278 L'eclisse

[ellipsis7]

THE MYSTERY OF OBERWALD (1981) is a reunion for MA with an older Monica Vitti in a period piece (unusually for him) shot on SD analogue video, where he used the then state-of-art video effects (mainly manipulation of colours) to further his exploration of the cinematic medium and chromatic range... It was commissioned as a piece for Italian television, RAI... The effects and image quality can be seen as pretty primitive now, given the subsequent advances in HD digital technology & CGI effects... Another exception for MA is that the drama was based on a preexisting work by fellow filmmaker (& artist) Jean Cocteau, L'AIGLE A DEUX TETES, written as a play in 1943 and then filmed by the Frenchman in 1948, and again produced by French television in 1975... It is essentially a melodramatic narrative and less characteristic of Antonioni's overall oeuvre... A more familiar trope is however apparent in the concept of two characters doubling or substituting for one another...

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

Thanks! Doesn't sound too thrilling. I guess you would place it in the lower tier of his work? Being a completist, I will have to get around to watching it, although it doesn't sound like a must see...

[ellipsis7]

If not essential, it is nevertheless a key link and interesting engagement with the video culture & technology of the early '80s... Closest comparison I guess is this pop video FOTOROMANZA he made with Gianna Nannini in 1984...

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

Interesting. Thanks, I will have to check it out.

By the way, I was lucky enough to catch a 35mm showing of Chung Kuo. Even though it's a documentary, I think that it's a shame that it is too often neglected in his filmography. Quite a striking, sometimes disconcerting, and in many ways unique look at China that no Western director would be allowed to film today, I think.

[ellipsis7]

That 35mm print would have been a blowup from the original Super 16mm negative on which it is shot... I was in Beijing last November (my eldest son is based for work in China & speaks fluent Mandarin) & it was fascinating to see some of MA's locations in the flesh & old men playing Mahjong oblivious to any political climate or cultural change while the ancient & modern are unjarringly juxtaposed in cause of progess forward rooted in the past, a lot of contradictions coexisting if not reconciled, so I don't know if I agree with your point... This Senses of Cinema article gives an interesting perspective on CHUNG KUO CINA from a Chinese point of view...

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

Thanks for the link - I'll have to look into that when I have the time. And yes, it was blown up from 16mm, but still amazing to watch it on film.

[criterionoop]

This preorder page appeared on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/LEclisse-Blu-ray ... PDKIKX0DER

I'm guessing that Criterion is doing a Blu-ray only edition (though it lists Sony Pictures Home Entertainment as the studio)

[FrauBlucher]

I think they mean Sony is the distributor, who distributes the physical media for the Criterion Collection.

[Yaanu]

I noted in the "Criterion and Dual-Format" thread a few days ago that L'eclisse is listed on the website as "Buy on Amazon.com", so your guess is probably accurate.

[oh yeah]

I guess this explains why the Criterion dual-format edition was out of stock and going for a minimum of $300-400 from Amazon sellers about a week ago, and is now gone altogether (though Best Buy seems to still have it listed for $27.99 in case anyone's interested!)

[black&huge]

So I've been wanting to get the current blu but I read studiocanal did a restoration in 2015 and to my knowledge there exists no physical media releade of it? Isn't studiocanal letting Criterion license again? I know the criterion blu apparently uses the master as their old dvd just wonderimg if I should hold off

[tenia]

Criterion uses indeed their older HD master, and Canal used the same master in France in 2015. I'm not sure if a new restoration exists.

[therewillbeblus]

I agree Murdoch with this being one of the scenes where Vitti’s character Vittoria manages to lose herself for a moment in abandon at being another person, in another world with other values, though I would disagree about Marta being totally ‘imperialist’ in her attitudes. I feel this is quite a complex and fascinating scene if you can look beyond the superficially shocking image of our lead character blacking up and performing an African dance.

Marta does not just have these pictures and mementos of her ‘trips’ abroad - she was obviously raised in Kenya herself from her comments about her father still having a farm there and making the effort to return to have her son in the hospital there “because it’s home”. She also does not shoot the rifle out of the window on a whim but when her urban Italian friend Vittoria asks her to shoot the balloon while she and Piero watch.

There is a colonialist aspect to be noted from Marta, as there is the sense of feeling in her comments and collection of photographs and mementos that she ‘appreciates’ the environment more than the black people, who being natives of the land with little opportunity to see the outside world, know nothing different.

