The plot itself is threadbare, and might be explained as “Girl loses boy, girl finds new boy, girl and boy lose each other.”  (As opposed to Raymond Bellour’s observation:  “ ‘Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl’… organizes, indeed constitutes, the classical American cinema as a whole.”  Quoted by James MacDowell. Continuando nella sua analisi del disfacimento della borghesia italiana, Antonioni compone il secondo capitolo della sua trilogia sull’incomunicabilità (“La notte”, “L’eclisse” e “Deserto rosso”) con la “musa” e allora compagna di vita Monica Vitti…. as if Antonioni had made only one film instead of many (reminiscent of the observation by Jean Renoir that “A director makes only one movie.      Allen Ginsberg. (The only thing that really impresses Bruno about Antonioni is that Bruno believes that Antonioni once [may, or may not] have driven a fancy sports car--a Flaminia Zagato--on a famous stretch of the antica via Appia near the town of Terracina some 50 kilometers southeast of Rome; the point Risi is apparently making is that Bruno, a fictional character in a movie, is more impressed by the car that Antonioni, the movie director, drives in “real life” than by Antonioni’s movie, L'eclisse.) bibliografia. Importantly, however, even these films appeal to largely subconscious appetites of which the client-audience and sometimes even the filmmaker herself/himself is largely unaware. "[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." (Acronym for “Esposizione Universale Roma,” a modern quarter of southern Rome where Antonioni had himself briefly worked in the late1930’s; pronounced in Italian as two syllables, “Ā'OOR”; long “Ā”; “OOR” as in the English word, “your,” without the “y”. L’ECLISSE (1962) – Conclusivo della trilogia, con Monica Vitti e Alain Delon, Michelangelo Antonioni sposta l’inquadratura sulla Roma del 1961. Eclipse (originally L'Eclisse), Antonioni's follow-up to the equally slow-and-steady L'Aventura, La Notte was the winner of the Grand Prize at Cannes. MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI’S L’ECLISSE Sometime later, Piero and Vittoria are lying on a hill looking up at the sky. On the way, Vittoria is fascinated by the clouds. They enjoy a playful walk through a park. . L’eclisse di Michelangelo Antonioni sulle note dei Joy Division. One might go so far as to say that, ultimately, there is nothing to understand. In the first case the broken ashtray speaks to the profound theme of the volition of inanimate objects, and is linked to the later ripping of Vittoria’s dress as well as to the broken piece of wood floating in the “barrel” (200 L open top steel drum) of the Eur. Following the announcement of a colleague's fatal heart attack and a moment of silence in memoriam, the room erupts back into frenzied activity. Nevertheless, I also believe that--as Seymour Chatman hints at in the last paragraph of his book on Antonioni--L'eclisse is one of the “best” movies ever made. Tone and viewpoint are invariably neutral, the creator distanced from his carefully wrought creation. Outside the building, Vittoria and her mother walk to an open market nearby. *  In this regard, analyzing an Antonioni film is vaguely analogous to psychoanalysis: one does not accept things at face value, true meaning often being latent. 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. Se interesa por la cinematografía escribiendo en la revista Cinema. Another neighbor, Marta (Mirella Ricciardi), calls and invites them to her apartment nearby. Likewise, film criticism of L'eclisse is relatively scanty compared to other films of Antonioni’s mature period. Curiously, not a single, major film of Antonioni takes place entirely within the confines of a single city. The recipe is otherwise straightforward: Get a camera, turn it on, point it at life, add no additional spices, flavoring, meaning, or significance. 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. Per Umberto Eco, con L’avventura eLa notte, … Another man lost 50 million. Biarese and Tassone (p. 155) quote R. Benayoun as observing that with regard to Antonioni’s The Passenger, “L’avventura di questo Vinto si chiude con la sua Eclisse.” (“L’avventura of I vinti concludes with L'eclisse.”)  The number and degree of similarities and correspondences between L'eclisse and other Antonioni films are remarkable.2. Not to be confused with the “euro” (€), the present common currency of 13 European nations. Antonioni, a good director, but that movie, it put me to sleep. Antonioni puede ser, a través de su cine, la pieza clave de ruptura de la cinematografía italiana con su pasado inmediato. All of this may seem surprising when one considers that--at least for Western Europeans--the film stars two giants of European cinema and concerns love, violence, and money. And what are we to make of the broken guitar of Blow-Up? L'Eclisse (English: "The Eclipse") is a 1962 Italian drama film written and directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and starring Alain Delon and Monica Vitti. In France, the film had 470,764 admissions. Simply put, an Antonioni film requires interpretation or “translation.”  One must be continually on the lookout for where the real “action” takes place, which is always on the level of the thematic and intellectual. In the second case, the broken vase speaks, among other things, to the theme of the disturbing disconnection between modern man, his environment, and his past. Piero comes to the bedroom and they make love. For such predominantly male characters, not being able to see is akin to another kind of blindness, that of not being able to comprehend. Marta, unamused, asks her to stop. At the airport, she watches the airplanes taking off and landing with childlike wonder. With regard to America, ignorance concerning Antonioni and in particular, L'eclisse, may not seem surprising. Testi di riferimento: Roberto Calabretto, Lo schermo sororo, Venezia… Nowadays, few American university students have ever even heard of Antonioni. A crude profile for almost all of Antonioni’s films would be as follows: Antonioni’s movies are usually contemporary dramas of a highly aesthecized and intellectual nature with a skeletal plot, sober