L'Eclisse - Criterion Collection

Starring:Alain Delon, Monica Vitti, Francisco Rabal, Louis Seigner, Lilla Brignone, Rosanna Rory, Mirella Ricciardi, Cyrus Elias
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Studio: Criterion
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Eclisse rolls over you and wraps you in its stylish embrace. The plot, such as it is, follows Vittoria (luscious Monica Vitti, The Red Desert) as her engagement falls apart and she slowly falls into a giddy but anxious affair with Piero (Alain Delon, Le Samourai, Purple Noon), a trader in Rome's stock exchange. Like Ingmar Bergman (Scenes from a Marriage, Persona), Antonioni examines the nuances of human relationships--but where Bergman is dense and dialogue-driven, Antonioni is spare and visual (there's maybe a page of dialogue in the first fifteen minutes of L'Eclisse). Every frame is like an exquisite black and white photograph, yet there's nothing static about this movie. It's fluid, sleek, and graceful, achieving its own kind of visual music. L'Eclisse contrasts opposing elements: Light and shadow, noise and silence, laughter and death, love and money, desire and dissatisfaction. Critics often describe the movie as a portrait of modern alienation, but they focus too much on Vittoria herself; while she finds her own life wanting, all around her Antonioni's camera captures a much larger world, full of as much vitality as despair, as much hope as loss. This is a movie essential to anyone's understanding of what movies can be. --Bret Fetzer

Description

The conclusion of Michelangelo Antonioni's informal trilogy on modern malaise, which began with L'avventura, L'eclisse (The Eclipse) tells the story of a young woman (Monica Vitti) who leaves one lover (Francisco Rabal) only to drift into a relationship with another (Alain Delon).

Customer Reviews:

L'Eclisse.......2007-06-27

This meticulously composed, at times breathtakingly abstract drama provides another variation on the Italian maestro's central preoccupation in the early '60s: the tenuousness of human connection. Vitti, his oft-appearing muse, never looked more radiant or alluring, a quality that makes her recoiling from physical affection even more puzzling and alienating. Delon, perhaps the handsomest French film icon of all time, is winning as Piero, a confident young buck who knows how to make money at the exchange but fails to fully possess Vittoria. Beautifully stylized and ambiguous, "L'Eclisse" casts a chilly eye on the nature of love and attachment.

what a beautiful movie, just that.......2007-05-12

L'Eclisse is a beautiful Italian neo-realist movie by director Michelangelo Antonioni, starring Monica Vitti as Vittoria and Alain Delon as Piero. Vittoria is a good-hearted woman who is "halfway there", meaning that finds herself at a point of desperately needed change. She can't see how a change would add meaning to her life, but she shows interest about all that surrounds her, and is willing to try new and eccentric things (like flying over Rome one afternoon or dressing up as a Somali woman) that ultimately prove to be empty of meaning. At the beginning we witness her separation from her fiancé, who was not a thrill to her either.
Piero is a hyperkinetic stocks runner, Vittoria's mother being a client, whose job demands absolute concentration, time, and iron people skills. Even though he never stops moving and jumping around, he also proves to be unable to see much meaning in life.
The two meet and fall in love, beginning a torrid romance, but even though they are with each other most of the time, be it playing or going for a walk, they hardly ever speak about anything and they seem to each have a large percentage of their thoughts devoted to scrutinizing every single thing, perhaps not for fun but to find significance in them; they are constantly laughing and smiling at little things, trying to be creative and break the routine, but Vittoria does not even consider the idea of making theirs a long-term relationship because she sees nothing to it: "I wish I didn't love you, or loved you much more", she says. She finds everything "halfway there", nothing is intense or dramatic enough to have real relevance.
Vittoria is Antonioni's existential heroine. She has a sort of innate elegance, a sort of abandon to her gestures and her contagious laughter, but she is able to adapt her face to the situation into a shyly desperate expression. Piero is constantly on the run and usually very cruel, but is unable to mistreat Vittoria at all. It is never clear if they like each other because they recognize their nihilism in the other's personality, but I sensed it so. They are so caught up in their own labyrinths that they become physically and emotionally dependent of the other: the reflection in the mirror.
The film ends quite abruptly as Vittoria and Piero set a date for the evening after a long embrace that could very easily mean "good-bye", but regardless of whether they continue their relationship it is not meant to last. With so similar an outlook of the value of daily life, they would most likely evolve to become nihilistic about each other.
On the more technical side, the film is a photographic masterpiece. Every frame looks like a carefully designed picture, every single one is priceless. Monica Vitti's performance is very endearing because she is not an ice maiden and she is not a silly bimbo, she's a credible good-natured woman in a difficult situation. Alain Delon is also remarkably charming (and repulsive at times) as Piero. The film itself is full of music and beautiful, albeit usually lonely, scenarios of Rome, and even though it exceeds 160 minutes, I found it hypnotizing enough not to realize the passing of time.

a great end!.......2007-05-10

Mónica Vitti has the silliest laugh in the cinema and the most expressive eyes. Acts without speaking, her African dance is extraordinarily sensual, the scene in the stock exchange is incredible. A great movie

