Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’eclisse is one of the most disturbing films about life and relationships in the mid-20th century. Director Martin Scorsese, in his documentary about Italian films titled My Voyage to Italy, describes how the film haunted and inspired him as a young moviegoer, noting it seemed to him a "step forward in storytelling" and "felt less like a story and more like a poem." 1987. p. 65. [9] But then maybe they shouldn't fall in love at all." AKA: The Eclipse, Eclipse. The next day, while waiting outside near her house, Vittoria looks in the barrel of water and sees the wood is still there. His work reflected not only a major change in Italian society but also a profound shift in film culture. David Sin wrote "The intervening years appear not to have diminished its impact as an innovative work of cinema, nor as a wider critique of the age in which we live. For a game, Vittoria dresses up as an African dancer with dark makeup, and dances around the apartment. "Modern love is rubbish: Antonioni's L'eclisse", "L'Eclisse review – Antonioni's strange and brilliant film rereleased", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=L%27Eclisse&oldid=994985836, Films produced by Robert and Raymond Hakim, Articles containing explicitly cited English-language text, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WorldCat-VIAF identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 18 December 2020, at 16:07. ©2021 British Film Institute. The character types and genre elements are all there, and yet the first striking aspect of the film is the deviation from the classic narrative structure of the modern romantic drama. 1. Rated the #9 best film of 1962, and #318 in the greatest all-time movies (according to RYM users). This is endlessly fascinating at a time when there are few genuinely innovative voices in world cinema; and the overall atmosphere of ennui, so beautifully constructed through sound and image, still feels heavily familiar. Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Using the spaces of Rome as a backdrop for the affair, Antonioni achieves the apex of his style in this return to his greatest theme: the difficulty of connection in an alienating modern world. He hears her typing. [6], It is today considered one of Antonioni's more important works. L'Eclisse subtitles. At the climax, Vittoria and Piero agree to meet up on a street corner in the suburb, but, famously, neither turns up for their rendezvous. Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube. The 22-minute “Elements Of Landscape” is a visual essay featuring critic Adriano Aprà and Antonioni friend Carlo di Carlo that gets into his stylistic architecture while sprinkling in some context, too, like the fact that audiences resisted L’Eclisse everywhere … As they talk, she seems nervous and unwilling to open up to him: "Two people shouldn't know each other too well if they want to fall in love. Architecture is a major character in L’eclisse, as prominent in the scenario as any of the trio of Vittoria, Riccardo and Piero. At the beginning of the film we see Riccardo and Vittoria breaking up in his sterile EUR apartment. "[17] Jon Lisi of PopMatters criticized the work as "strictly intellectual" in its returns to the viewer and wrote that viewing the film "isn’t exactly like watching paint dry, but the pace is so deliberately slow that it might as well be." On the way, Vittoria is fascinated by the clouds. If it’s true that we take a particular interest in the culture of the era just before we were born then my enthusiasm for L’eclisse may be pre-determined. They enjoy a playful walk through a park. From the very first frame, it sets out to defy conventional expectations and encourage the audience to create meaning from the film in a different way. Alain Delon Vittoria is fascinated by the sound of the fencing in the wind. He places the actors like static objects into conventional seeming scenes, but the underlying chemistry is missing its catalyst. Directed by: Michelangelo Antonioni. With this in mind, the film's motifs seem familiar -- again Antonioni employs a cold, unromantic view of life and love centered on a dubious heroine. L' eclisse (1962) Antonioni’s film charts the hot and cold relationship of a young couple in bustling Rome. L'eclisse è un film del 1962, ottavo lungometraggio diretto da Michelangelo Antonioni. In this the director is supported by the beautifully blank faces of Monica Vitti and Alain Delon. Piero drives back to his office on Via Po near Via Salaria, where he must break the bad news to his investors. They converse playfully, kiss each other through a glass window, and then kiss passionately. Vittoria arrives at the Stock Exchange and learns that her mother lost about 10 million lire. The concluding chapter of Michelangelo Antonioni’s informal trilogy on contemporary malaise (following L’avventura and La notte), L’eclisse tells the story of a young woman (Monica Vitti) who leaves one lover (Francisco Rabal) and drifts into a relationship with another (Alain Delon). Key scenes in the film were shot and set in Rome’s EUR district, the distinctively modernist suburb created by Mussolini. Is it that theirs was a fleeting affair that neither felt deeply; or that human connection is simply not possible in the modern age? It’s hard to imagine two other actors who could be better used in this film. Marta, unamused, asks her to stop. After work outside his office, Piero meets with a call girl he previously arranged to meet, but is disappointed that she recently changed her hair color from blonde to brunette. "[12] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called the film "visionary" and argued, "Antonioni opens up a sinkhole of existential dismay in the Roman streets and asks us to drop down into it. Think of D. W. Griffith and Lillian Gish back in the silent era, Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich in the early 1930s, Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina at the time of the French New Wave. Why does L’eclisse remain such a compelling film? Music by Moody Blues Whichever, for the director, architecture and characters are