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Re: L'Eclisse: the third piece of the Antonioni trilogy.

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Pepe Le Loco

In Reply to: L'Eclisse: the third piece of the Antonioni trilogy. posted by tinear on September 27, 2005 at 15:04:07:

One could easily pursue a certain cynical tact completely over the falls and say that a film like L'Eclisse can only be made by a rutheless and implacable intellect shackeled to the sentimental hot heart of a school girl. You wont hear me do that though.
I will say that its got some of what makes BlowUp great, without much at all of what makes it so bad. I allude of course, of the dreaded mimes. Lordy. But there are proto-mimemic flashes in L'Eclisse, and here in the freshness of their earlier inspiration, they are great. Accidently caught in frame from time to time, odd characters pass in the background, without remark, or in the distance through a window. Most of them are understated and flow controlled in a natural organic whole. These minor enigmas of L'Eclisse are as light as clouds and yet for that delicate balance of accident and meaning, as heavy as car wrecks. In time its true that they will explode bloated into the shamelessly mannered utterly baroque dopiness of the Blowup mimes. Here however, they work!
And I agree, just as advertised, L'Eclisse is architecture, or rather it is the articulation of space. Which is of course to say the same thing. Watch the film and feel the existance of lives in the context of the spaces they inhabit, and feel the relationships between people in the context of the spaces the relationships themselves create. Like I could have suggested above, its both beautiful and grimm.

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That would be some scary schoolgirl! Actually, how you could think - tinear 05:05:52 09/29/05 (2)
Vitti's heart is "hot" is beyond me. Neither is it in L'Av. Moreau's character in La Notte has that same disinterested, apathetic, "drifting" persona as well.
Now, regarding Vitti visually... yeah, that's nuclear fusion hot.
- Re: That would be some scary schoolgirl! Actually, how you could think - Pepe Le Loco 10:23:13 09/29/05 (0)
  True indeed, but I was speaking not of Vitti's heart, but rather of Antonioni's.
  The lush sentimental transports necessary to produce the kind of elaborately bleak and disconnected heroine that Vitti embodies in L'Eclisse, can be produced only by an exquisitely sensitive teenage idealism completely stoned on its own sexual passion.
  And a certain inate sympathy for french stuff seems to help too.
  Take a look at Goth culture for another expression of this same accute sentimentallity, which perhaps by coincidence is also often afflicted with francophilic impulses.
- Vitti created quite a few memorable roles, most of them not known here - Victor Khomenko 06:00:58 09/29/05 (0)
  One that I really love is the comedy role of Assunta Patane in La Ragazza con la Pistola, a 1968 film where she plays a Sicilian girl chasing her seducer.
  It is a completely hilarious film in the best Italian humor tradition, and if you can get it - you will have a treat.
  I have a soft spot for Monica...
I'd rate "L'Eclipse" as Alain Delons greatest performance - grinagog 22:11:36 09/28/05 (1)
and "The Passenger" as Jack Nicholsons
Grins
- Without much argument, these two are easy to agree with. - Victor Khomenko 05:55:00 09/29/05 (0)
  Nicholson of course is a more confusing case, with so many picture-perfect roles. But Profession: Reporter is special. I magine - they showed it, right after it came out, in the USSR!

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