SOURCE: A review of The Architecture of Vision: Writings and Interviews on Cinema, in Film Quarterly, Summer, 1997, pp. 38–40.

In the following review, Chatman draws on Antonioni’s writing to describe how the filmmaker worked as a director.

Antonioni was an active cinema critic in the 30s and 40s, but stopped writing about other directors’ work after making his own first film, Story of a Love Affair (1950). From then until his debilitating stroke in 1985, he wrote a number of short pieces and gave many interviews; two particularly, at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematographia; are of such importance and influence that the editors call them “oral writings” and include them among the essays of the first section of this book [The Architecture of Vision: Writings and Interviews on Cinema,], “My Cinema.” Section 2 contains writings by Antonioni on several of his own films (from Attempted Suicide [1953] to The Mystery of Oberwald...