“There are some nights when holding a needle, a book or a man . . . it’s all the same,” sighs the gorgeous Monica Vitti in L’Eclisse (The Eclipse), reflecting the ennui and anxiety that pervades Antonioni’s groundbreaking 1962 drama.
In a sense, the luscious black-and-white film is stylishly empty, lacking traditional narrative or character development, but the pictures speak much more eloquently than words. The director drums up a series of moods with sequences of brutalist concrete modern flats and the madness of the Rome stock exchange as Vitti’s character, Vittoria, explores different worlds in her search for perfect romantic love. L’Eclisse is the third in a series of similar Antonioni films that includes L’Avventura and La Notte.
In the first long-winded and mostly silent scene, Vittoria breaks up with her sweaty, desperate lover Riccardo (Francisco Rabal) and makes a cool exit, later transferring her affections to Piero (an achingly young Alain Delon) who is a sharp-suited, flash stockbroker.
In the background, the market crashes — with modern resonance — while Piero and Vittoria engage in a slow flirtation that never seems to satisfy either party. Did we care about these beautiful young things? Antonioni seems to prove their very emptiness by removing them from the last eight minutes, filling the same streets with the faces of others, whose stories might be just as important — or not.
Michelangelo Antonioni, PG, 126min
The remastered L’Eclisse is at the BFI and UK cinemas in August and September
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