I read an essay about Michelangelo Antonioni, especially how he directed and worked with his actors. It portrayed him as a complicated personality who became a director through unorthodox means – from critiquing films, to be precise.

He seemed to have a somewhat misanthropic view of the world, and he took this out on his cast. I feel like there could be an element of sexism in his behaviour, as he acted nastier towards women – at least according to the essay, though I assume many men of his age had similar attitudes in that era, especially coming from a culture that has hyper-masculine elements.

The main thing that actors did that he disliked was asking him to explain the motives behind the directions he gave. While there were many theories about this raised through the essay, the one that stood out to me was the assumption that he thought the actors were attempting to be “backseat directors” themselves.

If this is correct, I understand his sentiment, but having worked on sets, (I understand that community television and student productions could be different to the industry, but surely not that much) collaboration is important, and productions are markedly higher quality if everyone involved is on the same page.

On the other hand, it was interesting to see how innovative he was in regards to the way that he used actors. He made sure he was able to capture all of the subtleties in things that other directors at the time didn’t even think about, such as facial expressions and tone of voice. The fact that his films were driven not necessarily by the cast, but by everything around it, was fascinating; as it means that actors would work around the film – something that some current directors are starting to experiment with, but still don’t quite understand. I need to watch some of his works.