Editing Michelangelo Antonioni (section)

==Reception and legacy ==

Bordwell explains that Antonioni was extremely influential on [[art film]]s: "More than any other director, he encouraged filmmakers to explore elliptical and open-ended narrative."{{sfn|Bordwell|Thompson|2002|pp=427–428}} ''[[The Guardian]]'' described him as, "in essence, a director of extraordinary sequences," and advised viewers to "forget plotting, characters or dialogue, his import is conveyed in absolutely [[formalism (art)|formal]] terms."<ref>{{cite web |title=Michelangelo Antonioni: stately cinematic master or pretentious bore? |url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/aug/25/michelangelo-antonioni-master-or-bore |website=The Guardian|date=25 August 2015 }}</ref>

Film director [[Akira Kurosawa]] considered Antonioni one of the most interesting filmmakers.{{sfn|Kurosawa|1982| p=242}} [[Stanley Kubrick]] listed ''La Notte'' as one of his ten favorite films in a 1963 Poll.{{sfn|Ciment|2003|p=34}} [[Andrei Tarkovsky]] was deeply influenced by Antonioni, especially for the development of his film ''[[Nostalghia]]''. In an interview with Serge Kaganski in 2004, [[Jean-Luc Godard]] judges that Antonioni is the filmmaker who has most influenced contemporary cinema. [[Wim Wenders]] considered Antonioni as a master and the two collaborated as directors for the film ''[[Beyond the Clouds (1995 film)|Beyond the Clouds]]''. [[Miklós Jancsó]] considers Antonioni as his master. American director [[Martin Scorsese]] paid tribute to Antonioni following his death in 2007, stating that his films "posed mysteries—or rather the mystery, of who we are, what we are, to each other, to ourselves, to time. You could say that Antonioni was looking directly at the mysteries of the soul."<ref name="bfi"/> American directors [[Francis Ford Coppola]] and [[Brian De Palma]] paid homage to Antonioni in their own films.<ref name="bfi"/>

Antonioni's spare style and purposeless characters, however, have not received universal acclaim. [[Ingmar Bergman]] stated in 2002 that while he considered the Antonioni films ''[[Blowup]]'' and ''[[La notte]]'' masterpieces, he found the other films boring and noted that he had never understood why Antonioni was held in such esteem. [[Orson Welles]] regretted the Italian director's use of the [[long take]]: "I don't like to dwell on things. It's one of the reasons I'm so bored with Antonioni—the belief that, because a shot is good, it's going to get better if you keep looking at it. He gives you a full shot of somebody walking down a road. And you think, 'Well, he's not going to carry that woman all the way up that road.' But he ''does''. And then she leaves and you go on looking at the road after she's gone."{{sfn|Bogdanovich|1992|pp=103–104}}

American actor [[Peter Weller]], whom Antonioni directed in ''[[Beyond the Clouds (1995 film)|Beyond the Clouds]]'', explained in a 1996 interview: "There is no director living except maybe [[Akira Kurosawa|Kurosawa]], [[Ingmar Bergman|Bergman]], or Antonioni that I would fall down and do anything for. I met Antonioni three years ago in [[Taormina]] at a [[Taormina Film Fest|film festival]]. I introduced myself and told him that I adored his movies, his contributions to film, because he was the first guy who really started making films about the reality of the vacuity between people, the difficulty in traversing this space between lovers in modern day&nbsp;... and he never gives you an answer, Antonioni—that's the beautiful thing."<ref name="cigar-aficionado-durrani" />