Often described as the “Thinking Man’s Sex Symbol,” actress Monica Vitti passed away on Feb. 2 at the age of 90. Before retiring 20 years ago, she’d spent the latter decades of her career largely focused on comedies, for which she was beloved at home in Italy.
But to international audiences, Vitti forever remained what one critic called “the muse of incommunicability,” thanks to four seminal films she made with director Michelangelo Antonioni, becoming his lover and sometimes alter ego in a radical quartet of experimental narratives exploring existential alienation. In a tribute to Vitti, this week the Brattle Theatre has booked 35 mm prints of the first of these films, 1960’s “L’Avventura,” and the final, 1964’s “Red Desert,” so you can get lost in them on the big screen.
