MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI AND TONINO GUERRA’s “L’ECLISSE” ‘Is it fixable?’

by James Clark

Demanding of one’s very best, and realizing it, can lead to great contentment. Vittoria, the protagonist of the film, L’Eclisse, The Eclipse (1962), does in fact embrace a kind of contentment which virtually no  one will touch.

Let’s try to understand how she might fare. The credits have a life of their own, and they’re far more acute than they seem to be. It’s the sixties, and the dance craze, “the twist,” is right up her alley. What’s so perplexing in that? Vittoria’s twist is not the twist of Chubby Checker.

We catch up to her in the apartment of Riccardo, her fiancé. As she has had, on many occasions to insist, that though he is kind and very rich (a patrician, in fact—one of Ingmar Bergman’s far from esteemed—having strung him along, only one of her failings), she bores him to, in not so many words, madness. This was to be the last time. They had spent all night arguing about inhabiting distant worlds.

An electric fan had been in action all night. Also pervasive was his art collection. Whereas the fan meant relief, the art meant stasis to her. The currents of taste had become a jungle. The walls and the pedestals were one thing. The numerous empty frames were a challenge, a surprise. She had probably spent the best moments there upon that mystery. It was one thing to cram more dead festoon, in a surprisingly small apartment. But there seemed, for her, to be something unique about the possibility of moving around small factors within those areas. You could, easily, bring up the matter of “still life.” But when you note the couple in the film preceding, in this trilogy, namely, La Notte (1961)—in that case both being patricians, doing a bit of slumming—the night becomes almost a case of pathos. Bohemians! In suits! Can being a soloist improve her game? Games galore are on the menu. For instants, a cut discloses Riccardo’s handsome collection of chairs and tables. The perspective, if that’s the word, only displays the lower area of the furniture. The legs. Soon Vittoria’s legs join the oddity, the twist? The breakaway? Or hiding under the table what she fears? Contentment known; contentment terrifying. The pristine legs, reflecting upon a shining floor. Her stylish shoes? How far will they carry her? A world of reflection! Can that by real? She tells him, “I’ve already decided.” We need to know what “decided” means here. Riccardo, though of some longevity, was a pushover. She knows it will be much harder now. Cliché, however, seems to haunt her bid to brilliantly overcome mediocrity. She visits the curtains several times. Curtains! (One opening discloses a huge structure resembling an atomic bomb.) In that range of disaster, the host pleads, “What do you want me to do? … Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it!” He clearly doesn’t understand that he’s cheek to jaw with a student of the ways of pariahs. Her studies have a long way to go. But you have to give her credit that she’s pounced upon a career of translation, translation with its currents whereby two disparate ranges of sensibility might embrace where only one seemed possible. That new take-off and embrace (a twist) could make a singularity to open eyes, to reach a very different contentment. But, for several reasons, which we’ll present now, Vittoria is headed toward a solitary life. She moots that it might be possible to continue to do his (rarely read) translations of foreign articles for him. (In La Notte, a dying man has been an ardent investigator of writings no one wants to read. Perhaps he’s the only one alive. Perhaps Vittoria is the new mortal.) People lose love. The elements never quit.

On her homeward bound, the landscape is winsome. She’s not in a mood to hear from the elements. Her translation skills are about to undergo some very tough days. And one great gift. Strange, that all these sagas come down to courage, the courage to die when the gifts end. The best end. She has a white-collar job. But she’ll have to get pretty messy to go places.

What makes the metaphor of translation (Guerra’s metaphor) so insightful, pertains to the mountainous embrace of classical rational sight, a virtual cult, having polished off millions in its wake, while leaving to the emotions a second-rate force. Translation, with its equality of sensibility, and its rich nuances within the full range of motion becomes a new interplay, a new interplay virtually no one will touch. Here we have the last of the trilogy, coming to us with true dilemmatic panache. It might never take off on Earth. But fortunately, humans are not the only ones to rock.