both products of the age. The final sequence contains images that were presented earlier in the film: a nurse with a child, a horse-drawn buggy, a man walking by, trees rustling in the wind, water running from a barrel, people waiting for a bus, sprinklers going off, a blonde woman walking by, a piece of wood floating in a water barrel, and people coming home from work. Developed from a story by Antonioni, the film is about a young woman's disappearance during a Mediterranean boating trip. Vittoria and Anita dismiss such talk. The four films represent a concerted attempt to create a new form of film language which he deemed necessary for the new postwar world. Piero tries to kiss her, but she avoids his pass. At the airport, she watches the airplanes taking off and landing with childlike wonder. Every gesture, every declaration of love between Riccardo and Vittoria, or Vittoria and Piero becomes completely artificial when evacuated of all feeling. They embrace and talk of seeing each other every day. He looks around and says "I feel like I'm in a foreign country." As she walks the deserted early-morning streets past the EUR water tower, Riccardo catches up and walks with her through a wooded area to her apartment building, where they say their final goodbyes. At the window she looks down to the street where she sees two nuns walking, some people talking at a cafe, a lone soldier standing on a corner waiting. Silence 'Then I really don't understand you. My favourite film. That evening, on Sunday 10 September 1961, neither shows up at the appointed meeting place. , Monica Vitti The concluding chapter of Michelangelo Antonioni's informal trilogy on contemporary malaise, L'eclisse tells the story of a young woman who leaves one lover and drifts into a relationship with another. He adds that the ending is "a frightening way to end a film... but at the time it also felt liberating. Following the announcement of a colleague's fatal heart attack and a moment of silence in memoriam, the room erupts back into frenzied activity. On a Monday of July 1961, at dawn, Vittoria (Monica Vitti), a young literary translator, breaks off her relationship with Riccardo (Francisco Rabal) in his apartment in the EUR residential district of Rome, following a long night of conversation. The film retains a formal playfulness, with its open form offering different ways of watching and projecting onto the characters. As they walk away, Vittoria is surprised that Piero is concerned about the dents and the motor rather than the dead man. I wonder if your ex-fiancé did.' The final seven minutes of Eclipse suggested to us that the possibilities in cinema were absolutely limitless. [16], Nevertheless, disapproval of the work has occasionally been voiced. When she finally reaches him, she does not speak and he, thinking it's a prank call, yells into the phone and slams down the receiver. Hand-picked. The conclusion of Michelangelo Antonioni's informal trilogy on modern malaise, L'ECLISSE (The Eclipse) tells the story of a young woman (Monica Vitti) who leaves one lover (Francisco Rabal) only to … È il capitolo conclusivo della cosiddetta "trilogia esistenziale" o "dell'incomunicabilità", segue L'avventura e La notte. Antonioni’s film charts the hot and cold relationship of a young couple in bustling Rome. Her lover and her best friend, during the subsequent search for her, become attracted to each other. Starring: Monica Vitti, Alain Delon, Francisco Rabal, Lilla Brignone. I was born in the mid-1960s, only a couple of months after Michelangelo Antonioni had completed a cycle of four films which made waves in the international film scene. The silence in my soul. [7], On its theatrical run in Italy, L'Eclisse grossed a total of 305 million lire. Piero’s character is only loosely sketched in, we see what he does, but we know little of his back story. But are we any less disconnected from each other now? We witness a breakup, a new affair, stock market crash, a car crash. Sometime later, Vittoria visits her mother (Lilla Brignone) at the frantic Rome Stock Exchange, which is very busy upon Vittoria's entrance. Filmed on location in Rome and Verona,[1] the story follows a young woman (Vitti) who pursues an affair with a confident young stockbroker (Delon). [6] Described by Martin Scorsese as the boldest film in the trilogy, it is one of the director's more acclaimed works. This air of paralysis hangs heavily throughout the film and partly defines the once critical term ‘Antonioniennui’ which was used to describe the psychology of his characters in this cycle of films. There are no conventional story signposts, climactic peaks or moments of emotional resonance. They walk past a nurse wheeling a young girl in a baby carriage. "[12] L'Eclisse won the Special Jury Prize at the festival and was nominated for the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm). "L'eclisse twist" appeared on the flipside of "Renato" (1962), and was used on the soundtrack of Michelangelo Antonioni's feature film L'eclisse. When they reach her building, Vittoria unties a balloon from a carriage and calling to her new friend Marta tells her to shoot the balloon with her rifle (Marta previously having shot rhinoceros and elephants in Kenya), which she does as it ascends into the sky. Some of the technologies we use are necessary for critical functions like security and site integrity, account authentication, security and privacy preferences, internal site usage and maintenance data, and to make the site work correctly for browsing and transactions. , Francisco Rabal, Born: 29 September 1912, FerraraDied: 30 July 2007, Rome. Spoiler warning This feature gives away the ending of the film; If it’s true that we take a particular interest in the culture of the era just before we were born then my enthusiasm for L’eclisse may be pre-determined. Other articles where L’eclisse is discussed: Alain Delon: …The Leopard) and Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Eclisse (1962), as well as Mélodie en sous-sol (1963; “Basement Melody”; Any Number Can Win) and La Piscene (1969; The Swimming Pool). They agree to meet that evening at 8 pm at the "usual place" near her apartment.