The collaboration between Michelangelo Antonioni and Tonino Guerra began with L’Avventura (1960), a black-and-white film that they co-wrote with Elio Bartolini, a partnership that continued until 1982, when they again co-wrote the screenplay with Gérard Brach for Identification of a Woman (Pelo, 2010).
However, the turning point in the Antonioni–Guerra collaboration—from their earlier social explorations to a more restrained narrative in general, and for Antonioni from black-and-white to colour in particular—is most clearly represented in their 1964 collaboration, Red Desert. The story follows the neurotic Giuliana, who is isolated and imprisoned within a harsh modern industrial culture, where one can see how difficult it is for her to adapt to industrialization.
Antonioni later stated:
“My intention… was to translate the poetry of the world, in which even factories can be beautiful… Some people adapt, and others who cannot manage, perhaps because they are too tied to ways of life that are now out of date” (Chatman & Duncan, 2004).
But Guerra appears to hold a different view of the story world of Red Desert, and anyone familiar with the screenwriter and his approach to life can immediately recognize Giuliana as a reflection of a younger Guerra, who once said: “I could not stand it anymore, staying in the city with all those restless people” (Alfonso, 1999).
In fact, it can be argued that this film represents an unsuccessful attempt by Antonioni to present a set of principles concerned with the nature of beauty and the appreciation of a modern, industrialized society, while a strong force within Guerra’s subconscious resists the director’s intentions. The result is a director—Antonioni—who repeatedly feels compelled to explain his purpose in making the film. As in one instance, when responding to an interviewer who asked about the film’s harsh industrial environment, Antonioni said:
“It is too simplistic to say—as many people have done—that I am condemning the inhuman industrial world which oppresses individuals and leads them to neurosis. My intention… was to translate the poetry of the world, in which even factories can be beautiful” (Chatman & Duncan, 2004).
Of course, you may not be condemning the inhuman industrial world—but someone clearly is. And perhaps that is why, as you say, many people fail to perceive the beauty of your industrial world without your explanation. The director’s intention to depict the beauty of industrialization is strongly influenced—and challenged—by the screenwriter’s skeptical view of modern society in Red Desert.
Formalist screenwriters like Guerra, who develop their own language of storytelling, do not typically follow the fundamental principles of classical story design. For example, unlike classical narratives—where the story revolves around an active protagonist who struggles against external forces generated by an antagonist in pursuit of a goal—these minimalist writers tend to create passive protagonists. These characters appear inactive on the surface, while internally pursuing their desires.
In Red Desert, Giuliana is such a passive figure, used by the screenwriter and director as a tool to explore the environment; thus, the character herself is not the central focus. In other words, the story lacks depth in its portrayal of interpersonal relationships. What truly matters here is Giuliana’s relationship with—and awareness of—her surroundings, which themselves function as active elements.
In an interview with Jean-Luc Godard, Antonioni commented on this interest:
“What interests me now is to place the character in contact with things, for it is things, objects, and materials that have weight today” (Sarris, 1967).
This also explains why he frequently uses long lenses: Giuliana’s perspective remains in focus, while distant objects lose their clarity and function.
A similar concept of character design appears again in Nostalghia, a film that even earned the admiration of its director, Andrei Tarkovsky. Tarkovsky told an Italian interviewer at Cannes in 1983:
“I find it the most successful of all my films, the one in which I express myself best.”
He then explained the nature of his protagonist and his reaction to the finished film:
“The protagonist becomes my alter ego, embodying all my emotions, psychology, and nature. He is a mirror image of me. I have never made a film that reflects my inner states with such intensity. When I saw the finished work, I felt uneasy—as one does when looking at oneself in a mirror, or when one senses having gone beyond one’s own intentions.”
Unlike the clear divergence between Antonioni and Guerra’s perspectives in Red Desert, Tarkovsky’s remarks suggest a shared emotional and artistic alignment between director and screenwriter. This is further supported by the fact that both had demonstrated similar sensibilities in their earlier works, even before their collaboration.