She is obviously homesick for Kenya but appears to be in Italy because she fears the situation has become unstable as black people start wanting rights to the land and to hold positions of authority themselves. Yet she also feels a stranger and isolated in urban Italy, tied to waiting for her husband to come home in a way she probably was not in Kenya – another form of urban alienation.

This contrasts interestingly with Vittoria who is an urban character. She is fascinated by all of the artefacts in Marta’s apartment – the pictures, the elephant foot table, the music – and in the blacked up dance seems to be enjoying the idea of being part of a more ancient culture with clearly defined roles that contrasts so much with the confusing modern world where the emotional aspect of life is cut off and starved by perceived lack of importance over ‘physical’ goals like making money (which eventually in the stock exchange scenes seem extremely intangible and illusory in themselves). Vittoria seems to be wishing to be part of a society where the spirit and the body are more in harmony with each other, and so loses herself in the play acting.

Marta seems well aware that her urban Italian neighbours are having fun with playing Africans and learning about Africa but have no real connection to the country itself. Marta may be feeling that Vittoria and Anita are using Africa, the objects in Marta’s flat and Marta herself (as in the scene where her shooting skills are called upon later) as another casual distraction – an exotic but momentary distraction. Much as Anita taking Vittoria beyond the clouds on an airplane journey proves a transcendent, but fleeting, experience too. The presence of the two African pilots at the airport café also seems to link the two sequences together in filmic intent as well as in Vittoria’s mind.

That leads to Marta cutting short the African dance, and maybe the causal fun of Vittoria and Anita also touches a nerve, not just of seeing beloved objects and settings that you feel a deep connection to used in an offhand manner (although Vittoria and Anita likely didn’t mean any offence to Marta in their actions), but also that perhaps her own attitude could have been similar – projecting her own ideals and fears onto a nation and its people who she may soon realise have an entirely different set of ideas about what and who they are as a nation or a culture than she does.

This leads to Marta’s cruel comments when they are relaxing on the bed about the lack of ability of Africans to govern themselves, apart from a few who have been educated abroad (and therefore taught the ‘proper’ values of the modern world). These comments are likely based on Marta’s real feelings but perhaps the overly cruel and blunt nature of them is intended to shock her insulated, complacent friends with their comments about it being the correct thing for Africans to govern themselves – accepted wisdom, but perhaps something Vittoria or Anita have not really had to think about too deeply because it is not something that has directly impacted on them. It feels like more of an attack on insulated complacency of her companions than on Africans themselves which in most other ways she feels more of an, albeit landowning colonialist, connection to, as well as the comments containing an element of self comforting about the need for white rule to maintain order.

This also finds humorous expression in the scene which follows as Marta’s dog, a black poodle, makes another of what seem to be many attempts to escape from her apartment, and then when caught up to does a little standing-on-its-hind-legs show for Vittoria’s own private amusement!

For the film itself the connection to Africa is also a well made one – in Vittoria’s fascination with the distant country it makes explicit the comparison of the beautiful but hostile environment with Rome’s own achingly beautiful, but hostile to life in its own way, environment. At one point Anita wonders if Marta was ever scared of being attacked by a hippopotamus and Marta laughs and asks if Anita was ever scared of cars, as they are as much of Anita’s environment, and as dangerous, as hippopotamuses were for hers. I often think that this parallels with the later scene of the drunk stealing Piero’s flashy sports car and then being pulled dead from the lake in which it crashed. There are people in peril and dying even in this modern world as their inner turmoil overcomes their common sense to potentially dangerous situations.

It is another perfectly judged sequence in an absolutely magnificent film as a whole – raising a whole range of inflammatory and complex issues, sketching in all these contradictory attitudes and actions the characters show and, as throughout the rest of the film, showing the way emotions affect actions and attitudes without the film itself becoming over emotional in its perspective on the situation.

Loved rereading this look at the blackface scene, which played for me this time in a very different way. Regardless of what's offensive externally, in a vacuum Vitti is successfully able to fit into a role that is allowed (through 'play') to be nothing more complex than a stereotype. There's a problematic element to how and why that is, but it's also a beautiful moment for her character. She gets to escape the pain for just a moment and connect to something, if not someone. I think of the line directly prior, when Anita comes over, and Vitti says something like, 'sometimes having a man around and having a needle and thread are the same thing' - and how reducing significance to objects, including the process of objectification, seems to be the resilient way Vitti can engage with her world.