As we fallow Vittoria (and her stuffy name), we’re looking for her to have a go. Her first step, rather unfortunately, was to announce the end of the romance, for her mother’s sake, at the latter’s passion, the turbulent Roman stock market. She’s met with a glare and, “How come you’re here?” Dispensing with everything but the trades, the supposed information never comes across until much later. “Wait for me outside.” (The volume of the screaming has a life of its own. Another Guerra singularity.)  After announcing a small killing at the Bourse, Mamma forces down the price of the pears. “I have to pay for the ounce, too?” Competition yes. Cannibalism no. Something has been lost. A church of advantage. Two young traders on a roll, with their hand jive on the phones. How to temper. At the vegetable market our protagonist looks away, embarrassed. But then: “Are you eating with Riccardo today?”/ “Yes, with Riccardo…” Easy to mock (Antonioni). Hard to find the traction (Guerra).

That night she brings home a cut of ancient rock including a fossil. In her bedroom where she mounts the rock, there is a print by Toulouse-Lautrec. The old and inert; the twisted and the new. How would you say her first day of liberty is going? She does attend to touch and fine visual detail. She also bought a floral print, which required hammering the into the wall. Very soon, there’s a knock on the door and a woman gently asking how long the disturbance will last. She explains that her husband has an early flight and being anxious about friends keeping late hours. (The systematic neighbor was to deliver a new airplane to a distant point.) She explains, “For three days he’s talked about nothing but that plane.” Does that ring a bell?

Also ringing a bell, another woman notices the late hours and revels in it. She invites them to come up to her penthouse. This Marta, whose main home is in Kenya, is, temporarily alone (her husband travelling), and elicits to Vittoria a sort of gym after Riccardo’s motionlessness. Our protagonist begins with, “I didn’t get a moment of sleep last night. Yet I don’t feel a bit tired!” (Into a hub of visual sensibility.) Marta’s apartment is decorated in the choices of Africa, where bold gestures reign. Like a stiff tonic, Vittoria rushes to not only don the garments but also the coloration, black face; in this, she both cherishes and mocks. In a flash she had she had become what she wasn’t. Wielding a spear, in the genre of witless Broadway, she both cherishes and mocks along with her zealousness. An African drumming disc adds to the dynamic. (This after being treated to many beautiful photos of natives, animals and landscapes.) On the other hand, the gross parody nearly attains to something painful, haunting.

“That’s enough!” Marta demands. “Let’s stop playing Negroes.” Chastened, our protagonist, in the still of the night, ponders the rollercoaster. “There are times when holding a needle and thread, or a book or a man—it’s all the same.” Cut to her hands and fingers. The equipment; but lacking the skills, the right twist! In a preamble to Marta’s anxieties— “I’m afraid something’s going to happen”—there is Vittoria, with her champagne glass, needling in poor but biting English, “The coolaarr… ” (the colard’s)./ “Something’s going to happen in life about color. It’s dangerous. The six million Negroes want to throw out the sixty thousand whites. We’re lucky they’re still in trees and have barely lost their tails.” How’s that for missing the boat? How’s that for Vittoria’s freedom to embrace the heavens? Her slight qualms here are unimpressive.

Marta’s dog breaks free, and Marta and Vittoria, in chasing it, have another chance to wake up. Before the fireworks begin here, we hear, “My husband goes crazy if the dog is not there when he gets home.” (Love. Advantage.) With another of Guerra’s twists, the neighborhood is teeming with runaway dogs. And why not, if what the norm has provided this. Is anyone amazed?  The dogs hit the high road of an expansive city park. Many little lights dot the world here. Vittoria proves to be a hearty hunter. Why can’t she muster the true wilds of life? The confusion leaves Marta crying out, “I don’t think I’ll ever go back to Kenya… We’re very close, but there’s this wall…” Walls, in a planet of ours, become holy. “Here I only go out to shop. Where else would I go?” The hearty hunter asks, “You like being alone?”/ “It’s not that I like it, but I’m not with my people.”/ Our protagonist fires, “You like the monkeys?”/ “Maybe you think less about happiness down there. Things just unfold on their own. Am I wrong?”/ Dead wrong. Vittoria’s eyes get hard; and then confused. The satisfied native rounds it off with, “But here everything’s so difficult.” Instead of a rebuttal that difficulty is here to stay, everywhere. Our hearty hunter dribbles out, “Even love…” Then it’s off to snag the poodle, and wouldn’t you know it, the pup is virtual Disney star, out of The Lady and the Tramp, with a Lady with a nice jacket. (Guerra does not piss around.) Vittoria howls with delight seeing Marta’s poodle walking around on his hind legs. The nearly complete darkness rings out along a series of thin, high metal shaking in the night. “Listen,” she calls out! She comes upon a faint light, by which her face discloses, on side, light and one side dark. She turns to the metal. It resembles a jail. Who’s going to escape? Who has the mettle? Who can see that humankind must be transcended?

