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  Average Rating for L'Eclisse [1962] - 4 out of 5

  
  (based on 1 user reviews)
• L'Eclisse [1962]

  Kashif Ahmed 22 January 2009

  

  Monica Vitti looks absolutely stunning in every scene of this picture, whilst her performance; as cynical, enigmatic wallflower; Vittoria, is comparable only to her awkward, demanding role as Giuliana in 'The Red Desert' (1964) and marks a fitting conclusion to director Michelangelo Antonioni's 'Incommunicability Trilogy'; an unusual series of films about isolation in 1960s Italy. Now if one refuses to suspend their disbelief for a movie, then the highest compliment that film can receive is that the viewer forgot he or she was watching a film, and when it came to 'L'Eclisse' ('The Eclipse'): I often forgot I was watching a film. So convincing was the mis-en-scene, so naturalistic the performances; Monica Vitti acts with her entire being and almost negates the need for a script, effortlessly managing to convey meaning in a gesture, stance or expression. A woman who can devastate an audience without uttering so much as a word of dialogue; and nowhere is that more evident than in the opening scene where she tries to end her relationship with mild mannered intellectual Riccardo (the underrated Francisco Rabal, who later starred with Maximilian Schell in Alessandro Blasetti's 'Simon Bolivar'). Vittoria works as a translator of books hence uses her ability to interpret the human condition with all its genuine promise and mercurial deceits: "I'm tired and depressed, disgusted and confused", she confides, as if reading out a shopping list "...two people shouldn't know each other too well if they want to fall in love, but then maybe they shouldn't fall in love at all" declares Vittoria, this is clearly a woman with a lot on her mind: an elegant, complicated, sensitive soul left to her own devices in a changing world that seems to reject all she represents. Her liaison with slick, aggressive stockbroker Piero (a young Alan Delon, five years away from his iconic role in 'Le Samourai') is doomed to failure when Modernity, Capitalism and Industrialisation, like the faces of Cerberus itself, rear their ugly heads. Alan Delon's character is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of very little; consumed by materialist desires, their mutual attraction is hampered by an inability to communicate what Vittoria suggests is 'The Silence of Love'. Her attitude reminded me somewhat of Chris Eigeman's classic "I'm nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday" speech, in Noah Baumbach's 'Kicking & Screaming' (1995) and though the films are worlds apart, there's still that similarity of characters indulging wistful recollection and offering pre-emptive evaluations on events that have yet to happen. Antonioni is an auteur who straddles the border between surrealist satire and neo-realism; for the overtly comedic manner in which the stockbrokers resume trading after pausing for a moment's silence to mark the passing of a colleague, is pure Luis Buñuel in its exposé of petit bourgeois sentiments and capitalist absurdity. It's also worth noting that one of the original posters for 'L'Eclisse' was a satirical allusion to the Veronica Lake poster for 'Sullivan's Travels' (1941) a film which implied that lowbrow escapism was the primary function of cinema, something that Antonioni obviously disagrees with, so much so that he's on record as having said that "...an audience must work for their enjoyment" which is admirable in light of many a modern day movie where we're not so much spoon fed as force fed everything from the story, to the visuals to the characters involved. Materialism is also shown to be an ideology which dehumanises the individual to the point of becoming a mere commodity; traded, bought and sold at will, an assimilated cipher wandering around in an empty and meaningless paradigm, with no end or consequence to speak of. Vittoria sees this from the onset; the chaos & inequity of the Stock Exchange, where her mother plays the markets, is deemed to be an uncivilised arena of nonsensical pomposity: "...I can't tell if it's an office, a market place or a boxing ring". Her indifference / mild aversion is vindicated when the stock firm's manager refers to a major crash as the necessary "weeding out" of ordinary investors "...that leaves the better clients standing". In one of its more controversial scenes, 'L'Eclisse' revisits the theme of racial-sexual envy, first touched upon during the nightclub dance sequence in 'La Notte': Vittoria and neighbour Anita (Rosanna Rory, great forgotten actress from the Commedia All'Italiana period) visit their mutual friend & keen photographer Marta (played by famous Italian photographer Mirella Ricciardi in a clever bit of self reflectivity). Marta's apartment is a cultural shrine to her years spent in Africa, suddenly, we cut to Vittoria: blackened up and in faux tribal gear, dancing to some