Review of The Lady Without Camelias

Early Antonioni and although he is clearly feeling his way there are already signs of what is to become. We open with a fairly busy street scene and it becomes apparent the camera is following a woman along the pavement as first she pauses at an advertising poster and then approaches a cinema entrance. We only see her from behind and she enters the cinema to see the closing moments of herself on screen. It will later become apparent she is the star/victim of our picture. Later half the picture is taken up with a blank wall forming the corner of a street and a couple disappear behind it. There are several instances in sun and rain of cars and people walking across squares and beside buildings where the space is as important as those walking in its midst. Storywise the tale is more mundane. A naive young lady becomes committed to marriage without her knowledge, becomes involved elsewhere and the conflicts in her personal life are reflected in the conflicts in her working life in the cinema. Antonioni seems not to be a fan of popular cinema and if your vision is as sound and persuasive as his would prove to be maybe this is fine and another kind of popularity can be achieved but it is something of a stretch. Much cinema dismissed in the day as trash has survived with notable potency and resonance of the time and place whereas much arthouse cinema has disappeared without trace with charges of pretentiousness. Here we see the birth of Antonioni and whilst throughout his career he would construct scenarios railing against the men who presumed to control his icy maidens it would be his cinema eye, his certainty that place affects personality, that would carry most weight through his golden period from the late 50s up until his majestic and final great work, The Passenger.