The pilot and his wife give Vittoria a ride in the clouds. Less kitsch; the same wall—with a difference. She begins miserably: “What’s the hardest thing about flying a plane like this?”/ “Getting where you want to go…” The pilot plunges into a cloud formation that makes it pedestrian. Big smiles, no action. After her hosts have left, she begins to take flight. She ponders the empty, transfixed plane. She ponders the skies around it. Then she walks to a small café. Two blacks are sitting in the sun outside the door. She watches how they converse. She looks up to a plane in flight. At the door, a man addresses her in American English. Links in space. She sits alone in the patio.

The Stock Market on the day it crashed. A manager tells a trader, “Take it easy on orders. The Market’s a bit inflated. Don’t buy too much. I don’t like the Russians’ attitude.” (Antonioni does not like the attitude of Guerra, the semi-Russian.) Vittoria sees the portents. (Melodrama weak. Melodrama strong.) Her mom snarls, “You could have waited to make your brilliant move with Riccardo!” (Her daughter asks, “Is this serious? Is it fixable?”) Piero, her mother’s middleman, hears from him of a big player losing millions. The Market means nothing to Vittoria; but she’s become a student of disaster. You might think that something like a climax won’t happen in a process like this. This is our climax, not so easy to note; not easy to note a massive joy. But for someone like our protagonist, it’s a start.

Vittoria follows the shocked gambler. His crossing of the busy street was far from the verve shown by Lidia, the protagonist of, La Notte, where the mundane and swift crossing at Milano, becomes a dangerous circus. But his steady trek to a patio is a picture of composure. She stands very close to her subject. (Even as he walked across the street, he must have seen Vittoria’s rather rude haunting.) He asks a waiter for a mineral water, downs it steadily and proceeds to write and sketch on a small piece of paper. At this point, she’s inches’ away, clearly obvious.  He leaves the table without taking the paper. She quickly looks at the paper and continues her haunting until it is certain that something “dramatic” will not occur. She takes up the paper again, at her dinner at a café, with Piero hovering. He had drawn some flowers, and a small poem. She looks at her drink. Can she fathom? He had told her in the note, “It went badly this morning, didn’t it, miss.” His contentment was not shaken. Vittoria has been given a great endowment. Now she must use it. Does she have what it takes?

Her first bid after that distracted lift was to attempt to calm her hard as nails mother. Right from the get-go, a slip. Piero, not the poetic type, asks to join her. His plan is not to about generosity. “Where are you going?”/ “Where else? To see my mother. She’s not the type to draw flowers.” And with this slight we’ve corroborated that our protagonist almost might be her mother. Chubby Checker would never have dropped the ball so miserably. Where does this poison emanate? Before Mamma gets home, the whole shtick of normality—her child’s bedroom (“Maybe you were shorter,” Piero suggests; “This is what Mama’s afraid of, poverty…;” “I never think of that” [poverty]…Just like I never think about getting rich;” “My gosh, I’ve changed!”—the tee is poised to get into another bunker. Late one night, he drives his flashy sports car to her apartment on the edges of Rome. Thinking to be charming, he asks, “How do you say, ‘I want to come up?’”/ “You can’t. Tough language isn’t?” (Perhaps it should be, “soft canniness.”) It is the business of translation which holds a key to the uncanny, for those who really persevere. The toughest language.

Smug Piero— “I don’t see why we should waste time like this this”—has left the door and the keys wide open, for a theft. A theft by a drunk, subquality dying in a canal, with a stiff arm seemingly trying to make a point, is met that morning by most of the populous with laughter. In the morning the beautiful people replicate the chaos of Marta’s party. He declares, “There isn’t too many dents in it.”/ She pulls herself together enough to find fault with Piero’s viciousness. “You’re thinking about the dents?”/ “I think I’ll sell it. It’s only got 5000 miles…”

Instead of Piero, the rich insect, being gone for good, Vittoria shows that if money and good looks don’t figure to be everything, what’s left is sentimental bathos, like the jerks laughing at the dead drunk. Our protagonist will run through some kind of victory lap, a victory in the dark, in an eclipse; an eclipse so black that no one in the world will ever see it. No one in the world. But lighten up. Planet Earth is not the only entry.

