L’Eclisse (no 25)

 

by Allan Fish

(Italy 1962 125m) DVD1/2

Aka. The Eclipse

Images of the human soul

p  Raymond Hakim, Robert Hakim  d  Michelangelo Antonioni  w  Michelangelo Antonioni, Tonino Guerra, Elio Bartolini, Ottiero Ottieri  ph  Gianni de Venanzo  ed  Eraldo da Roma  m  Giovanni Fusco  art  Piero Poletto

Monica Vitti (Vittoria), Alain Delon (Piero), Francisco Rabal (Riccardo), Louis Seigner (Ercoli), Rosanna Rory (Anita), Marella Ricciardi (Marta), Lilla Brignone,

Here I must acknowledge that, as taglines go, it’s rather pretentious, yet also, in retrospect, rather glib.  And glib is one word that cannot be ever attributed to director Michelangelo Antonioni.  Baffling?  Often.  Slow?  Very often.  Cerebral?  You betcha.  But glib?  A definite no.  L’Eclisse is certainly one of the remotest films of Antonioni’s career, which is saying something when you consider his numerous other contenders.  Many have accused him of being a director embraced by the intelligentsia and his work as now dated.  And indeed, when I first saw the film in my late teens it was not without a certain head-scratching and a sense of being underwhelmed.  In truth, Antonioni is one of those eclectic directors – along with Godard, Tarkovsky, Rivette and even Buñuel – whom are probably not best seen by someone who has not, shall one say, reached a certain level of maturity.  Over fifteen years on, it’s a different story and just as Dilys Powell said all those years ago; “at the second viewing, the passion breaks through.” 

            Antonioni’s films are famous for their slender plots and L’Eclisse is a prototype example, as we follow young Vittoria, from her break up with her long-time lover, Riccardo, to an affair with her wealth-orientated mother’s stockbroker, Piero.  Antonioni uses this flimsiest of narratives as the top layer for a most telling psychological analysis.  A film incredibly deep, yet also effortlessly simple, and whose purpose can perhaps be ascertained in the extended first sequence.  It literally seems to take off where La Notte, his previous film, left off.  That ended with a reconciliation at dawn between Mastroianni and Moreau.  L’Eclisse rather opens at dawn, again after a long night, and one which has obviously gone by without them realising it.  Vittoria opens the curtains to find that it’s morning and we come to realise that the outshot of the all-night talk is her leaving her partner, the crestfallen Riccardo.  Indeed, the whole sequence seems to go on without much purpose to the plot, in a way that surely was either paid homage to or spoofed by Godard, Piccoli and Bardot in Le Mépris.  Yet L’Eclisse, like its predecessors L’Avventura and La Notte, is about alienation and, in this case, also about reflection.  They have reflected through the night about their predicament, while through the opening scene Vittoria’s face is seen in reflection five times, through either mirrors or windows, not to mention her legs being reflected in the pristine polished floor in a very deliberate iconic shot.  Most importantly, when looking through a mirror, she turns away.  It’s as if she can’t look at herself, searching instead to connect with the outside world.  Even the time of dawn adds to this sense of reflection, with seeing daylight after a sleepless night almost like seeing it in reverse, the wrong way round.  It’s a motif continued through the rest of the film, as she is seen through glass doors, windows, even car and aircraft windscreens.  Further symbolism is apparent in the use of contrasts, with Vittoria stopping outside the columns of an ancient Roman temple to a dead god, after coming out of the stock exchange built to honour a new one, that of Mammon.  Not to mention her examining a picture of her father while St Peter’s, home of the holy father, is seen and heard in the background, and the eerie quiet of the minute’s silence for a deceased comrade in the stock exchange.  In truth, one could examine Antonioni’s work until Doomsday and still not capture the essence.  Indeed, we haven’t even mentioned the incredible presence of Monica Vitti or the photography of di Venanzo, as gleaming as his work for Fellini, but showcasing a very different Rome.  When Riccardo asks “are you going some place?“, you might wonder for a while, but in the end, you’ll not forget this journey.