L'Eclisse

L'Eclisse

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
Produced by Robert and Raymond Hakim
Written by Michelangelo Antonioni
Tonino Guerra
Elio Bartolini
Ottiero Ottieri
Starring Alain Delon
Monica Vitti
Francisco Rabal
Louis Seigner
Music by Giovanni Fusco
Cinematography Gianni Di Venanzo
Edited by Eraldo Da Roma
Distributed by Cineriz (Italy)
Times Film Corporation (USA)
The Criterion Collection
Release dates
  • 12 April 1962 (1962-04-12)
Running time
 126 minutes
Country Italy
Language Italian
English
Box office 470,764 admissions (France)[1]

L'Eclisse (English: "Eclipse") is a 1962 Italian drama film written and directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and starring Alain Delon and Monica Vitti. Filmed on location in Rome and Verona,[2] L'Eclisse is about a young woman who breaks up with an older lover and then has an affair with a confident young stockbroker whose materialistic nature eventually undermines their relationship.[3] The film is considered the last part of a trilogy which was preceded by L'Avventura (1960) and La Notte (1961).[4][5][6] In Martin Scorsese's documentary My Voyage to Italy, the director called L'Eclisse the boldest film in Antonioni's trilogy. L'Eclisse won the Special Jury Prize at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Palme d'Or.[7]

Plot

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. Riccardo tries to persuade her to stay, but she tells him she no longer loves him and leaves. 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.

Sometime later, Vittoria visits her mother (Lilla Brignone) at the frantic Rome Stock Exchange, which is very busy upon Vittoria's entrance. A young stockbroker, Piero (Alain Delon), overhears an inside tip, rushes to purchase the stocks, and then sells them at a large profit. He introduces himself to Vittoria; he is her mother's stock broker. Following the announcement of a colleague's fatal heart attack, the room erupts back into frenzied activity. Outside the building, Vittoria and her mother walk to an open market nearby. Vittoria attempts to discuss her own recent breakup, but her mother is preoccupied with her earned profits.

That evening, Vittoria's neighbor Anita (Rosanna Rory) comes to visit and they discuss the former's breakup. Vittoria says she is depressed, disgusted, and confused. Another neighbor, Marta (Mirella Ricciardi), calls and invites them to her apartment nearby. Marta talks about the farm she and her husband have in Kenya. For a game, Vittoria dresses up as an African dancer with dark makeup, and dances around the apartment. Marta, unamused, asks her to stop. The conversation turns sour as Marta, a colonialist, worries about "monkeys" arming themselves and threatening the minority whites. Vittoria and Anita dismiss such talk. When Marta's dog Zeus gets free of the house, the women take off after him. Vittoria is fascinated by the sound of the fencing in the wind. Back in her apartment, Riccardo calls for her, but she hides and doesn't answer.

The next day, Vittoria and Anita fly to Verona in a small airplane. On the way, Vittoria is fascinated by the clouds. At the airport, she watches the airplanes taking off and landing with childlike wonder. "It's so nice here," she tells Anita. Meanwhile, back at the Rome Stock Exchange, Piero is busy making trades. Vittoria arrives at the Stock Exchange and learns that her mother lost about ten million lire. Another man lost fifty million. Vittoria follows the man through the crowded streets to a small cafe, where she sees him drawing flowers on a small piece of paper and drinking mineral water before moving on. She meets up with Piero and he drives her to her mother's apartment in his Alfa Romeo Giulietta sportscar. She shows him framed family pictures and her room growing up. Piero tries to kiss her but she avoids his pass. Piero drives back to his office on Via Po near Via Salaria, where he must break the bad news to his investors.

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. Deciding not to go with her, Piero drives to Vittoria's apartment and stands outside her window. He hears her typing. After a drunk walks by and notices Vittoria at the window, Piero comes over. While they are talking, the drunk steals Piero's sportscar. The next morning, Piero and Vittoria arrive at the crash site where the drunk drove the car into a lake. Vittoria watches as they pull the car with the body from the water. As they walk away, Vittoria is surprised that Piero is concerned about the dents and the motor, rather than the dead man. They enjoy a playful walk through a park. 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, which she does as it ascends into the sky. When they reach her building, he kisses her, but she seems uneasy. Before she leaves, she drops a piece of wood into a barrel of water.

That evening, Vittoria tries to call Piero, but his phone is busy. When she finally reaches him, she does not speak. The next day, while waiting outside near her house, Vittoria looks in the barrel of water and sees the wood is still there. Piero arrives and tells her he bought a new BMW to replace his Alfa Romeo. She asks to go to his place. They walk past a nurse wheeling a young girl in a baby carriage. Piero takes her to his parents' apartment, which is filled with beautiful works of art and sculpture. 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. But then maybe they shouldn't fall in love at all." They converse playfully, kiss each other through a glass window, and then kiss passionately. After he accidentally tears her dress, she goes into a bedroom and looks at the old family pictures. 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. Piero comes to the bedroom and they make love.

Sometime later, Piero and Vittoria are lying on a hill looking up at the sky. He looks around and says, "I feel like I'm in a foreign country." She says that's how she feels around him. He gets upset when he doesn't understand what she's feeling. She says, "I wish I didn't love you or that I loved you much more." Sometime later at his office, Vittoria and Piero kiss and embrace playfully on the couch, even wrestling on the floor like children. When an alarm goes off, they prepare to part. They embrace and talk of seeing each other every day. They agree to meet that evening at 8:00 pm at the "usual place" near her apartment. That evening, on Sunday 10 September 1961, neither shows up at the appointed meeting place.[8]

Cast

Production

Filming locations

Reception

Awards and nominations

L'Eclisse won the Special Jury Prize at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm).[7]

Film critic Robin Wood complained that this and all films made by Antonioni after L'Avventura were "self-indulgent," "defeatist" and a "retreat into a fundamentally complacent despair."[10]

Director Martin Scorsese, in his documentary about Italian films, 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." He adds that the ending is "a frightening way to end a film... but at the time it also felt liberating. The final seven minutes of L'Eclisse suggested to us that the possibilities in cinema were absolutely limitless."

References

  1. ↑ Box office information for film at Box Office Story
  2. 1 2 "Filming locations for L'Eclisse". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 15 February 2012.
  3. ↑ "L'eclisse". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 15 February 2012.
  4. ↑ Gazetas, Aristides (2008). An introduction to world cinema. London: McFarland. p. 246. ISBN 978-0-7864-3907-2.
  5. ↑ Wakeman, John (1988). World Film Directors: 1945-1985. H. W. Wilson. p. 65.
  6. ↑ Cameron, Ian Alexander (1971). Antonioni. Praeger. p. 105.
  7. 1 2 "Festival de Cannes: L'Eclisse". Festival de Cannes. Retrieved 22 February 2009.
  8. ↑ The final sequence contains images that were presented earlier in the film: a nurse with a child, a horsedrawn 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. The sky grows dark and the streetlights come on.
  9. ↑ "Full cast and crew for L'Eclisse". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 15 February 2012.
  10. ↑ Wakeman, John. World Film Directors, Volume 1. The H. W. Wilson Company. 1987. p. 65.
Bibliography
  • Arrowsmith, William (1995). Ted Perry, ed. Antonioni: The Poet of Images. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-509270-7. 
  • Brunette, Peter (1998). The Films of Michelangelo Antonioni. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-38992-1. 
  • Chatman, Seymour (1985). Antonioni: The Surface of the World. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-05341-0. 

External links

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