The OP of this thread was just trying to stir up something. That's why he hasn't had the balls to come back and address anyone's responses. It's also why he neglected to mention that the consensus on the film turned around LITERALLY THE NEXT DAY, and it was deemed -- right then and there -- one of the greatest films ever to have played at the festival. The problem was that the movie turned cinema convention on its ear. At that point, cinema was all about external factors driving the characters, whereas Antonioni, with this film, focused squarely on internal motivations/conflicts/etc. that weren't rarely defined in the same fashion in ANY previous films, and certainly not in his unique style. To the audience on that first night, this was an utterly new form of motion picture, and they didn't know how to react so, thinking it was some artsy-fartsy ball of pretension to be quickly brushed away, they booed, laughed, cracked wise, you name it. The following day they were proven to be utter fools (much like the OP here), and film history has labeled them as such ever since. We should pity them, really; they were simply afraid of something new. That happens a lot. The OP, however, has no excuse whatsoever for his laughable attempt to dismiss the film; after all, the picture's 50 years old now. It's hardly new, and it launches a way of storytelling and character development that is still with us today.
ALL OF THIS, by the way, is in the commentary that the OP claims to have listened to (along with those "essays", which probably amounted to other IMDB reviews that praised the film! LOL), as well as the documentary (from '66) on the Criterion DVD. He just didn't bother to include these key details in his bait because he knew everything he had to say about the film would hold no water if he did. Not a very clever boy, sadly.
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