{"id":24,"date":"2026-05-26T06:24:32","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T06:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/untitledfigure.com\/?p=24"},"modified":"2026-05-26T06:24:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T06:24:32","slug":"tracing-the-screenwriter-in-a-great-trilogy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/untitledfigure.com\/?p=24","title":{"rendered":"Tracing the Screenwriter in a Great Trilogy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The collaboration between Michelangelo Antonioni and Tonino Guerra began with <\/span>L\u2019Avventura<\/span><\/i> (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 G\u00e9rard Brach for <\/span>Identification of a Woman<\/span><\/i> (Pelo, 2010).<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the turning point in the Antonioni\u2013Guerra collaboration\u2014from their earlier social explorations to a more restrained narrative in general, and for Antonioni from black-and-white to colour in particular\u2014is most clearly represented in their 1964 collaboration, <\/span>Red Desert<\/span><\/i>. 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Antonioni later stated:<\/span>
\n<\/span>\u201cMy intention\u2026 was to translate the poetry of the world, in which even factories can be beautiful\u2026 Some people adapt, and others who cannot manage, perhaps because they are too tied to ways of life that are now out of date\u201d (Chatman & Duncan, 2004).<\/span><\/p>\n

But Guerra appears to hold a different view of the story world of <\/span>Red Desert<\/span><\/i>, 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: \u201cI could not stand it anymore, staying in the city with all those restless people\u201d (Alfonso, 1999).<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019s subconscious resists the director\u2019s intentions. The result is a director\u2014Antonioni\u2014who 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\u2019s harsh industrial environment, Antonioni said:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is too simplistic to say\u2014as many people have done\u2014that I am condemning the inhuman industrial world which oppresses individuals and leads them to neurosis. My intention\u2026 was to translate the poetry of the world, in which even factories can be beautiful\u201d (Chatman & Duncan, 2004).<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, you may not be condemning the inhuman industrial world\u2014but 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\u2019s intention to depict the beauty of industrialization is strongly influenced\u2014and challenged\u2014by the screenwriter\u2019s skeptical view of modern society in <\/span>Red Desert<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2014where the story revolves around an active protagonist who struggles against external forces generated by an antagonist in pursuit of a goal\u2014these minimalist writers tend to create passive protagonists. These characters appear inactive on the surface, while internally pursuing their desires.<\/span><\/p>\n

In <\/span>Red Desert<\/span><\/i>, 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\u2019s relationship with\u2014and awareness of\u2014her surroundings, which themselves function as active elements.<\/span><\/p>\n

In an interview with Jean-Luc Godard, Antonioni commented on this interest:<\/span>
\n<\/span>\u201cWhat interests me now is to place the character in contact with things, for it is things, objects, and materials that have weight today\u201d (Sarris, 1967).<\/span><\/p>\n

This also explains why he frequently uses long lenses: Giuliana\u2019s perspective remains in focus, while distant objects lose their clarity and function.<\/span><\/p>\n

A similar concept of character design appears again in <\/span>Nostalghia<\/span><\/i>, a film that even earned the admiration of its director, Andrei Tarkovsky. Tarkovsky told an Italian interviewer at Cannes in 1983:<\/span>
\n<\/span>\u201cI find it the most successful of all my films, the one in which I express myself best.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He then explained the nature of his protagonist and his reaction to the finished film:<\/span>
\n<\/span>\u201cThe 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\u2014as one does when looking at oneself in a mirror, or when one senses having gone beyond one\u2019s own intentions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Unlike the clear divergence between Antonioni and Guerra\u2019s perspectives in <\/span>Red Desert<\/span><\/i>, Tarkovsky\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Andrei Gorchakov, the Russian writer in <\/span>Nostalghia<\/span><\/i>, 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

The initial development of <\/span>Nostalghia<\/span><\/i> 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 <\/span>Nostalghia<\/span><\/i> (Pelo, 2010).<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, Guerra knew where they should go and understood the director\u2019s expectations. Although he allowed space for Tarkovsky\u2019s 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\u2019s ideas through his own symbolic and poetic solutions.<\/span><\/p>\n

