Review of L'Eclisse (1962) by Jesse L — 11 Apr 2005

(DVD) (2nd Viewing, 6 Antonioni Films Seen).

The visuals alone are more than enough reason to adore this film- especially now with the Criterion release, which is some of the best work they've done Antonioni's black and white compositions are simply phenomenal, and I'm hard pressed to think of another screen couple who are so equally matched in their physical beauty than the statuesque Vitti and the restless Delon are in this film.

But of course there's so much more going on than simply pretty pictures of pretty people being paraded on a screen (even, or especially, during the famous closing montage). I need to now go back and take a look at both L'AVVENTURA and LA NOTTE, but I like the progression of Antonioni's vision and examination of isolation and disaffectedness in contemporary society in this loose trilogy. Sometimes the sheer aesthetic beauty of the images border on fetishizing the very concept of ennui, but I think there is something to be said of an artist who finds this kind of sublimity in such supposedly banal subject matter. This time around I was most impressed at how Antonioni finds a way to reduce human interaction to its most abstract level and get away with it, and it's interesting how Antonioni seems to indicate that human interaction in the modern world only seems able to take place within the public/business sector (represented in the stock market), while connection on a one-on-one basis proves elusive.

Further viewings are in order before I even begin to grasp how this films manage to work in spite of itself, but with a film like this I'll happily invest that kind of commitment. I can easily see this film becoming one of my all-time favorite films.