And that leads to the depressing kicker - the only meaningful way to participate is to do so with figures that cannot reciprocate, but it's safer to engage with them because it's easier to accept this. We don't expect a stone wall to return our affections, but we do expect a human being to, and so there's less room for disappointment. It's also a theoretical basis for colonialism - in the absence of true community and affection that can satisfy, man is isolated, individualistic, and lonely, and thus turns to power through conquering submissive societies. Just as one can do by moving through physical space without a voice, or embodying a culture without a presence to object. Vitti loves and hates these things, and everything in between - she doesn't know how to feel any more towards 'things' than people, but at least she can arrive at a concrete decision and leave it there without consequences - she clearly loves fashion, and yet will say. "when clothes tear, it's their own fault" - though this feels like just as much of a metaphor for how people diffuse opportunities at responsibility as a stand-in for a chance at connection. In the blackface scene, Vitti's actions are externally offensive, if not for racist reasons at this period than for stealing a host's thunder, usurping her culture, diluting its value to her, or whatever. Social intimacy has barriers everywhere because we're so on edge and untrusting, partially because we don't really understand the emotions driving us.

This has never been a top Antonioni for me, though I do think it's a great film. What I find particularly amusing is in how the scenes in L'Avventura of Vitti playing around in the less-contained back half contrast with her meandering moments in this film. In the earlier movie, she's most captivating when reacting on the island on the hunt - perhaps because we're watching the beginning of an evolution take hold; irreversible sobriety settling in - and the second half piles on the banality, until it becomes immense suffering and breaks the couple, as it did Anna.

Here, in L'Eclisse, that's been established well before the first scene, and so we get a very strange intro to this film, where the entire first half is devoid of the central romance and functions like a fascinating version of L'Avventura's second half - where Vitti basks in her environments more resiliently, an air of novelty coats each moment that she greets life with such curiosity, attention, and enthusiasm. She's still depressed and suffocating, but breaks free from the lifelessness still suffocating Vitti's character in L'Avventura far more (her moments of joy are fleeting in both contexts, but -outside of active lovemaking in L'Avventura- feel more prevalent here; excluding her pre-'awakening', pre-disappearance in the first film, of course). Then the actual romance in L'Eclisse comes off as boring and unimportant, which may mirror relationships in Antonioni movies, but structurally works as a more concentrated episode like L'Avventura's first hour. Except that it quickly breaks from that, becoming more like its first part, Antonioni so disinterested in the utility of the relationship (which, I'd argue, is because both parties immediately acknowledge to themselves that there is little known, partially a sensation they fight against in the quest to understand emotions and connect), leading to more meandering engagements.

It's as if Antonioni was only allotting so much utility to the actual 'relationship' in L'Avventura because it was a vehicle for existential whiplash, and now that we're dropping in on characters who have acclimated (if not quite 'adjusted', because what red-blooded creature fully can?) to this kind of sterile isolation, "serious" attempts at connection refract back into defensive play. It's a less jarring contrast between sections, bleeding into one another like a vicious cycle of Vitti's relationships we never saw the start of before it ended for the film's first quarter. I get why Scorsese calls this the most ambitious Antonioni, even if it's not my favorite. Though I like how Antonioni can ostensibly imitate himself but - as Sloper said on the same page as colin's post - dish in divergent tones so as to give these scenes entirely novel feels. I don't feel the same kind of distress in this film as I did in the first of the tetralogy, but I do feel a lot more tranquility and aggression and irreparable obstacles to connection permeating the ennui. Even if the central couple has more fun together, they're also clearly more 'broken' by now, and the bare thread of hope that still exists in L'Avventura has been pulled out.

[colinr0380]

Thanks for the kind words twbbs! I needed some time to process L'eclisse again, so sorry for the delay in posting a reply!

I don't feel the same kind of distress in this film as I did in the first of the tetralogy, but I do feel a lot more tranquility and aggression and irreparable obstacles to connection permeating the ennui. Even if the central couple has more fun together, they're also clearly more 'broken' by now, and the bare thread of hope that still exists in L'Avventura has been pulled out.

I think this is why I love L'eclisse the most, as this is kind of a dystopian world without a bomb having dropped (as yet), in which characters are wandering through the achingly gorgeous and fully humanly manufactured urban environments that have been created for them to inhabit, work and live inside. But they do not seem to be functioning properly on a psychological level, to such an extent that it ends up making the human behaviours taking place within the location feel passionless or even in the stock exchange scenes parodically empty of actual real meaning. I particularly love that really abstract 'end of a relationship' scene at the start of the film, where all the words have been spoken and nothing remains to be said before the film even began. The gorgeously modern shared home functionally designed around the needs of intimate relationship for a couple is unable in and of itself to keep the couple together, and so despite performing all of the functional tasks (including shaving!), the couple just fall back on rote surface level behaviours before the inevitable parting.