After gawking the crash, they stroll into a garden. They’re seen from over the trees. Snippets of their bodies mingle with the boughs. Not a hope of lucidity. They encounter the music of a jazz piano on a jook box. (Later, when visiting his mansion, he and she witlessly ridicule such music and others not to their liking.) They come to the structure of Marta’s penthouse. Vittoria, from one point of view a critical investigator, becomes careless in exaggeration. She is exposed here, as craving a highlight that is beyond her strength, beyond her courage. Structure in this sense has many drives, many twists. She gushes like a stockbroker. “She was born in Kenya. She killed hippos and elephants.” Vittoria had acquired a big balloon during the excitement. (Empty gas.) She calls out to the neighbor, “Get your rifle!” Up goes the balloon, and the shooter explodes the balloon. If only she could explode her cheapness. She smiles to him. They kiss. She pulls away. He resents her ambiguity. That evening she phones, but she does not speak. That elicits from him a scream. Next day, she wanders amidst her streets and buildings: a honeycomb- covering speared with horizontal metal, being a work in progress; a crude fence; a corroded version of a well; shadows playing upon the constructions; she leans on a dead tree trunk; turning her head, she sees a stunningly beautiful horse pulling a lightweight carriage. Piero appears. “I’ve been here for fifteen minutes. I bought another car, a BMW.” She pushes a stick into that dirty well.

The BMW takes her to his mansion. Her face clouds over. The faint light is redolent of centuries    of patricians. He expected she’d be impressed. Despite the gloom, she had to admit, to herself, that a form of high art, and love had been maintained. Despite that, an irony: both of them, from various perspectives, eclipse a delicate work of three young girls. Bound together, those two. Is it that hard to face death? Slick talk leads to kissing and a ripped a shoulder strap. “Forgive me. I’m sorry,” he says. / She says, “If clothes tear, it’s their own fault.” Handsomely put. A second maxim is not so good. “Two people shouldn’t know each other too well if they want to fall in love.” The supposed lover boy, jumps to a politically correct gesture, “Then I really don’t understand you.” He resorts to mocking, “‘I don’t know,’ that’s all you know to say.”  (Film critic, Roger Ebert, makes fun of this film, and the whole enterprise here. He is absolutely lost.)

Vittoria goes on to the cliché, “I wish I didn’t love you … or that I loved you more.” She is a moving target. Next evening, they occupy his office when work ends. They caress awkwardly on a sofa and deliver their hate toward others and to themselves. (As also seen in the film,  L’Avventura.) The adolescent savagery of advantage. They vow to see each other tomorrow. But they know they’re finished. As she leaves, we see the stairwell, held up by crude two-by-fours and having been burned several times. (An Antonioni idea; but serving the momentum of Guerra.) The raw stairway and delicate factors on the wall. Vittoria comes down the stairs with heavy steps. He puts back the receivers on their places. Receiving not much. On reaching the street, she is met by the shadow of a conflagration on the wall across the street.

The last words are wordless. There is a voyage into Vittoria’s neighborhood. But it’s not for her. It is time to find another bid. An agency barely conceivable. This step needs a pariah, many pariahs. Somewhere, it’s been done. The man with poise who failed badly has shown it can be done.

The elements had been given their flights. A stroller pushed by a nanny. Water springing out of a crack in a dirty well. The building of honeycombs, and its spears and its surrounding trees. The horse and rider. The silhouette by the road. Pavement and bits of incidents. A plastic wall. The white crossing stripes. The stains on the pavement. Trees in the breeze. Ants on a tree. A man turning a corner and becoming lost to sight. A bus beginning to move. The well and its garbage. A stream of water falling into a sewer. An anxious lady waiting for the bus. Her anxious visage. A younger woman with angry eyes. The bus arriving. Children playing on the road. A water cannon. The silver water from a hose. Grey, soft clouds. Vittoria. Back to the well, now some ticket on the surface. Close-up of an old man and his glasses. His angry face. The horse again. The nurse again. The nurse and the baby. Now dark. Marta and her balcony. A streetlight coming on. More street lights. Close-up of the streetlight. Pedestrians from the bus going various ways. Close-up of the bright streetlight.