One of the eerier and more memorable moviegoing experiences of my life was watching a revival of Michelangelo Antonioni's "La Notte" (translation: "The Night") about a decade ago at the Charles Theater, a then somewhat needy art house cinema in the middle of Baltimore.

The movie's story of dead love, the icy beauty and clarity of its black-and-white images and the ultra-cool of its stars (Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau) and of its 1961 Italian decor and fashions combined with the lonely feeling of being in a nearly empty and strange cinema in a strange town at night to create an almost out-of-body sense of alienation that could be labeled Antonioni-esque.

Antonioni, 94, died Monday at his home in Rome. The death was announced today (July 31), a day after the announcement of the death of that other great master of international cinema, Ingmar Bergman.