His images ore constantly shifting. Objects disappear and recompose, lines, structures, colours, tones shimmer and alter. Nothing is fixed in an Antonioni image, nothing secure, nothing clear, at least not for very long. His vision touches things like a caress, glances by them, sensitive to changes in light and shape, and to changes brought about by the act of looking itself. The sense of impermanence in his films includes both what is seen and what takes place.
Love affairs evaporate, disappear like figures losing outline in a mist.
Quests become diverted, forgotten. In L'Avventura , for example, Anna's friends search for her on the island from which she has mysteriously disappeared. But they become interested in other things. She is less forgotten, perhaps, than displaced by the mystery of the island, the composition of horizon and sea, the compulsive beauty of the rocks and the waves. Searching for one thing, they find another.