Vitti's elegant languor is contrasted with the cacophony of the Rome stock exchange, which is the director's metaphor for the madness of unrestrained capitalism.
The Eclipse (1962)
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Reviews Counted:15
Fresh:13
Rotten:2
Average Rating:7.4/10
Theatrical Release:17-06-2005
Synopsis: Michaelangelo Antonioni's L'ECLISSE (ECLIPSE) is a visually stunning film with a strange, abstract plotline. Monica Vitti stars as Vittoria, a beautiful woman who, in the opening scene of the... Michaelangelo Antonioni's L'ECLISSE (ECLIPSE) is a visually stunning film with a strange, abstract plotline. Monica Vitti stars as Vittoria, a beautiful woman who, in the opening scene of the movie, dumps her boring boyfriend Riccardo (Francisco Rabal). Vittoria's mother (Lilla Brignone) passes her time at the stock exchange, watching the numbers rise and fall as if her whole life depends on the next high or low. In contrast, Vittoria wanders the streets of the city unhindered, dreaming, floating independently and waiting for whatever fate befalls her. She begins an affair with a powerful, handsome, emotionally vacant stockbroker, Piero (Alain Delon). Their relationship is fun, flirtatious, risky, and dangerous all at once--but mostly, it is an expression of true human affection, which the other characters in L'ECLISSE seem to lack. However, the plot of L'ECLISSE is hardly Antonioni's focus. As sweeping pans of the calm, dusty streets mix with the intense cacophony of the stock exchange, the director compares and contrasts the structure of city life with the still, silent aspects of a more natural environment, observing society's evolution into a technological monolith. L'ECLISSE is part of a trilogy of Antonioni films, along with LA NOTTE and L'AVVENTURA. [More]
Starring: Monica Vitti, Alain Delon, Francisco Rabal, Lilla Brignone
Starring: Monica Vitti, Alain Delon, Francisco Rabal, Lilla Brignone, Rosanna Rory
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Screenwriter: Michelangelo Antonioni, Tonino Guerra
Producer: Raymond Hakim, Robert Hakim
Composer: Giovanni Fusco
Reviews for The Eclipse
The characters' emotional twilight is unsettlingly conveyed by this piece of celluloid mood music.
Anyone disenchanted with the vacuity of later Antonioni will find the seeds of their dissatisfaction well-rooted in the mannerism and facile anguish evident here.
The vitality Vitti displays makes her absence deeply felt in the film's infamously ambiguous final scenes.
Vitti once again proves an ideal performer for Antonioni's thematics in what is probably her best role to date.
One watches -- and, perhaps more importantly, hears -- the modern world through his rendering of emotion, architecture, chaos, boredom, silence, and incommunicability.
All there is to the drama -- a prolonged detailed illustration of the moody surrender of the woman to a rare and elusive love. This takes, for its full illumination, a few minutes over two hours.
...sit back, suppress the subtitles so they don't distract you from the images and let the 125-minute movie suspend and substitute your consciousness like the moon passing in front the sun.
Because Antonioni shoots characters and places in ways that make them look unfamiliar, the impact makes the slow pacing and lack of clarity not just endurable, but ecstatic.
while one feels the passion that Antonioni puts into his movies, one also gets the slightest sense of a wish that he'd go ahead and grow up a little already
[In] Antonioni's version of science fiction, he allows the incredible to be implied.
The conclusion of Michelangelo Antonioni's loose trilogy (preceded by L'Avventura and La Notte), this 1961 film is conceivably the best in Antonioni's career, but significantly it has the least consequential plot.
Latest News for The Eclipse
July 31, 2007:
Remembering Michelangelo Antonioni
Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, who gave the world such influential films as L'Avventura, Blow-Up, and The Passenger, died Monday at the age of 94. More...
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