L'avventura

Antonioni’s masterpiece of modern alienation, with Monica Vitti as the young woman searching for her friend who's inexplicably disappeared.

Michelangelo Antonioni’s first collaboration with poet Tonino Guerra extended his early experiments with narrative: the sudden disappearance of a diplomat’s daughter while holidaying with friends in the Aeolian Islands is less the start of a mystery than of a cool dissection of the relationship that develops between her lover and her best friend as they search for her. Pace, positioning and perspective are all-important in this masterpiece of modern alienation; the first chapter in a loose trilogy that also includes La Notte and L'eclisse.

Ranked joint 72nd in the 2022 Sight and Sound Great Films of All Time poll.