tone, generally dealing with adult characters from the middle or upper classes who are experiencing a romantic conflict, often adulterous. He introduces himself to Vittoria; he is her mother's stock broker. Why then, did Antonioni film it? That evening, on Sunday 10 September 1961, neither shows up at the appointed meeting place. She says "I wish I didn't love you or that I loved you much more." Sometime later, Vittoria visits her mother (Lilla Brignone) at the frantic Rome Stock Exchange, which is very busy upon Vittoria's entrance. The final seven minutes of Eclipse suggested to us that the possibilities in cinema were absolutely limitless. L'ECLISSE (IT/FR, 1962) di MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI. He adds that the ending is "a frightening way to end a film... but at the time it also felt liberating. The H.W. World Film Directors, Volume 1. As they walk away, Vittoria is surprised that Piero is concerned about the dents and the motor rather than the dead man. Deciding not to go with her, Piero drives to Vittoria's apartment and stands outside her window. A young stockbroker, Piero (Alain Delon), overhears an inside tip, rushes to purchase the stocks, and then sells them at a large profit. 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." The plot, such as it is, follows Vittoria (luscious Monica Vitti, The Red Desert ) as her engagement falls apart and she slowly falls into a giddy but anxious affair with Piero (Alain Delon, Le Samourai , Purple Noon ), a trader in Rome's stock exchange. The density, however, is of a different kind than that of Joyce’s Ulysses, a work that is also remarkably dense, but saturated with allusions. 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. Indeed, Brunette suggests that “. This may be true insofar as I believe that L'eclisse is never destined to become a particularly popular film. Piero tries to kiss her, but she avoids his pass. This is true, if only because life itself--however chaotic its surface--has its patterns. The common consensus of the remainder of the planet will be that L'eclisse is a tedious, abstruse, and slow-moving film. In Antonioni’s case, the boundaries are particularly porous. The opening scene concerns the breakup of Vittoria and Riccardo. One must be inquisitive, open, actively engaged, and preferably have suffered a bit in love, which means that most viewers will come to Antonioni’s film with at least the latter life experience already in their résumé. Virtually every scene in a mature film by Antonioni may be analyzed in terms of the specific theme being highlighted. Piero arrives and tells her he bought a new BMW to replace his Alfa Romeo. But then maybe they shouldn't fall in love at all." L'eclisse, like all of Antonioni’s films, is an intricately conceived structure that is held together by thematic as opposed to conventional storytelling mortar. ... Con l’analisi … Antonioni rompe con el neorrealismo sin abandonar el humanismo, sólo que este nuevo humanismo fílmico es bastante menos moralizante que el anterior, su lenguaje crítico es menos evidente, su origen burgués y acomodado ataca... Continua la lectura L'eclisse has never been a popular film. L'eclisse (The Eclipse; Pronunciation of “eclisse”*) begins at the end. Le amiche, Il grido, L'avventura, La notte, L'eclisse, Deserto rosso (1964). 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. When an alarm goes off, they prepare to part. Vittoria attempts to discuss her own recent breakup, but her mother is preoccupied with her earned profits. Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube. Meanwhile, back at the Rome Stock Exchange, Piero is busy making trades. "[18] Conversely, Susan Doll wrote that if Antonioni's works are "out of vogue with movie goers captivated by postmodern irony and fast-paced editing, [...] we are the worse for it. As Moravia, who I believe was an admirer of Antonioni, has written of the filmmaker, “È come certi uccelli solitari che hanno un verso solo e lo provano notte e giorno. "[15] In the 2012 Sight & Sound polls conducted by the British Film Institute, L'Eclisse was voted in both the critics' and directors' polls as one of the 100 greatest films of all time. For the naïve viewer the answer is an unfamiliar one:  the segment is a gold mine of concealed, thematic riches, as opposed to the pleasures of most commercial films, overt sex and violence (“Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”). A. è autore, oltre che di racconti, anche di saggi come la raccolta a cura di C. Di Carlo e G. Tinazzi Fare un film è per me vivere ‒ Scritti sul cinema (1994). They walk past a nurse wheeling a young girl in a baby carriage. "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. . Vittoria says she is depressed, disgusted, and confused. . "[13], The final sequence is especially praised, with Jonathan Rosenbaum[14] and others regarding it as one of the more effective scenes in Antonioni's oeuvre. Attraverso i suoi film egli ci ha dato questo suo verso e soltanto questo.” ([Antonioni] is like certain solitary birds that have but one song, a tune they sing all day and night. Such Joycean allusions to specific events, places, and people in the Dublin of June 16, 1904 with their superimposed mythological and other references do not apply to Antonioni’s vision of Rome in the summer of 1961. 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). )*, The Wasteland I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage, and when the boys said to her: “Sibyl, what do you want?” she answered: “I want to die.”. quando vedo ‘Deserto rosso’  mi rendo conto che è un film strano e mi dico, ‘Come sono stato pazzo! Dopo una burrascosa fase di produzione, Antonioni presentò a Cannes, nel 1960, il suo L’avventura. In reality, nothing much happens. ^ Associazione "Michelangelo Antonioni", su michelangeloantonioni.info, Associazione "Michelangelo Antonioni". Or, alternatively, employing the International Phonetic Alphabet:  ['eʊər]. An Antonioni film requires active engagement by the viewer. a broken piece of wood, a matchbook, a woman, a man, [NOTE: TEXT SIZE MAY BE INCREASED BY PRESSING SIMULTANEOUSLY "Ctrl" AND "+" KEYS OR BY OTHER METHODS], Strange now to think of you, gone .