Michelangelo Antonioni: Character

“I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible.”

Michelangelo Antonioni

Encountering Directors interview (1969)
Context: I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible. I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see them in empty space.

“Is it important to show why a character is what he is? No. He is. That's all.”

Michelangelo Antonioni

Encountering Directors interview (1969)

“Don't regard my characters as symbols of a determined society. See them as something that sparks a reaction within you so that they become a personal experience. The critic is a spectator and an artist insofar as he transforms the work into a personal thing of his own.”

Michelangelo Antonioni

Encountering Directors interview (1969)

Personality

“My characters are ambiguous. Call them that. I don't mind. I am ambiguous myself. Who isn't?”

Michelangelo Antonioni

Encountering Directors interview (1969)

“When we say a character in my films doesn't function, we mean he doesn't function as a person, but he does function as a character — that is, until you take him as a symbol. At that point it is you who are not functioning. Why not simply accept him as a character, without judging him? Accept him for what he is. Accept him as a character in a story, without claiming that he derives or acquires meaning from that story. There may be meanings, but they are different for all of us.”

Michelangelo Antonioni

Encountering Directors interview (1969)

Personality