It could be seen as a film about alienation, although as therewillbeblus points out, the characters are trying to function in the world, rather than feeling apart from it. Vittoria is wanting to connect with people - a new lover, her friend, Marta in her apartment, even a dog! - but they are all fleeting connections, as if both parties know how tenuous their connections to each other really are. The characters try to forge connections through objects and shared experiences - the aircraft flight, Marta's flat and the objects within, the visit to Piero at the Stock Exchange - but the bond is all too brief and often superficial. An outsider's view of the abstract event, rather than having an actual connection to the lived experience. And the two relationships that Vittoria has both have that same quality, as if the characters are outside of themselves and aware of how they are performing the actions of a love scene, or a break up, from a remove rather than actually emotionally committing to the act.

Which leads to that stunning final sequence going back to the abstraction of the opening, although without any audience identification characters left at all, just the world that was made for them to physically exist in but without any emotional or psychological links left to give any motivation to setting up a life there, and which now autonomously (and anonymously!) exists without any main characters at all. Where L'Avventura has rugged islands, fishermen's shacks, boat trips, plazas full of roaming men, cathedrals and opulent mansions; L'eclisse has building sites, officially sanctioned green spaces, pedestrian crossings on empty intersections, the concrete facades and glass frontages of apartment buildings, and the contrails of high flying aircraft.

[therewillbeblus]

I particularly love that really abstract 'end of a relationship' scene at the start of the film, where all the words have been spoken and nothing remains to be said before the film even began.

And yet, even after a night of (ostensible) bickering, laying cards on the table, etc., Vitti's beau still acts as if the fighting, points therein, and breaking up was all meaningless. His reaction clearly notes a fragility in the dynamic, but the attitude maintains a "So, we're good, right?" - as if, in this confusing and terrifyingly-alienating world, it's not feasible to even entertain the idea of breaking away from a resource, toxic or otherwise. This mirrors modern relationship dynamics all too well, as the world as only become increasingly alienating and people more consciously and demonstrably co-dependent.

The characters try to forge connections through objects and shared experiences - the aircraft flight, Marta's flat and the objects within, the visit to Piero at the Stock Exchange - but the bond is all too brief and often superficial. An outsider's view of the abstract event, rather than having an actual connection to the lived experience. And the two relationships that Vittoria has both have that same quality, as if the characters are outside of themselves and aware of how they are performing the actions of a love scene, or a break up, from a remove rather than actually emotionally committing to the act.

Which leads to that stunning final sequence going back to the abstraction of the opening, although without any audience identification characters left at all, just the world that was made for them to physically exist in but without any emotional or psychological links left to give any motivation to setting up a life there, and which now autonomously (and anonymously!) exists without any main characters at all. Where L'Avventura has rugged islands, fishermen's shacks, boat trips, plazas full of roaming men, cathedrals and opulent mansions; L'eclisse has building sites, officially sanctioned green spaces, pedestrian crossings on empty intersections, the concrete facades and glass frontages of apartment buildings, and the contrails of high flying aircraft.

I like how you said that - the attempt of characters to "forge connections through objects and shared experiences" - viewed as a form of adaptability, perhaps in response to your last paragraph's reading of the final sequence: Inanimate spaces and structures have 'evolved' to autonomy as mankind has -not exactly remained static or regressed- but not evolved as the same rate (which is also true of our own human evolution compared to external progress in the last century/longer).

You hint at a contrast of how the Delon relationship fizzles differently than the initial one. It's more mutual, respectful, and operating under the same logic of avoiding inevitable pain. In that way, it's ironically more harmonious, intimate, and they are more suited as a couple - they get each other's response to this world! They get the fear! How depressing - to decide to call it quits for no reason other than the awareness of the void, both see it, and not realize the importance of that mutual recognition. I'm not saying they make the 'wrong' choice, but there's something extra depressing about the notion that - if these two people in simpatico cannot have hope of a union, who can? Perhaps only the ignorant, but even someone who fits that profile like Delon cannot ignore the fears protecting/preventing him from vulnerability and intimacy.

