Some people seem to think "L'Avventura" is Antonioni's first 'Great' film. No Way! Antonioni was already up there with the all-time greats with his first two Fifties masterpieces "Chronicle of a Love Affair" and "Le Amiche," (Glad to say "Le Amiche" is now available in a very good transfer on IMAGE DVD with removeable subtitles in all its rapid-fire Italian dialogue glory which you can freeze and study at your own pace) although he didn't become quite the Revolutionary of Cinema until about the time of "Il Grido (The Cry)" which hinted at everything that soon crystalized on the magnificent trilogy of "L'Avventura," "La Notte," and "The Eclipse," & later even expanded into an almost romantic and transcendent view of the future (through individuation & discarding of outdated myths and customs) in the vastly underrated artistic coup-d'etat of American cinema & all of American commercial culture: the awesome post-Hippie tour-de-force "Zabriskie Point" (a multi-million dollar commercial disaster that severely crippled Antonioni's later ability to raise financing).The superb ultra-dense and illuminating commentary on the first disc of Criterion's "L'Avvenura" by Gene Youngblood (author of the late '60s cinematic theory classic "Expanded Cinema"; for a different take on Antonioni, that goes even deeper than what Youngblood has to say on this disc without becoming didactic or pretentious in any 'film-or-art-school gibberish' way, you cannot do much better than William Arrowsmith's long essay in "Antonioni: Poet of Images";), that alone, along with the pristine transfer of the film itself (only one negligable line in the final party scene which they've reduced to an absolute minimum) would easily be worth the price of 4 movie tickets.But you also get a second disc which doesn't have too much on it, but what it does have is fantastic: a rare 1 hour mid-'60s French documentary on Antonioni & Jack Nicholson's passionate reading of 3 of Antonioni's most insightful essays (and later a recalling of a hilarious incident on the set of "The Passenger").Now, for a superstar like Nicholson (who has never embarrassed himself as an artist or sold-out to the Hollywood mainstream despite a thousand and one opportunities & made the producers of "Batman" pay points through the nose for agreeing to appear in that fluff piece) to take the time to pay his respects to a director he truly admires, and promote the sale of this DVD, should teach some of the younger generation of actors something (or even Robert De Niro, who has for many years now, it's pretty friggin' obvious, gone completely mainstream, and is busy doing DVD commentaries for awful pieces of unfunny, brain-dead commerical putritude like "Meet the Parents," that didn't need his commentary to sell a zillion copies!)! The documentary is in Black and White and among other things which are of supreme interest for cineastes, are the rare interviews with Cesare Zavattini (one of the founders of Neo-Realism), Ennio Flaiano (Fellini's and Antonioni's co-writer), Giovanni Fusco (the Rolls Royce to Ennio Morricone's Ford Mustang in the Paisano hierarchy of film composers), Monica Vitti (at home, in the early '60s with Antonioni himself, who doesn't talk to the interviewer & only throws in an occasional comment!), and Fellini (taking a break from filming "Juliet of the Spirits" to talk to the enquiring interviewer about his friend & co-writer on "The White Sheik"). There are some rare, very revealing shots of Antonioni directing films which give you a rough idea of his style of interaction with cast and crew (in one scene, he is shown directing Princess Soraya, the former wife of the Shah of Iran, whom the Shah had divorced for not having borne him a son!). Last but not least, we also get to see the ridiculously vulgar American trailer for "L'Avventura" that tries to sell it to 'high-class' American audiences as some kind of 'sophisticated' European sex-exploitation film by showing every 'provocative' little snippet in the entire film!