Antonioni: Documents and Testimonials Page #2

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but had no luck.

We had a mutual friend in Milan

and I asked him if he was still interested in producing the movie,

and over the phone he told us he was.

As soon as we started scouting for locations,

we started incurring expenses

and I found myself bound to sign

I.O.U.s for forty million lira.

They were these enormous, huge, pieces of white paper

and they were my first ones ever.

When I came back and met this guy I told him:

Listen I'm already knee-deep into this project,

I have given my word and signed forty million worth of I.O.U.s

and assumed after our phone conversation

we had an understanding.

But he said that wasn't the case,

that we must still talk things over

and that I was wrong to have signed the I.O.U.s.

Eventually we found this gentleman in Turin, Mr. Villani,

that joined me in the first part of the project.

Finally, we started production.

The cast and crew met Antonioni in Milan

where the movie ended the way everybody knows.

We were all very happy. Antonioni because he made his movie.

Villani because he'd produced an important picture.

I was happy because I'd helped a friend

and because I had paid back my 40 million lira worth of I.O.Us...

In Story of a Love Affair, Antonioni transfers

the principles of neorealism into a bourgeois environment,

adding introspection to the dramatic witness role.

"Already then" he wrote, "l needed to see the characters,

even in their most simple gestures, after all had been said,

after all the lines had been exhausted

and when in everybody's soul nothing was left

but the consequences of what had happened."

In this movie, Lucia Bose's face reveals

a grave, pure, somber beauty.

The actress has now abandoned her screen career

and we caught a glimpse of her in an international airport.

FRANCESCO ROSI director AD on The Vanquished The Vanquished had a very rough

time with the board of censorship;

the Italian episode, the one I remember,

had to be almost completely re-shot twice,

it was rewritten several times and shot over twice, exactly

because of those censorship problems I was talking about.

However, my experience with Antonioni has been rather important

because I had the opportunity to observe Antonioni,

an artist of a coherence that is rare in film making.

His work is always coherent and he is absolutely faithful

to his ideas, even through all the obstacles

that all of us directors have to face in this business.

Antonioni shot these stills in London, Paris and Rome,

during the long period of scouting for locations for The Vanquished.

FRANCESCO MASELLI director The choice of locations becomes truly

a sort of key for interpreting the movie.

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