Cult Movies (and Not Only): Zabriskie Point

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The Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007) directed three English-language films for the producer Carlo Ponti and MGM. These three films were “Blowup” (1966), “Zabriskie, Point” (1970) and “The Passenger” (1975). “Zabriskie Point” refers to the homonym spot, a part of Amargosa Range located in Death Valley National Park in the US. This desolated area consists of lake sediments from Furnace Creek, which dried 5 million years ago. Christian Brevoort Zabriskie in the early 20th century was vice president and general manager of a borax mining company that was operating there.

Director’s commentary about society in this film is an essay about alienation, commercialization, radicalization and the failure of communication in modern world, not especially in America as many may probably think. Images of a polluted city (Los Angeles) by commercial, greedy tycoons, capitalism and mass consumption underline Antonioni’s point of view.

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Mark, a young man, in the aftermath of a riot that took place in Los Angeles where a policeman was shot (it is not clear if Mark shot the policeman), steals a plane and flies through the desert. Daria a beautiful young woman, secretary and lover of Lee Allen (Rob Taylor) a real estate tycoon, drives to his desert retreat. The plane (sky) and the car (earth) cross their paths. A flirt begins which leads to Zabriskie point where the couple eventually makes love. At that point a complete breakdown in realistic narrative takes place as multiple couples engaged in a sexual play through the valley.

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Later the couple paints Mark’s plane in psychedelic colors. Mark flies back in Los Angeles to deal with the authorities and finally cops shot him dead. Daria drives to her boss’s desert home in Phoenix where capitalists are making deals about the exploitation of the desert. With disgust Daria fantasizes blowing it up in the final scene. The explosion occurs over and over from different angles. The initially long distance shots give their place to closer ones, inside the house, where objects flying toward the viewer in slow motion under an electrifying music score. Obviously Antonioni sees some beauty in capitalism but as a rainbow of shattered objects between space and time.

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The third and maybe the real star of the movie is the desolate landscape of Death Valley. Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin, didn’t have any previous acting experience something that possibly leads them into nerveless acting.

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The movie was released after going through five writers (Antonioni, Franco Rossetti, Sam Shepard, Tonino Guerra and Clare Peploe) and nearly two years in production. Antonioni’s earlier film “Blowup” had become an artistic and unexpected financial success but many things went wrong about this new film from the beginning. The production cost came up to 7 million $ but the film made less than 900.000$. The counterculture audience on which MGM was courting simply ignored the film and critics attacked it.

Director’s leftist politics brought troubles from the start. Groups opposed to the movie’s alleged “anti-Americanism”, FBI agents tailed cast and crew members, the U.S. Justice Department investigated the film and questioned whether the orgy scene violated the “Mann Act” a 1910 law prohibiting the transportation of women across state lines “for immoral conduct, prostitution or debauchery”. Producers pointed out that no sex had taken place and that no state line had ever been crossed since Zabriskie Point was 13 miles west of the California- Nevada borders.

Michelangelo Antonioni, Daria Halprin,and Mark Frechette. Image source.

In the soundtrack album, featured Pink Floyd, The Youngbloods, The Kaleidoscope, Jerry Garcia, Patti Page, and the Grateful Dead. The track “You Got the Silver” taken from the Rolling Stones “Let it Bleed” did not appear on the album due to rights problems. “Us and Them“, was originally written on the piano by Richard Wright for the movie in 1969. Antonioni rejected it and later this track appeared into The Dark Side of the Moon. Antonioni contacted also The Doors while they were recording the album L.A. Woman. The band recorded the song “L’ America” for the film, but in the end it was never used. Pink Floyd’s “Heart Beat, Pig Meat,” heard during the opening credits and “Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up” which is a remake of the Floyd’s “Careful With That Axe, Eugene” during the final explosion scene. The third Floyd track someone can find in the album is the “Crumbling Land”, according to David Gilmour “a kind of country & western number which he [Antonioni] could have gotten done better by any number of American bands. But he chose ours – very strange.” Jerry Garcia’s “Love Scene” a solo-guitar improvisation accompanying the love scene in the desert.

And some credits:

• Harrison Ford can be seen for a few seconds in the jail scene.
• The original ending was a shot of an airplane sky-writing the phrase “F**k You, America,” This and other scenes were cut by MGM.
• One hundred people participated in the desert scene. Some from Joseph Chaikin’s Open Theatre company, and other “made up of assorted hippies.”
• Mark Frechette died under strange circumstances in 1975 in a Massachusetts prison. He was serving a 6-to-15-year sentence for a bank robbery participation in 1973 in Boston where two men were killed.
• Daria Halprin, the daughter of the avant-garde dancer Ann Halprin  later married – and divorced – Dennis Hopper.

See also:    Cult Movies (and Not Only): “Vampyros Lesbos”