28 Michelangelo Antonioni Movies, Ranked Best to Worst

Voted as one of the greatest films ever made (Sight & Sound), it follows Anna, who goes on a boat-trip to a Mediterranean volcanic island with boyfriend Sandro and best friend, Claudia. Inexplicably, Anna goes missing. Sandro and Claudia search everywhere for her, but in vain. Slowly they get attracted towards each other, and forgetting about Anna, get involved in a relationship.

This romantic drama film revolves around Vittoria, a beautiful literary translator who is living in Rome. She splits up with her writer boyfriend Riccardo, after which she meets a stockbroker named Piero. They begin a relationship but face difficulties due to Piero’s materialistic nature.  

Giuliana is facing an existential crisis, as although her husband is quite successful in his career, he doesn’t pay attention to her. She soon finds herself attracted to one of his colleagues, and they end up making love.              

Giovanni is a novelist whose wife, Lidia, seems to be quite upset with their relationship. When she finds out that her friend Tommaso is suffering from a terminal illness, she starts roaming the streets of the city, questioning her marriage to Giovanni.

During the 1960s, London-based successful fashion photographer, Thomas, feels that he has everything in life, which sometimes gets boring for him. One day he spots something suspicious in the photographs of a mysterious beauty that he had captured in a park. He detects a man with a gun which points to a possibility of a crime. So he must investigate it further. 

David Locke is an American journalist who is sent to cover a conflict in Northern Africa, but he fails to make any progress with the story. When he discovers the body of a stranger looking similar to him, he decides to assume the identity of the dead man. He soon finds out that the man was an arms dealer, which puts him into dangerous situations with criminals as well as cops.

Chung Kuo – Cina is a documentary by Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, which focuses mainly on the lives of ordinary Chinese man. The documentary allows glimpses of Chinese culture as seen across the nation. It covers regions from major cities of Beijing and Shanghai, up to old city of Suzhou and collective farms in Henan, depicting the outcome of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. 

Zabriskie Point is a drama film which tells the story of a young revolutionary and an anthropology student who begin an unrestrained relationship, during the time of civil unrest in the US in the late 1960s.

Shortly after arriving in Rome for her honeymoon along with her husband, a young bride named Wanda sneaks out of her room. She is obsessed with the hero of a romantic photo novel, and therefore she makes up her mind to meet him in person. However, things don’t go as expected.

People of the Po Valley is a documentary short film that shows in detail the life of Italians living on the Po River in the 1940s. 

The movie tells three different stories about youth in three different countries. In Paris, France, a few high school students kill their friend for money. In Rome, Italy, a university student gets involved in smuggling cigarette and in London, England, a poet discovers the body of a woman and tries to sell the story to newspapers. 

Also known as Il mistero di Oberwald, the movie tells the story of a young radical poet Sebastian, who breaks into a castle in Oberwald, to kill the Queen. The Queen has been mourning her husband for ten years. Things get complicated when both discover that Sebastian is the spitting image of the dead king.  

Love in the City, L'amore in città in Italian, is an anthology film composed of six segments, each written and directed by different writer or director. The segments include Paid Love, Attempted Suicide, Paradise for Three Hours, Marriage Agency, Story of Caterina and Italians Stare.  The music is by Mario Nascimbene, one of the best known Italian film soundtrack composers.

Directed by three different Italian directors, I tre volti is an Italian drama film which tells three different romantic fables.

Al di là delle nuvole (Beyond the Clouds) is a romantic drama film which tells the story of a filmmaker who is looking for inspiration for his next project. As he travels through France and Italy, he observes the relationships of a few young couples. 

An Italian pilot’s flight is shot down during the Italian invasion of Greece during the World War II. The British forces capture and put him in a prisoner-of-war camp. There he meets and falls for a young Italian woman, who had volunteered to take care of the prisoners. He soon works on an escape plan to get back to his country.   

Eros is an anthology romantic drama film which tells us three different stories. The first story is about a call girl named Miss Hua, who is visited by a shy dressmaker’s assistant Zhang, as he needs to take her measures. The second story is about Nick, an ad executive who suffers tremendous work pressure. He discusses about a beautiful naked woman he saw in his dream with his psychiatrist Dr Pearl. The third story is about a bored couple who notices a gorgeous young woman while taking a stroll near a lake resort.