A well-known example of this can be seen in Guerra\u2019s \u201cmathematical manifesto,\u201d which appears in both <\/span>Red Desert<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Nostalgia<\/span><\/i>. In <\/span>Red Desert<\/span><\/i>, Giuliana\u2019s 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 <\/span>Nostalghia<\/span><\/i>, where Andrei and Domenico discuss alienation while listening to Beethoven\u2019s Ninth Symphony, and Domenico illustrates the same idea using drops of olive oil.<\/span><\/p>\n

Guerra\u2019s protagonists share another defining characteristic: they primarily struggle with themselves. Unlike classical narratives, where characters confront external obstacles, their central conflict is internal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Spyros, in <\/span>Voyage to Cythera<\/span><\/i>, is another example. Though not entirely passive, he is isolated, silent, and contemplative\u2014unable 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2014he is a universal figure, moving through the narrative with his unused violin case, connecting a known past to an uncertain future.<\/span><\/p>\n

The <\/span>Cahiers du Cin\u00e9ma<\/span><\/i> magazine redefined key film theories and criticism, including Auteur Theory, first advocated by Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut in 1954. According to this theory, the director is considered the primary author of a film (Kamina, 2004).<\/span><\/p>\n

Its roots can be traced back to the 1940s, when Andr\u00e9 Bazin and Roger Leenhardt argued that directors express their personal vision through cinematic techniques such as lighting, camera movement, editing, and mise-en-sc\u00e8ne (Thompson & Bordwell, 2010).<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1957, Bazin further elaborated on this idea in his essay <\/span>\u201cOn Auteur Theory,\u201d<\/span><\/i> while also drawing on Alexandre Astruc\u2019s concept of the <\/span>cam\u00e9ra-stylo<\/span><\/i>\u2014the idea that a camera can function like a pen in the hands of a writer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Truffaut, one of the main defenders of the theory, criticized what he called \u201cscenarist cinema,\u201d arguing that it reduced directors to mere illustrators of literary texts. In his 1954 essay <\/span>\u201cA Certain Tendency of the French Cinema,\u201d<\/span><\/i> he famously stated:<\/span>
\n<\/span>\u201cThere are no good and bad films, only good and bad directors.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet this raises a fundamental question:<\/span>
\n<\/span>Can a director truly be the sole author of a film?<\/span><\/p>\n

As Ellen Cheshire suggests, the answer depends on the production context (Shafrir, 2013). Some directors\u2014particularly independent filmmakers\u2014do assume multiple roles, becoming writer-directors and maintaining greater creative control. Examples include Woody Allen, Quentin Tarantino, Charlie Chaplin, Federico Fellini, and Truffaut himself.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, most films\u2014across all movements and industries\u2014are the result of extensive collaboration.<\/span><\/p>\n

Consider again <\/span>Gone with the Wind<\/span><\/i>, 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shortly after the rise of auteur theory, Pauline Kael challenged it by emphasizing the collaborative nature of filmmaking. In her essay <\/span>\u201cRaising Kane,\u201d<\/span><\/i> she argued that <\/span>Citizen Kane<\/span><\/i>\u2014often cited as an auteurist masterpiece\u2014was shaped not only by Orson Welles, but also by cinematographer Gregg Toland and co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The collaboration between Michelangelo Antonioni and Tonino Guerra began with L\u2019Avventura (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 G\u00e9rard Brach for Identification of a Woman (Pelo, 2010). However, the turning point in the Antonioni\u2013Guerra collaboration\u2014from their earlier social explorations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_header_footer","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/untitledfigure.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/untitledfigure.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/untitledfigure.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/untitledfigure.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/untitledfigure.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/untitledfigure.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25,"href":"https:\/\/untitledfigure.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/25"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/untitledfigure.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/untitledfigure.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/untitledfigure.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}