SOURCE: “Eclipsing the Commonplace: The Logic of Alienation in Antonioni’s Cinema,” in Film Quarterly, Vol. 48, No. 4, Summer, 1995, p. 22–34.

In the following essay, Moore discusses Antonioni’s exploration of alienation in his films.

Talk of alienation in Antonioni’s cinema is more often than not negative. Despite Peter Bondanella’s observation that characterization in Antonioni’s films might not be all that negative, typically Weberian interpretations of disenchantment dominate readings of Antonioni’s cinema.¹ I would like to elaborate upon Bondanella’s observation by supplying a theoretical framework, and then, noting some instances from Antonioni’s work, argue that alienation is more accurately portrayed as negativity in Hegel’s and Adorno’s sense of a reflection on value. As an instance of negativity, alienation, in this view, is a positive event promoting aesthetic progress in the face of novel experience.

In Weber’s by now classic analysis of...