So, I finally saw the third installment in the famous alienation trilogy (the other two movies in it being La Notte and L'Avventura). All three star Monica Vitti, Antonioni's muse of the time and girlfriend of four years' standing. Typically, L'Eclisse starts with a break-up, that of bourgeoise Vittoria (played by Vitti) and her equally bourgeois fiancé Riccardo (Rabal). The movie also ends with a break-up of sorts
or rather, the conclusion of a fledgling affair that fizzles out before it even has a chance to live, however briefly. In fact, this so-called "love affair" would have probably been but the external shell of an emotional union between a man and a woman. The rightly famous final sequence of the movie is indeed memorable - I cannot fault Martin Scorsese for gushing about it as he does in his homage to classic Italian cinema, My Voyage to Italy. I can't imagine any film student not being advised to watch the last 10 minutes of L'Eclisse by a wise course teacher.
Alain Delon could not have been better cast as a shallow and materialistic, young proto-yuppie prat. Though she was only on screen for a brief while, I admired the performance of Lilla Brignone as Vittoria's Stock Exchange-obsessed mother, completely oblivious to her daughter's emotional states throughout.
Monica Vitti, with a wardrobe as varied and flattering as Maggie Cheung's in In the Mood for Love, looks beautiful but is possibly the weakest, or most predictable of the movie's performers. It's often not in Antonioni movies that I've enjoyed her performances the most. In my view Vitti is mostly in her element as a comedienne, more specifically in the tragi-comedies known as commedie all'italiana. This is the genre that she is mostly associated with in Italy anyway, often with Alberto Sordi as a co-star. Antonioni seems to get slightly affected, over-stylised performances out of Vitti. I never get a sense that the actress fully enjoyed working for her then-boyfriend. I suppose, though, that Monica's natural comic timing and slightly goofy manner could never have been put to good use in something called "the alienation trilogy"! The nocturnal sequences of Vitti and her neighbour visiting their strange Anglophone acquaintance, whose home looks like a caricature African colonialist's haven, added some subtly dark humour and a surreal touch to the central part of the movie. When the three women go looking for the African-born expat's escaped poodle, I smilingly realised how many different forms a comedy moment can take.
Last but not least, as a Roman born in 1972, I was fascinated to see the smart but cold suburb known as EUR (originally founded by Mussolini) as it looked in the early 60s, when whole sections of it were still only half-built and semi-deserted. It was indeed an architectural embodiment of alienation! If Antonioni had been an architect, he probably would have been a brilliant one, as he completely understands what effect urban and architectural spaces have on human states of mind.
Alain Delon could not have been better cast as a shallow and materialistic, young proto-yuppie prat. Though she was only on screen for a brief while, I admired the performance of Lilla Brignone as Vittoria's Stock Exchange-obsessed mother, completely oblivious to her daughter's emotional states throughout.
Monica Vitti, with a wardrobe as varied and flattering as Maggie Cheung's in In the Mood for Love, looks beautiful but is possibly the weakest, or most predictable of the movie's performers. It's often not in Antonioni movies that I've enjoyed her performances the most. In my view Vitti is mostly in her element as a comedienne, more specifically in the tragi-comedies known as commedie all'italiana. This is the genre that she is mostly associated with in Italy anyway, often with Alberto Sordi as a co-star. Antonioni seems to get slightly affected, over-stylised performances out of Vitti. I never get a sense that the actress fully enjoyed working for her then-boyfriend. I suppose, though, that Monica's natural comic timing and slightly goofy manner could never have been put to good use in something called "the alienation trilogy"! The nocturnal sequences of Vitti and her neighbour visiting their strange Anglophone acquaintance, whose home looks like a caricature African colonialist's haven, added some subtly dark humour and a surreal touch to the central part of the movie. When the three women go looking for the African-born expat's escaped poodle, I smilingly realised how many different forms a comedy moment can take.
Last but not least, as a Roman born in 1972, I was fascinated to see the smart but cold suburb known as EUR (originally founded by Mussolini) as it looked in the early 60s, when whole sections of it were still only half-built and semi-deserted. It was indeed an architectural embodiment of alienation! If Antonioni had been an architect, he probably would have been a brilliant one, as he completely understands what effect urban and architectural spaces have on human states of mind.