris during the early 1960s (cited in Archimandritis ZOIJ: 26). What exactly is it about Antonioni's work that was so formative for Angelopoulos, and how can we see its effects play out in his own subsequent films? More than simply illustrating authorial influence, by exam­ining the connections between these two filmmakers as well as some important differences, this chapter seeks to explore the ways in which, through their work, we can chart the complex development of European feature film modernism itself