Goodbye Tom, Ingmar, Now Michelangelo

These things really do come in threes: Tom Snyder, Ingmar Bergman, and now Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, dead late last night at age 94. Film critics praised his portrayals of modern angst and alienation which won him a cult following as well as global fame for a career spanning six decades. He received an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in 1995, after he’d suffered a stroke and could barely talk. His work included the Oscar-nominated Blow-Up, Zabriskie Point and L’Avventura. Gilles Jacob, the veteran president of the Cannes Film Festival, told world media that Antonioni was the “alchemist of intimacy, the architect of space and time in contemporary cinema.” Italian President Giorgio Napolitano said Italy had “lost one of cinema’s greatest protagonists and one of the greatest explorers of expression in the 20th century.” Antonioni’s body will lie in state on Wednesday at Rome City Hall. His funeral is scheduled for Thursday in his native Ferrara.