SOURCE: “Antonioni in 1980: An Interview,” in Film Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 1, Fall, 1997, pp. 2–10.

In the following interview, conducted in 1980, Chatman discusses with Antonioni the filmmaker's body of work.

I recently unearthed the tape of an interview I had with Michelangelo Antonioni in November 1980, recorded as I was preparing my book, Antonioni, or the Surface of the World. Antonioni invited me to his beautiful apartment on the Tiber. He was warm, friendly, open, and always candid. The interview was partly in English and partly in Italian.¹ For this publication, Antonioni graciously allowed me to reproduce some of his own drawings and texts.

[Chatman:] In your early, “apprentice” films of the 1950s (the documentaries, and Cronaca di un amore, I Vinti, La signora senza camelie, and Le amiche) were you working within the genres or were you trying to work your way out of them? You wanted to make a film...