Which is partially why I find the "forge connections through objects and shared experiences" so potent. This relationship transcends the objects into experience, which I think is often felt on a higher level of connection, certainly within Antonioni's worlds. However, this all works as a precursor for Red Desert's finale, when Vitti says something about how we are all "separate" in bodily form, and this translates to psychological problems, since 'if you prick me, you feel no pain, but I do'. There's something fundamental about our disconnection, it seems, exacerbated by a busier external life where people have more burdens, distractions, work, priorities, and so relationships become neglected, and more pain is induced without note. But then she says 'everything I go through becomes who I am', a somewhat optimistic reframe about how experience shapes me regardless of my pain, fears, disappointments, struggles, etc. and that this is inherently meaningful.

The connections-thru-objects fits a cultural pivot to connection around things, after accepting that trying it through only experience won't be fulfilling to everyone, from evidence just mentioned - as the world evolves into becomes more consuming, we need to locate new ways to feel connected. I'm sure this was fitting for the period, but it feels even more relevant today, or more scarily, perhaps it's cyclical. For what was to come - an attempt at purely experiential connection in the Flower Power movement in the 60s - quickly gave way to commodification and a Gen X attitude to engage around things with signifiers we can share, after Boomers failed at their own attempts and eventually sold out, letting down the next generation. Obviously this is a simplistic and not particularly well-developed or fair portrait of generational divide, but the point is more that we resiliently pivot to figuring out how to maintain safe connections, even if -sadly- distanced, as a consequence of an unsafe net of a world to contain us.

[colinr0380]

I particularly love that really abstract 'end of a relationship' scene at the start of the film, where all the words have been spoken and nothing remains to be said before the film even began.

And yet, even after a night of (ostensible) bickering, laying cards on the table, etc., Vitti's beau still acts as if the fighting, points therein, and breaking up was all meaningless. His reaction clearly notes a fragility in the dynamic, but the attitude maintains a "So, we're good, right?" - as if, in this confusing and terrifyingly-alienating world, it's not feasible to even entertain the idea of breaking away from a resource, toxic or otherwise. This mirrors modern relationship dynamics all too well, as the world as only become increasingly alienating and people more consciously and demonstrably co-dependent.

Especially because that first beau Riccardo reveals that he does care a bit about the relationship as he gets that brief moment a couple of scenes later where he is seen roaming outside of Vittoria's apartment, as if trying to run into her again. It is almost as if he is now in his own L'avventura-style state of wandering, only this time the searcher is the one who disappears from the film, never to be seen again, and nobody really cares to notice his absence.

[therewillbeblus]

And Vitti also searches - it’s as if there are two options: Move on and find something and become complacent all over again, or move on and find something but use ‘wisdom’ to consciously detach. There’s no option of consciously staying together and doing the work, so the ‘Higher’ or “mature” option is.. to consciously alienate oneself from connection? Either way is depressing - to think that the only discernible intervention to break from a Sisyphean pattern is self-destructive

[colinr0380]

I agree, although in some ways the ending sequence of the disappearance of both of the lead characters after their plans to meet up again at that significant from earlier in their relationship intersection at the building site can be felt in multiple ways. The couple are so detached that they could not even bother to meet each other, but isn't that better than just one or the other of them turning up and being left jilted by the other? Maybe the fear of that happening prevented either of them from, as you say, putting the work in and making themselves vulnerable enough by showing their true feelings that they could potentially be dumped. So in the last scene in which the characters meet, there is that sense that both know things have ended but refuse to say it outright and make the plan to meet up as a kind of empty gesture that both know isn't a real one, to spare each other the need to say "its over". Which in a way sheds light on the abstract opening scene too, as perhaps having ended in the same fashion without a big argument or anything as dramatic as that, but just an mutual exhaustion with continuing the pretence.

But also I like the idea that the empty environment can be seen positively in some ways, especially if we see the urban environment itself as the alienating catalyst for the crisis in the character's relationships. By neither character turning up to the pedestrian crossing and meeting up at the building site, and leaving aside whether they have definitively broken up or will ever meet again, perhaps it could be seen as a sign of the characters having abandoned that stultifying environment for pastures new (or an anticipation of the escape into the desert wilderness of Zabriske Point, before that film's own epic finale involving the glorious multi-angled and slow-mo'ed almost psychic destruction of the conveniences and trappings of modernist life). It is just that the film, and we the audience, have ourselves been abandoned within that environment at the end, left scanning that location and being occasionally excited by the appearance of people who briefly look like our main couple only to be disappointed that they are not. In some ways that building site is significant as the ultimate metanym of the film (or to use a more current term, a "liminal space") that is expressing that idea, as the in between state poised between being an empty patch of ground or a finished building, and which could potentially go either way depending on whether the project is completed or not.