"More a sensation than an idea" .......2007-05-06

A young free-lance translator breaks up with her fiancé after an incommunicative night. She goes to the stock market, seeking comfort from her mother who is preoccupied with her stock trading; however, she meets her mother's young stockbroker. She next has the following experiences: a carefree girl's night, flight through clouds in an airplane, and the openness of a small airport environment. The stock market crashes, causing financial hardships, and her mother becomes more concerned with her stock losses than her daughter's well being. The stockbroker takes the young woman to his parents' house while no one is at home. The couple approaches and withdraws, and eventually becomes intimate. Post-intimacy conversation reveals their lack of understanding of each other. Office sex ensues, and the couple decides to see each other forever, and to meet again that night. There is an eclipse that night.
The theme of this film is the alienation that leads two self-absorbed, affluent young people to create a superficial and dependant love relationship in the context of materialism and parental neglect.
This theme is supported by the use of the elements of film style. Dialogue gives us contrastive language between the two people which reveals how little they know of themselves and each other. "I feel like I'm in a foreign land," Pierro says to Vittoria. "You make me feel the same. How strange," she replies. This dialogue tells the audience that this couple, though physically intimate, is not emotionally connected, cluing us into the superficiality of their relationship and their self-absorption. Action shows us Pierro and Vittoria kissing through the glass pane of the cabinet door. This suggests to the viewer their physical longing for one another while reinforcing their disconnectedness. Composition places the couple on the edge of frames and at crosswords. These displays make the audience feel tense, lonely and precarious. This use of composition relates to the theme in that it makes the audience feel the lack of insight that Vittoria and Pierro suffer from. The fast cuts within the editing of the stock market scene emphasize the animalistic nature of the stock market, making the audience feel entranced and frightened. The materialism aspect of the theme is shown through this editing scene. The musical score and various sound effects create contrasts of anxiety, calmness, and desolation which put the feeling of alienation into the viewer.
This film is ultimately valuable today because its theme is inescapable. From the time that Antonioni created L'Eclisse, the world has grown no less materialistic and healthy relationships have grown no less dependent upon a strong sense of self and understanding of others. Although the alienation of the young people was caused by the threat of nuclear war, financial struggle and parental neglect of 1960's Italy, similar political, financial and familial instabilities can cause similar feelings among the youth of today. Technology continues to progress, and with it, one could easily argue, human communication declines. L'Eclisse argues that awareness of self and of the external motivations for personal desires is necessary for healthy relationships in such an environment. This awareness entails intense understanding of emotion: the human factor that connects us even in states of desolation and loneliness. Antonioni wrote of the film, "All I am capable of thinking is that during an eclipse even feelings probably come to a halt." Thus the eclipse is the connecting factor for the alienated characters of the film, proving at least that, by existing together, we are capable of union. Antonioni portrays what critic `Hawk' of Variety Magazine referred to as the "eclipse of sentiments" masterfully in the final ten minutes of the film. The final montage is dominated by a slow movement from images of crossroads, a construction site, Vittoria's apartment building, and various unknown faces: all people, places, and things that have witnessed the development of Vittoria and Pierro's relationship. This montage ultimately creates "a sensation which defines the film" by relating seemingly unrelated things, proving the connectedness of life even within the context of L'Eclisse.
As is to be expected with an extreme artistic endeavor such as L'Eclisse, the film received mixed reviews. While Hollis Alpert of the Saturday Review commends Antonioni's masterful use of cinematic style, he complains that Vittoria and Pierro's emotions "have become so vitiated that we cannot help but wonder why we are to be so concerned about them." That is one of the primary concerns of the film, however: the understanding of what context leads to such impaired emotions and what comes of them. An unknown critic for Time similarly complains that Antonioni's "pessimism" is "sick" and "naïve." There is hope even within a world that loves money, and "evil is not the dominant quality of modern life," this critic claims. One fails to understand exactly which film this critic was watching. To have missed the hope that Antonioni layered into L'Eclisse is astonishing. Even if the musical score and dialogue were taken away, one could not watch the beautiful sequence of image and montage without feeling both the struggle and the immense hope. Other critics, such as Bosley Crowther (The N. Y. Times) and "Hawk" of Variety Magazine attained a greater grasp of Antonioni's "eclipse of sentiments" and the context which drove the characters to their low state and the audience to its revelation. "Modern society and the money which commands it are turning man into an object... unable to maintain normal relationships," says "Hawk." Thus, he says, the eclipse metaphor works on several levels, emphasizing both the eclipsing effect of materialism and displaced emotion, as well as the veil of human connectedness that ends the movie.

Antonioni is cinema........2007-03-26

This review may contain spoilers.

I say this is a film. L'Eclisse can easily be described: Desolation married with beauty. Absolutely. Though this four-lettered description of Antonioni's masterpiece is appropriate (on some level), it will never say enough. It is the details. The small things, you know, that make this haunting display of isolation transpire into its own dimension of aesthetics. This film should initially be viewed for its unconventional techniques. But is also remarkably enjoyable on a simpler level with humor placed sporadically and wonderfully throughout. Ultimately, though, the film's focus is the destructiveness of the modern world.

The cinematography of the landscape. It is fresh and crisp. Its breadth is spectacular. Antonioni leads the scenery into the foreground. To an exalting and resplendent effect. The vacuous setting superimposes the characters and belittles them from every facet. Monica Vitti is perfection. Oh, rather. Visually fragrant to the point that her screen presence draws you into her spellbinding "loneliness." Vitti's Vittoria constantly feels the world through her fingertips. Attempts a physical connection to her surroundings. Yet, her environment is lifeless and barren. Her relationships the same. The men Vittoria sees are emotionally inert.

We start off with the end of Vittoria's relationship with Riccardo (Francisco Rabal). Riccardo stares off into nothing here and there. Vittoria trying to feel a connection with anything as she wanders around the room. She leaves finally. She later meets Alain Delon's Piero, a materialistic stock broker that is also void of any real emotions reserved for the love Vittoria is seeking. His love is for money. While she has a relationship with Piero, it is an empty affair. One simply for convenience in the end. Although the ending is seemingly a short art-house film for the sake of innovative elegance (and leaves Vittoria and Piero's realtionship to speculation), it is magnificent.

Like Alain Resnais' films, L'Eclisse is tantamount only to itself. And is appreciated, perhaps, by only those with an affinity for cinematic high-end art. For that is what it is. And that is why I love it.

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