My Time With Antonioni: The Diary of an Extraordinary Experience

Come the 1990s, the great Michelangelo Antonioni's directing career was widely considered to have been finally curtailed by the effects of a stroke which left him scarcely able to speak. But with the support of committed financiers and fellow professionals, Antonioni was able to undertake Beyond the Clouds, a portmanteau piece adapted from several of his short stories and sketches. A stellar cast (John Malkovich, Sophie Marceau, Peter Weller, Irene Jacob, Jean Reno, Fanny Ardant) was assembled. Wim Wenders, a passionate admirer of Antonioni, agreed to back-stop the production: to direct some linking sequences and to assist Antonioni on the shoot. This book is his journal of that process, in which Wenders writes thoughtfully and frankly about the pleasures and problems to be had in collaborating with such a renowned maestro under such extraordinary conditions.