Michelangelo Antonioni

From 1942 to 1954 he was married to Letizia Balboni.

He became partially paralyzed after suffering a stroke in 1985.

In 1986 he married Italian film director and actress Enrica Antonioni.

Michelangelo Antonioni was born on September 29, 1912, in Ferrara, Emilia-Romagna, Italy, to Ismaele Antonioni and Elisabetta (née Roncagli).

As a child Antonioni developed interest in the arts that included music and painting. An exceptionally bright child he played the violin and performed in a concert for the first time at the age of nine. Later his interest in music was overpowered by cinema but his love for painting remained throughout his life.

He attended the ‘University of Bologna’ from 1931 to 1935 and completed his graduation in Economics. While in the university he became associated with student theatre. Thereafter he started working as a bank teller and also contributed as a film journalist writing stories and film reviews in the local Ferrara newspaper ‘Il Corriere Padano’.

He also became an amateur tennis champion for northern Italy while in his twenties.

He relocated to Rome sometime in 1940 and began working at the Fascist film magazine, ‘Cinema’. Its editor was the noted Italian film critic and producer, Vittorio Mussolini. Antonioni was however ousted from the magazine after a few months.

He co-authored the 1942 Italian war film ‘A Pilot Returns’ (‘Un pilota ritorna’) with Roberto Rossellini. It was directed by the latter. This work helped him sign a contract with ‘Scalera’, an Italian film production and distribution company. That year he also assisted director Enrico Fulchignoni for ‘I due Foscari’ and director Marcel Carné for ‘Les Visiteurs du soir’.

He made his first documentary ‘Gente del Po’ in 1943 that dealt with the inhabitants of the Po valley area followed by a string of short films of neo-realist style that portrayed the lives of commoners. Post liberation the stock of films were kept in the East-Italian Fascist "Republic of Salò" and could only be recovered in 1947, however not fully retrieved.

He made his debut as a full-length feature film director in 1950 with Italian drama ‘Cronaca di un amore’ (‘Story of a Love Affair’) starring Massimo Girotti and Lucia Bosè. In this film, which was not totally compliant with the contemporary style of Italian neorealism, he depicted the middle class. The film received positive response from critics and fetched Antonioni a ‘Nastro d'Argento’ award in the category of ‘Special Silver Ribbon’.

His next film ‘I vinti’ (‘The Vanquished’), a 1953 drama, although often not counted among the remarkable films of Antonioni and also faced censorship issues specially in the UK where it was never released, received a thumbs-up from the critics. It comprised of three stories with the Italian story set in Rome, the French story set in Paris and the English one in London delving about youths who commit murders.

The theme of his films would often hover around social alienation which is evident from his works like ‘La signora senza camelie’ (‘The Lady Without Camellias’, 1953), ‘Le amiche’ (‘The Girlfriends’, 1955) and ‘Il grido’ (‘The Outcry’, 1957). In ‘Le amiche’ (‘The Girlfriends’) he attempted a new style where he applied long takes and also featured a string of incidents that were seemingly not connected with one another, a technique he successfully used in many of his future endeavors.