Andrei Gorchakov, the Russian writer in Nostalghia, is another passive protagonist. He travels to Italy to research the life of a Russian composer who had lived there and later committed suicide upon returning to Russia.
The initial development of Nostalghia took place through long-distance conversations between Guerra in Italy and Tarkovsky in the Soviet Union. Later, Tarkovsky travelled to Italy not only to meet his screenwriter, but also his guide in the journey toward Nostalghia (Pelo, 2010).
In fact, Guerra knew where they should go and understood the director’s expectations. Although he allowed space for Tarkovsky’s ideas and imagery, his most important role was to translate those ideas into a coherent structure and cinematic language necessary for a poetic narrative unfolding in Italy. In doing so, he sometimes expanded or reshaped Tarkovsky’s ideas through his own symbolic and poetic solutions.
A well-known example of this can be seen in Guerra’s “mathematical manifesto,” which appears in both Red Desert and Nostalgia. In Red Desert, Giuliana’s son argues that one plus one equals one, demonstrating this by merging two drops of liquid into a single larger drop. A similar moment occurs in Nostalghia, where Andrei and Domenico discuss alienation while listening to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and Domenico illustrates the same idea using drops of olive oil.
Guerra’s protagonists share another defining characteristic: they primarily struggle with themselves. Unlike classical narratives, where characters confront external obstacles, their central conflict is internal.
Spyros, in Voyage to Cythera, is another example. Though not entirely passive, he is isolated, silent, and contemplative—unable to reconnect with the present. His struggle stems from a decision made 32 years earlier, when he left his homeland for the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan in pursuit of communist ideals, abandoning his family and village.
In the film, directed by Theodoros Angelopoulos and co-written with Thanassis Valtinos, Spyros returns to find that the villagers intend to sell their land to developers. His refusal disrupts their plans, and he is rejected by the community.
For the Greek collaborators, Spyros represents a political past that cannot be reconciled with the present. But for Guerra, he is more than a symbol—he is a universal figure, moving through the narrative with his unused violin case, connecting a known past to an uncertain future.
The Cahiers du Cinéma magazine redefined key film theories and criticism, including Auteur Theory, first advocated by François Truffaut in 1954. According to this theory, the director is considered the primary author of a film (Kamina, 2004).
Its roots can be traced back to the 1940s, when André Bazin and Roger Leenhardt argued that directors express their personal vision through cinematic techniques such as lighting, camera movement, editing, and mise-en-scène (Thompson & Bordwell, 2010).
In 1957, Bazin further elaborated on this idea in his essay “On Auteur Theory,” while also drawing on Alexandre Astruc’s concept of the caméra-stylo—the idea that a camera can function like a pen in the hands of a writer.
Truffaut, one of the main defenders of the theory, criticized what he called “scenarist cinema,” arguing that it reduced directors to mere illustrators of literary texts. In his 1954 essay “A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema,” he famously stated:
“There are no good and bad films, only good and bad directors.”
Yet this raises a fundamental question:
Can a director truly be the sole author of a film?
As Ellen Cheshire suggests, the answer depends on the production context (Shafrir, 2013). Some directors—particularly independent filmmakers—do assume multiple roles, becoming writer-directors and maintaining greater creative control. Examples include Woody Allen, Quentin Tarantino, Charlie Chaplin, Federico Fellini, and Truffaut himself.
However, most films—across all movements and industries—are the result of extensive collaboration.
Consider again Gone with the Wind, one of the most successful films in cinema history. Despite winning multiple Academy Awards, it was directed by three filmmakers and written by several screenwriters, while its success also depended heavily on actors Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, and production designer William Cameron Menzies.
Shortly after the rise of auteur theory, Pauline Kael challenged it by emphasizing the collaborative nature of filmmaking. In her essay “Raising Kane,” she argued that Citizen Kane—often cited as an auteurist masterpiece—was shaped not only by Orson Welles, but also by cinematographer Gregg Toland and co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz.
