I have been really impressed by the level of discourse, and also by the willingness to indulge in bitchy or catty asides without losing the main polemic impetus or thrust.

Bergman and Antonioni were among those filmmakers whose films I got to see late at night on PBS or at the local rep cinemas (Ellay's NuArt & Fox Venice).

I do prefer Bergman's early funnier ones (SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT, THE MAGICIAN, WILD STRAWBERRIES, THE DEVIL'S EYE), but PERSONA, HOUR OF THE WOLF, SHAME, PASSIONS OF ANNA, VIRGIN SPRING, SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE (the long version), parts of SEVENTH SEAL (which overall has not dated well, but which has such a strong central conceit as to still be some sort of classic), FANNY & ALEXANDER are as good as movies get. Even relative failures like THE SILENCE and THE TOUCH are interesting and entertaining. And THE SERPENT'S EGG is one of those wholly horrible film that is so bad as to rewad repeated viewings. (Recommend as a trple bill with KILL BILL 1# & #2.

Bergman, like Godard even, is someone whose influence can be problematic. IF someone is pinching a scene or doing an "hommage" you notice, and want to leave the theatre or remove the DVD a.s.a.p. and watch the original film.

For me, the Antonioni movies to cherish & return to again & again are L'AVENTURRA, ECLIPSE, IL GRIDO, THE PASSENGER, and BEYOND THE CLOUDS. BLOW UP, RED DESERT, and to a lesser extent, ZABRESKIE POINT, are frustrating and erratic movies that did nail a particular zeitgeist. And it is a bit ironic that his documentaries are not particularly terrific, nicely crafted, but not the Antonioni we know from his movies. And the comment on Antonioni influencing advertising was somewhere between a cheap shot aimed at the wrong barn and sheer fuckwitterie.) Fellini and Godard and Truffaut had much more of an influence on advertising than Antonioni ever did.

There is an aspect of Antonioni's visual approach that has had a great, and mostly good influence on various filmmakers, especially Antonioni's approach seems to have actually opened a door for many directors, like Angelopoulos, Wenders (who repaid the favor), Wong Kar Wai (who's also influenced by Godard), Tarkovsky, and Bela Tarr. (Altough, in Bela Tarr's case I wish that door had stayed closed. Tarr may be a poet of rebar and rising damp and of rain and fog, but any sense of narrative is beyond him. At least with Angelopoulos the characters are caught in regional civil wars, which explains the angst and dread; and Tarkovsky's characters scream at God before literally or figuratively immolating themselves, making Tarkovsky a true missing link between Antonioni and Bergman.)

What I find most striking about Antonioni is his influence on Middle eastern filmmakers like Kiarostami (TASTE OF CHERRY), Abu Assad (PARADISE NOW) and Bani-Etemad (UNDER THE SKIN OF THE CITY). Antonioni's oblique and sideways approach really resonates with the, with their landscape both physically and politically, and they have been able to find useful and interesting ways to adapt his visual vocabulary to their needs.

But comparisons can be really odious. Comparing Bergman to Antonioni is like comparing Strindberg to Pirandello, Sibelius to Rossini.

Andrew O'Hehir writes:

"I've always felt similar reservations about Antonioni's work as I do about Alfred Hitchcock's; in both cases, an extraordinary technical facility seems to put form ahead of content, style ahead of substance. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that for both directors form was content, and that this idea flowed from their most basic understanding of the world. In both cases, my problem is not so much with Antonioni or Hitchcock's movies (which I find powerful and impressive, though hardly ever moving) but with what I see as their baleful influence on later generations.

Antonioni's black-and-white trilogy of the early '60s -- the international sensation of "L'Avventura," followed by "La Notte" and "Eclipse" -- with their beautiful women, sharp-dressed men, sleek modern settings and startling compositions, shaped advertising and fashion photography for decades to come. Whatever Marxian-Freudian points the filmmaker was trying to make became subsumed in the decadent, sexy glamour of the whole enterprise. That isn't precisely ironic, and isn't precisely Antonioni's fault. Maybe it's just symptomatic of the problem those movies sought to address."

Even by the standards of daily journalism, these paragraphs are remarkably shoddy and ill-considered. First Antonioni is blamed for the fact that advertising hacks ripped off the look of his films -- although immediately afterward, we're told this "isn't precisely Antonioni's fault" (that "precisely" is worthy of Nixon). Well, if it isn't his "fault," why make it the basis of your complaint against him? And why is he blamed for having been ripped off by perfume pitchmen, but not credited for having influenced Chantal Akerman, Jim Jarmusch, Richard Linklater, Lucretia Martel, Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese, Bela Tarr, Wong Kar-Wai, Edward Yang, and dozens if not hundreds of other notable directors of the last 40 years?

For Antonioni and Hitchcock, "form was content, and... this idea flowed from their most basic understanding of the world." No attempt is made to describe either form or content, much less what "basic understanding of the world" means in this context.

Finally, the worst of it: "Whatever Marxian-Freudian points the filmmaker was trying to make became subsumed in the decadent, sexy glamour of the whole enterprise." The "whole enterprise" here presumably refers to the actual '60s films -- the ones O'Hehir steadily refuses to engage with, or even (again) describe, apart from noting their similarities to the advertisements they influenced. The "Marxian-Freudian points" bit suggests, in a nicely underhanded way, that Antonioni, that pretentious f**k, tried to apply "Marxian-Freudian" ideas to his films, but failed, because he was too much of a "decadent, sexy" airhead. Of course, there are no "Marxian-Freudian" ideas to be found in Antonioni's work, and the fact that O'Hehir would even write such a thing suggests that he's read Marx and Freud about as closely as he's viewed Antonioni -- or as closely as he edits his own writing once he's finished clubbing the keyboard.

No artist is above criticism, even in an obituary, and any reputation as elevated as Antonioni's will -- and should -- invite dissenters to state their opposing views. But is it really too much to ask a film critic to actually watch a director's work before attacking it?

Readers who want to learn something useful about Antonioni are encouraged to look at the writings of Paul Coates, Philip Lopate, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Jonathan Rosenbaum, and David Thomson.