L’Eclisse
Okay, so the truth is: Watching this movie hurt. Not because it was bad, that is very far from it, but because it was absolutely brilliant. For the first part of the movie, I was mainly astonished at its style; in fact, I have never ever seen a cinematography that is as beautiful as this, not even with Godard. On the other hand, I was surprised at the directionlessness of the plot during the first 30 minutes of the film.
Very slowly, however, I came to understand what the whole building up of the story is about. In retrospect, the whole first part of the movie was to introduce us to the two main characters, which is why we had this long breaking up talk at the very beginning, why we saw Vittoria with her mother and with her friend playing Africans, why we had these extremely long scenes at the trading floor. It was all to show us the environment in which these characters live, and by extension, showing us why they were unable to truly get close to each other.
Maybe that is what I have found to be so disturbing, sad and hurtful – right in the moment when the both of them grew closer, they both decided not to pursue that relationship anymore. Whatever reason it might be, whether it really was just running away or realizing that the other is a horrible match for you or something completely different doesn’t matter. The scary thing is that something made this relationship end, and this type of end feels incredibly horrible to me.
In many aspects, “L’Eclisse” is wonderful. Especially when the two main characters met and started engaging in a relationship, the film became interesting and even a little suspenseful in its slowness. More than anything, however, “L’Eclisse” is one of those wonderful Antonionian portraits of the Italy of its time, and I can’t wait to see the other two of Antonioni’s Italian trilogy. I also surely will be seeing „Zabriskie Point“ at some point, just out of curiosity.
it is such an eerie film, isn’t it?
you put the effect of the various long environment-scenes so concisely, as I personally too thought that those were the ones that stick in your mind the longest, precisely as they felt like an extension of what was going on with the characters.
“It’s almost as if Antonioni has extracted the essence of everyday street life that serves as a background throughout the picture, and once we’re presented with this essence in its undiluted form, it suddenly threatens and oppresses us. The implication is that behind every story there’s a place and an absence, a mystery and a profound uncertainty, waiting like a vampire at every moment to emerge and take over, to stop the story dead in its tracks. And if we combine this place and absence, this mystery and uncertainty into a single, irreducible entity, what we have is the modern world itself—the place where all of us live, and which most stories are designed to protect us from.” – J-Ro from the criterion essay
i thought the lingering shot of Alain Delon by his desk, and the subsequent hearing of the telephones starting to ring in the staircase – from her point of view – was so shocking? and that entire ending montage?
and, of course, the pairing of Delon and Vitti is just extraordinarily glamorous by itself.
ah, this film is greatness.