L'Eclisse (1962)

In the suburb of Rome, the translator Vittoria (Monica Vitti) breaks her engagement with her boyfriend, the writer Ricardo (Francisco Rabal), after a troubled night. Vittoria goes to downtown to meet her mother (Lilla Brignone), who is addicted in Stock Market, and she meets the broker Piero (Alain Delon) in a day of crash in the Stock Market. The materialist Piero and the absent Vittoria begins a monosyllabic relationship.

"L'Eclisse" is a love story in the world of Michelangelo Antoniani, where the lack of communication, emptiness and loneliness in the big city prevails over the human feelings. The first ten or fifteen minutes with Vittoria and Riccardo alone in his apartment, practically without any words (actually very few words are spoken), is amazing, showing a couple whose love and relationship is completely exhausted. The scenes in the Stock Market of Rome are also very impressive. Monica Vitti, the favorite actress of Antonioni, shows a stunning beauty and her alienation of feelings is expressed by her face and few words along the story. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Eclipse" ("The Eclipse")

Fmovies: Many people feel that Vitti was the most gloriously radiant, magnetically attractive film actress of the 1960s and 70s. This is her best film. It is also one of the two best Antonioni films (along with Blowup), and it is a stunningly inventive film. The last scene alone is totally unparalled in film history. The "African" scene also ranks as one of cinema's most striking moments. Alain Delon is a good pairing for Vitti and he perfectly captures the intended too-self-absorbed, pretty-boy role.

Antonioni's 'L'Eclisse' depicts the emptiness and and meaningless of life in the post-Second World War world under the shadow of the nuclear threat. This is represented by the mushroom shaped water-tower looming outside the window in the film's early sequences, and is referred to again in newspaper headlines towards the end of the film. This film was made in 1962, a year after the Berlin crisis, and in the year of the Cuba crisis when we came very close to nuclear war between the USA and the USSR.

The film also depicts the greed of capitalism, as shown in the mad, chaotic scenes in the Rome Stock Exchange and the obsessive gambling of the mother character.

The location, with distant shots of Benito Mussolini's EUR buildings on the outskirts of Rome, also suggest a meaningless, empty, soulless Brave New World all overshadowed by the nuclear threat, where people suffer loneliness and depression and feel unable to make long-term commitments.

L'Eclisse fmovies. L'ECLISSE is not everybody's cup of tea. It is so slow that to continue watching it may sometimes require a conscious strain of will. But it is a rewarding experience: L'ECLISSE is probably the best of all unhurried movies. It is so desperately tender; Alain Delon and Monica Vitti are so young and beautiful, and at the same time - so precise in their naiveté; the camera shots are so long and ambiguous, so empty of words. If there ever was a movie that truthfully represents the playful and sad uncertainty of being in love, then this must be it.

L'ECLISSE is sure to break your heart... or mend it.

The ending is as mysterious as God's ways and if it wasn't for the music to bring me down to earth I may have thought that I had died.

From the beginning, Vittoria is seen in agitation. A fan blows her hair, she doesn't fit in the frame of many shots, or is caught actually in another world via a mirror. She is constantly gazing outside, she is like an electron trying to gain enough escape velocity to get away from the silent stagnant relationship she is in with Riccardo.

Most of us know this...the end of a relationship...the vacillation between pain and numbness and irritation. It was very eerily depicted in the opening of this film, you almost sense there is something bigger going on. The stark shots outside, I didn't realize it was early morning at first, so it almost seemed like an apocalyptic sci-fi start. I wondered if somehow an eclipse, based on the title, had caused all the people on earth to vanish. Music concrete added to the alien aura.

But really it was just the affair, not civilization, that had collapsed.

Even once Vittoria breaks free, we often see her captured behind bars via Antonioni's ever clever camera work. A sense of restlessness still pursues her, as the winds stir the world around her. A whirlwind romance with Piero has its moments of pleasure, but still something seems amiss.

The only scene that I found serene took place at the airport. Did others feel that way as well? If so, why?

Is this a film that cites the vagaries of life, the gusts of lust, the hot air tornado of the stock market? Is the answer to somehow find a way to ride the air, rather than be blown hither and thither?

In the few Antonioni films I have seen, I do love how the "plot" can drift as much as the characters. Indeed there was a point where I thought the film would just leave Vittoria in the dust, and follow someone else. I don't think I was as smitten with her as I should have been, although her coquetry was at times sublime. Hello torn strap of the dress! But their affair has very little beyond the chase, her talk of love seemed ludicrous to me.

The overlong shots of the stock exchange were exasperating yet enthralling simultaneously. If that is the crowning achievement of man, then we are indeed doomed. Money for money's sake alone...sickening. Maybe that is the contrast to the simple conquest of the air via flight?

This film certainly caught my eye, scenes linger - the car being towed out of the lake (another doppleganger?) - the balloon being shot out of the sky - the investor who lost a lot, but not his ability to doodle but ultimately for me, this film didn't quite take off.

6/10 Thurston Hunger

Smart and moody, this film is not only about emotional Eclipse, it is about the eclipse of the old society as it changes, and also about how architectural changes eclipse older style, and more importantly, nature. There are really smart and insightful comments here on changing racial attitudes, and the disparities between rich, poor, and the people who don't mind cannibalizing the disenfranchised. All this commentary done with the subtlety of the slowing growing suburbs that our leading lady lives in.

Monica Vitti plays our "everywoman" who is our window into the Director's mind, but also herself a mere dot on the landscape. Early on, we see her throw away exactly what she seems to be looking for, only to pursue it in exactly the wrong place/person.

The film has a look of a sci-fi horror movie, but the horror here is emotional desolation, the destruction of nature/natural-ness, and the looming threat of nuclear war. This film, so cleanly represents the era when "duck and cover" was not only a physical act, it was an emotional state.

If you don't like film as art, you will be completely lost by the architectural city-scape ending montage, and the lack of traditional film closure. This is not a light evening of movie entertainment, but it is film making at it's non-verbal, eloquent best. Captivating, thought provoking, and meaty.