traditional African music; and though this all looks & sounds wholly inappropriate not to mention racist, it's actually done in the context of self-exploration by a woman who we know by that point doesn't have a prejudice bone in her body. And yet in spite of Antonioni's subtext, there's still something slightly perturbing about the whole thing. Solemnity returns in an instant when Marta, enjoying the revelry at first, rebukes her guests with the line: "That's enough. Let's stop playing Negroes". She confirms her inherited racism in the following scene, but unknowingly contradicts herself with every other sentence, Vittoria & Anita are at a loss to explain Marta's prejudicial mindset and simply refute her off-colour remarks with blasé, rational rebuttals. Looking back at this scene; it plays out like a sly dig at European society's crude understanding of the de-colonisation process, which was in full swing by 1961. And the fact that they'd yet to fully comprehend the crimes of their imperial past, illustrated by the shot in which Vittoria briefly refers to a military (i.e. Mussolini era) photograph of the father she never knew. 'L'Eclisse' is pre-écriture feminine drama that subverts some of the motifs Antonioni usually employs to covey alienation e.g. positive cover is a first; for whereas smoke and fog were used as barriers in his other films, here; Vittoria, abroad a small aircraft, finds momentary comfort and joy from behind the natural veil of a cloud. A rusty bucket of water in which Vittoria places a twig and Piero's empty cigarette carton is symbolic of her stagnant emotional state; enclosed in a decaying, but familiar, edifice surrounded by the forces of modernity (i.e. the building site); its climatic rupture signifies release and death, for the water literally goes down the drain; the cost, according to Antonioni, of half measures & modernity's deadly parting shot at the slightest hint of any genuine human interaction. The Women's Liberation Movement, as Norman Mailer accurately predicted, was a long term disaster for which we're all still paying the price: The politically conscious, liberated, courageous voices of change were supposed to make things better for us all (and for awhile they did). But an unseen subversion somewhere along the line misdirected women's revolutionary idealism and all they wound doing up was to wade into the same mire as men; equal only in suffering and exploitation by the powers that be. Vittoria is the archetypal 1960s woman: an era in which, as Sheila Rowbotham stated in 'The New Women's Century': "Images of femininity were communicating blatantly opposing messages of freedom and subordination" which is evident in her relationships with Riccardo & Piero. Perhaps one of the reasons for these mixed messages, was that the patriarchal illuminati didn't want conscious equals to challenge their misrule, but simply required a new army of slaves who'd help undermine collective morality, work longer hours and drastically destabilise, for want of a better term, 'Family Values'. And the only reason for their success, was due to our reluctance to put aside petty, externally imposed divisions or try to reclaim and shape our own our destiny for a new and better world. I enjoyed Monica Vitti's immediate post-Antonioni career; films like 'Modesty Blaise' (1966), 'Girl With A Pistol' (1968) & 'The Bitch Wants Blood' (1969) gave her a chance to do something different, though I wasn't as big a fan of Vitti's cabaret comedies; she worked steadily up until the early 90s but never quite attained the iconic status of some of her, in my opinion not as talented, contemporaries (e.g. Bridget Bardot) which is a shame, but makes her films in the Antonioni period all the more cherished. Now it's very easy for modern audiences to laugh at this seemingly dated & self-important genre, but harder to tune into its wavelength and fully appreciate the care & effort that's gone into the story, direction and performances: 'L'Eclisse' is nothing less than a masterpiece of subtle genius and style; the perfect synthesis of artistic vision and delivery. 'The Incommunicability Trilogy': 'L'Avventura', 'La Notte', 'L'Eclisse' along with 'The Red Desert' are rarely visited landmarks in the history & evolution of cinema, but if seen in the right frame of mind; are classics that'll have you coming you back time after time.

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This film by Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni completed a trilogy about doomed relationships in the modern world, and won the 1962 Cannes Special Jury Prize. Vittoria (Monica Vitti) is a young woman who breaks up with her lover Ricardo (Francisco Rabal), a bookish intellectual, and instead takes up with brash stockbroker Piero (Alain Delon). However, there are still emotional ties between Vittoria and Ricardo. The final breakdown of Vittoria's emotional state is symbolically mirrored by Antonioni's montage of a deserted, dying city.