When the viewer sees the barrel of water wherein a piece of wood floats, he doesn’t pay attention to the piece of wood or to the water flowing out, rather he sees those things as “non-Piero” and “non-Vittoria”. Their role is active because they remind the audience that Piero and Vittoria used to walk among them. Interestingly, the flowing water coming out of the barrel perhaps represents metaphorically the emptying of Piero’s and Vittoria’s passion In this last scene, Antonioni’s mise-en-scène subtly stages a dialectical use of continuous shots and discontinuous shots. The first device is intuitively linked to the human or animal movement. At the beginning of the sequence, the audience is indeed able to see the horse-carriage or the man reading his newspaper in continuous shots rendering the movement. The second device is displayed according to a series of discontinuous and short shots on objects or natural motionless things: bricks, steel rods, wood fences, tree trunks,
When the viewer sees the barrel of water wherein a piece of wood floats, he doesn’t pay attention to the piece of wood or to the water flowing out, rather he sees those things as “non-Piero” and “non-Vittoria”. Their role is active because they remind the audience that Piero and Vittoria used to walk among them. Interestingly, the flowing water coming out of the barrel perhaps represents metaphorically the emptying of Piero’s and Vittoria’s passion In this last scene, Antonioni’s mise-en-scène subtly stages a dialectical use of continuous shots and discontinuous shots. The first device is intuitively linked to the human or animal movement. At the beginning of the sequence, the audience is indeed able to see the horse-carriage or the man reading his newspaper in continuous shots rendering the movement. The second device is displayed according to a series of discontinuous and short shots on objects or natural motionless things: bricks, steel rods, wood fences, tree trunks,