Director Michelangelo Antonioni, one of the last great figures in Italian cinema, has died at the age of 94, Ansa news agency reported July 31, quoting his family.
Antonioni, who made only about 20 films, died at his home on July 30, the report said.
His major movies included Blow Up, made in England in 1966, L’Avventura (The Adventure) in 1960, and his 1975 work The Passenger, starring Jack Nicholson.
Blow Up won Antonioni the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival in 1967, while the Venice film festival honoured him with the Golden Lion for Red Desert (1964) and a career Golden Lion in 1983, followed two years later by a career Oscar.
Born in Ferrara, northern Italy, on September 29, 1912, into a well-to-do family, Antonioni excelled in economics at the University of Bologna.
He started out as a film critic for a local magazine before moving to Rome to study at the Experimental Cinema Centre and to work for Cinema magazine, both considered centres of resistance to fascism.
By 1942 he was in Paris, where he assisted Marcel Carne in the making of Les Visiteurs du Soir before becoming the co-screenwriter of Roberto Rossellini’s Un Pilota Ritorna (A Pilot Returns).
The following year Antonioni made his first documentary, The People of the Po and went on to make his first full-length film, Cronaca di un Amore (Chronical of a Love) in 1950.
It was with Blow Up, the story of a fashion photographer who realises that he was the witness to a murder in London, that Antonioni achieved his greatest commercial and critical success.
Partially paralysed by a stroke in 1985, Antonioni was feted by the Italian cinema world when he turned 90 in 2002.
He lived in Rome with his wife, Enrica Fico, who was by his side when he died, Ansa said. – AFP