Zabriskie Point (film)
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- This article refers to the 1970 movie 'Zabriskie Point'. For the soundtrack album see Zabriskie Point (album); for the the natural monument, see Zabriskie Point.
| Zabriskie Point | |
|---|---|
 original movie poster |
|
| Directed by | Michelangelo Antonioni |
| Produced by | Carlo Ponti |
| Written by | Michelangelo Antonioni |
| Starring | Mark Frechette Daria Halprin |
| Cinematography | Alfio Contini |
| Distributed by | MGM |
| Release date(s) | 1970 |
| Running time | 110 min min |
| IMDb profile | |
Zabriskie Point is a 1970 film by Michelangelo Antonioni that depicts the U.S. counterculture movement of that time. It sympathetically tells the story of a young couple — an idealistic student, and a militant radical — to put forward an anti-establishment message.
This cult film stars Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin, neither of whom had any previous acting experience. The screenplay was written by Antonioni, fellow Italian filmmaker Franco Rossetti, American playwright Sam Shepard, prolific screenwriter Tonino Guerra and Clare Peploe, wife of Bernardo Bertolucci. The film was the second of three English-language films that Antonioni had been contracted to direct for producer Carlo Ponti and to be distributed by MGM. The other two films were Blowup (1966) and The Passenger (1975).
The soundtrack album, Zabriskie Point, features music from various artists, including Pink Floyd, The Youngbloods, Jerry Garcia, Patti Page, and the Grateful Dead. A Rolling Stones track ("You Got the Silver") did not appear on the soundtrack album.
The film was a notorious box office bomb, attacked by critics and ignored by the counterculture audience that the MGM was courting. The film cost $7 million to produce, and made less than $900,000 in its domestic release. In the booklet that was released with the CD soundtrack, it is unsympathetically declared that
- "... [c]ritics of all ideologies — establishment, underground, and otherwise — greeted the movie with howls of derision. They savaged the flat, blank performances of Antonioni's handpicked first-time stars, Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin, and assailed the script's confused, unconvincing mix of hippie-buzzword dialogue, self-righteous, militant debate, and free-love romanticism."
Since its release, however, Zabriskie Point has grown somewhat in stature. Its influence on films like Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers and Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny is unmistakable. Film scholars like Robert Philip Kolker and Sam Rohdie have emphasized its importance in Antonioni's filmography.
The name refers to Zabriskie Point in Death Valley, the location of the film's famous desert love scene, in which members of the Open Theatre simulate an orgy.
[edit] Trivia
- Harrison Ford has an uncredited role as an airport worker.
- After making the film, stars Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin moved into the same California commune. Halprin married Dennis Hopper in 1972. In 1973, Frechette participated in a bank robbery in which one of his accomplices was killed. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and later died in a weightlifting accident in 1975.
- The siege at the university was filmed at Contra Costa College in Richmond, California.
- According to Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins fame, Zabriskie Point may have been the inspiration to director, Stephane Sednaoui, for the 'Today' video from the Pumpkins' Siamese Dream album.
