Michelangelo Antonioni Biography

Fast Facts

• Wrote for Fascist film magazine Cinema in 1940, but was fired after a few months by editor Vittorio Mussolini, the son of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini
• Served in the Italian army during World War II
• Made his feature directing debut at the age of 38 with the 1950 Italian drama Story of a Love Affair
• Best known internationally for his English-language debut, the 1966 thriller Blow-Up, starring Vanessa Redgrave
• Did not direct a feature film for more than a decade after being partially paralyzed by a stroke in 1985
• With the assistance of director Wim Wenders, returned in 1995 with the dramatic anthology Beyond the Clouds, based on Antonioni's book That Bowling Alley on the Tiber: Tales of a Director
• Died on July 30, 2007, the same day that the celebrated Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman, also died