Removed from the late '60s climate of dissent, Michelangelo Antonioni's only American-made film now stands as a startling work of art, alternately stark and excessive, cathartic and self-indulgent. Antonioni’s absorption in the landscape, both natural and man-made, is the real story, and he revels in every widescreen frame: billboards poised against the blue sky, the shadow of a plane traversing desert wasteland, youthful brown bodies intertwined in the sands of Death Valley. Forget revolution; the explosive finale is nothing less than an orgy of kineticism, as Antonioni gleefully blows up everything in sight from umpteen angles, because he can. (BS) Screened in 2013 as part of Revolution in the Air: The Long Sixties Lecture Series with Professor Mary Patten.