Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007) was at the top of his form with "The Passenger" in 1975. Although, like other Antonioni films, it left some open questions, frustrating some viewers, it was strikingly shot, had strong performances, and even related to something beyond haute bourgeoisie boredom and alienation (though it certainly did not lack for those Antonioni leitmotifs).

Despite the commercial and critical success of "The Passenger," it was six years before Antonioni shot another film -- and then it was material (Jean Cocteau's Ruritarian romance "The Eagle Has Two Heads") that seems very alien to Antonioni's sensibilities, not least in being a talky stage play set in an earlier historical era (ca. 1900). Even with Monica Vitti back onscreen and Antonioni playing with colors, "The Mystery of Oberwald" is awful.

The "Identificazione di una donna" (Identification of a Woman, 1982) is more watchable than "Oberwald" is very faint praise. It has some mirror shots and shots of (not always through!) doors and windows that I like, and a highly willed color scheme (that does not come across very well on VHS), but it often seems like a parody of "L'aventurra" (the disappearing young woman, her male companion's immediately getting it on with another one who is ostensibly helping search for the disappeared one) and "L'eclisse" (the mirror shots, the inconclusive romance, the lover seen through a window (a variant on Monica Vitti waiting in the street below in "L'aventurra") and more fog ("Il deserto rosso").

There is solemn intoning of what the viewer does not need to be told (because abundantly shown):"What is the point of a love story,'' the protagonist's friend asks him as he contemplates his next film, ``with all this ruin and corruption?" And there is some death of God banality.

The alienated protagonist, Niccolo (Tomas Milian), is a film director (immediate cause for alarm in the viewer!) who has just lost his wife (I'm not sure whether she died or left him) and who does not know what his next movie will be. More alarm bells went off in my head when he said, "I am thinking of making a movie -- about a woman. That's all I know. It shall be...a woman character...and once I find her image, I will be able to make the movie." (BTW, the ultimate image in his mind's eye and on the screen at the end, is one usually coded as male.)

Niccolo is having a relationship with an aristocratic woman named Maria Vittoria ("Mavi" for short, played by Daniela Silverio), who takes him to perhaps the dullest party ever filmed. An unimposing thug (Gianpaolo Saccarola) calls Niccolo to deliver a warning to stay away from her (delivered over an ice cream sundae!). After a drive through thick fog into which he disappears for a while (getting out of the car), returning to find her gone, she prosaically returns, then has a bout of hysteria in the car.

The couple, who do not seem at all in love with each other, arrive at a rented villa that is built over an ancient Roman house. The villa is sinking into what Niccolo terms an "abyss," though it is only the undermining from excavating the ancient structure.

They have sex shot with clinical detachment (that is, devoid of any eroticism). Then Niccolo is back in the city (seemingly Rome) searching for her. After a discussion with a friend of Mavi's at a swimming pool (Lara Wendel) who confides that she prefers being masturbated by woman to being masturbated by men (dialogue there to wake up audiences), Niccolo does find where Mavi is.

He has some help in this pro forma search from his new main squeeze, an actress named Ida (Christine Boisson), a brunette variant on Mavi, who provides some voyeuristic full-frontal nudity and some more coldly shot sex scenes.

Catharsis was not on Antonioni's agenda even when he wasn't parodying his films. "Identification" is "atmospheric," but with a remarkably charmless (as well as vacuous) protagonist, little plot, continuity lurches (or indifference to such concerns), cheesy sets, and, as usual for Antonioni films, running more than two hours, there is nothing in this film that is not available in better form in earlier Antonioni films. (The box and other sources list the running time as 128 or 131 minutes, but even with very lengthy closing credits, it runs 124 -- though it felt like four hours.)




© 2008, Stephen O. Murray


The other stations of the Antonioni cross:
Cronaca di una amore (1950)
L'amíche (1955)
Il Grido (1958),
L'Aventtura (1960)
La Notte (1961)
L'eclisse (1962),
Il derserto ross (1964),
Blow-Up (1966),
Il misterio de Oberwald (1980),
The Passenger (1975),
Beyond the Clouds (1985),
and his disappointing contribution to the trilogy Eros (2004).






Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: VHS
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age