born Sept. 29, 1912, Ferrara, Italy
Italian film director and producer.
He wrote film reviews and studied filmmaking before directing his short film The People of the Po Valley (1947). His first major film, The Girl Friends (1955), was followed by the international successes L'avventura (1960), Eclipse (1962), and Blow-up (1966). His other films include The Red Desert (1964), Zabriskie Point (1970), and The Passenger (1974). In Antonioni's films, plot and dialogue are subordinated to the visual image, which becomes a metaphor of human existence rather than a record of it.