UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Witnesses to an Elusive Reality: Pirandello's and Antonioni's Characters in Search of a Story Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3cb667r6 Author Martinescu, Mihaela Publication Date 2013 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Witnesses to an Elusive Reality: Pirandello’s and Antonioni’s Characters in Search of a Story A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Italian by Mihaela Martinescu 2013 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Witnesses to an Elusive Reality: Pirandello’s and Antonioni’s Characters in Search of a Story by Mihaela Martinescu Doctor of Philosophy in Italian University of California, Los Angeles, 2013 Professor Thomas Harrison, Chair This dissertation compares Luigi Pirandello’s and Michelangelo Antonioni’s characters, illustrating the ways in which Antonioni’s characters display Pirandellian characteristics, as well as emphasizing the autonomy with which their author claims to have endowed them. Like Pirandello’s puppets, Antonioni’s weary and unmotivated characters also appear lifeless. I claim that their aimless wandering, symptomatic of their inner restlessness and their inability to cope with a reality they cannot grasp, and subsequent attempts to hide behind the mask of insanity, are these characters’ most prevalent tendencies. ii As I analyze their characters, I point to the ways in which the two artists’ themes and philosophies also converge, culminating with their analogous observation of reality, and their unnerving awareness of the impossibility of its representation. I point to the fact that some of Pirandello’s theories on cinema are visible in Antonioni’s films, while Antonioni’s artistic trademark, his “interior neorealism”, is clearly illustrated in many of the themes that we have come to identify as Pirandellian. My inquiry finishes with a look at what lies beyond character, text, and image, and constitutes the meta-artistic dimension of both artists’ legacies. In conclusion, I claim that their greatest point of convergence is ultimately represented by that which lies beyond the mask, in Pirandello’s case, and the image, in Antonioni’s. iii This dissertation of Mihaela Martinescu is approved. Lucia Re Claudio Fogu Edward F. Tuttle Thomas Harrison, Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2013 iv DEDICATION I dedicate this dissertation to my son Darius, an enthusiastic communicator and acute observer of life, whose playful vitality has both fueled and hindered its sluggish progress. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 1……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………6 The Mystery of Human Character Chapter 2…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………50 The ‘Avventura’ of Another Story Chapter 3…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………99 Beyond Character Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….169 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………………………………….172 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my committee members, Professors Lucia Re, Claudio Fogu, and Edward Tuttle, for their faith in my abilities to carry this project to completion and their constant encouragement in this endeavor. I would like to especially thank Professor Tom Harrison for believing in me from the start, giving me a chance, and providing an invaluable amount of guidance and support along the way. I would also like to thank two of my former undergraduate professors from CSULB, Al Baum, whose Introduction to Modern Literature was my induction into this sinister garden of forking paths, into which I have, ever since, let myself so often aimlessly wander into the labyrinthine depths of Modernity, and to Ronald Bush, in whose intriguing course on The Modern Confessional Novel was planted the seed from which this dissertation took shape. Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank my family, whose members each have been at my side, both helping and guiding me, through every step of what has been an amazing, and amazingly difficult, journey. I would like to especially thank my father, Nicolae, for his courage and sacrifice thirty-two years ago, as he embarked on a perilous journey whose objective was to take him as far away from the hopeless reality of the oppressive regime as he could go, in order that I may have the opportunity to partake in the freedoms and academic opportunities that he was denied, and my mother Ionela, who set out on a similarly difficult journey, in the company of a twelve-year-old, leaving so much behind, for instilling in me many of the values and principles that have shaped me into the person I have become, and to my husband, Nader, for not allowing me to give up vii and constantly urging me to “complete the cycle”, and for being such an insightful and stable life companion. I would like to also include my son Darius, as I conclude by thanking my entire family for putting up with me both while I was writing, and when I wasn’t, and during all those times when I was stressed, and not-so-pleasant to be around. viii VITA 1995-1999 Student Assistant/Graduate Assistant Department of Educational Psychology California State University, Long Beach Long Beach, California 1998 B.A. Cum Laude, Comparative Literature California State University, Long Beach Distinguished Undergraduate Award College of Liberal Arts California State University, Long Beach 1999-2000 Graduate Assistant Department of Comparative Literature and Classics California State University, Long Beach 2000-2004 Administrative Coordinator The George L. Graziadio Center for Italian Studies California State University, Long Beach 2002 M.A., Interdisciplinary Studies California State University, Long Beach Distinguished Graduate Award College of Liberal Arts California State University, Long Beach 2002-2006 Lecturer Romance, German, Russian Languages and Literatures California State University, Long Beach 2006 Italian Instructor Mt. San Antonio College Walnut, California 2006-2009 Teaching Assistant/Teaching Assistant Consultant Department of Italian University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, California 2013 Italian Instructor Long Beach City College Long Beach, California ix PAPERS PRESENTED Martinescu, Mihaela. “Long Live the Machine that Mechanizes Life!” Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Conference, San Francisco, 27- 30 December 2008. ---. “Michelangelo Antonioni: From the Crisis of Representation to the Crisis of Being.” American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Annual Conference, Long Beach, 24-27 April 2008. ---. “Jacopo Ortis: Love, Myth and Nationalism in Ugo Foscolo’s Narrative.” The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS), Colorado Springs, 4-7 April 2002. x Introduction I attempt, in this dissertation, to analyze the peculiarities of Pirandello’s and Antonioni’s characters, identifying those aspects that render them unique while emphasizing those aspects that make them comparable. Both artists’ themes, especially in the case of Pirandello, and techniques, especially in that of Antonioni, have been discussed extensively by critics, in voices echoing throughout this discussion, as well. In the three chapters that have emerged from this intricate pursuit, I attempt to show how these unusual characters were conceived, the philosophical and aesthetic convictions that helped to create and shape them, as well as the characteristics and nuances that, to some extent, facilitate our ability to perceive them. I also emphasize in this analysis the way in which some of Pirandello’s theories on cinema, particularly his concept of “cinemelography,” are reflected in many of Antonioni’s films. Although there is not one study that compares these two artists in an equally comprehensive way, there are focused attempts that point to the similarity between single characters, including the obvious resemblance between Pirandello’s Mattia Pascal and Antonioni’s David Locke – two characters who, unhappy with their lives and themselves, decide to trade identities - and that between Serafino Gubbio, the camera operator in Shoot! and Thomas, the photographer protagonist of Antonioni’s Blow-Up, both observers and recorders of reality, who become aware of, and disillusioned with, the impossibility to represent it. A fair amount of general criticism is available, however, on Pirandello’s own ideas on, and his relationship to, cinema as a genre. Manuela Gieri’s Contemporary Italian Filmmaking: Strategies 1 of Subversion, references Pirandello’s writings on the cinema and compares Pirandello with other filmmakers, including Antonioni, employing, unlike me, a primarily thematic approach. Much of the criticism that links Pirandello to the cinematic genre acknowledges and analyzes the critical work that Pirandello has produced on cinema and on its relationship to theatre. His 1915 novel Si gira!, (that became, in the 1925 definitive edition, I quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore), contains a decidedly negative commentary on the cinematic medium. The protagonist’s impassive attitude and his purely mechanical function at the film production company, where he works as a camera operator, are symptomatic of the alienation, mechanization and fragmentation of the modern individual in the technological age. Serafino Gubbio’s inability to speak at the end of the film points to the artist’s failure to communicate a reality that has been compromised