L'ECLISSE (1962)

I've recently been revisiting the Michelangelo Antonioni alienation films of the 60s and 70s. I saw them many years ago but realized I had not reviewed most of them for this blog, only LA NOTTE. As Susan Doll notes on the Turner Classic Movies website, the director "abandoned the clarity, logic, and directness of classical modes of filmmaking, preferring intentionally vague characters in tenuous narratives that remain open-ended and disorienting." The films can be a bit of a slog, but I don’t mind rewatching them for their stark settings and interesting visual style, and for the pretty people who act in them. This one wins in terms of smokin' hot leads: Monica Vitti (who was in many of his movies) and Alain Delon, but it is probably the slackest of the bunch in terms of narrative drive. We begin at dawn by watching the end of a long relationship between Vitti and a slightly older writer (Francisco Rabal) for whom she does translation work. They have spent all night in his apartment hashing out their problems—he looks all in, but as Viiti tends to do, she looks ravishing. She finally leaves and, though he follows her through an urban desert setting (the movie is set in a corner of Rome in which urban buildings and streets end next to stark empty plains), he leaves when she arrives at her apartment. Later in the day, Vitti visits her mother at the stock exchange where she is an active dabbler, and Vitti meets her mother's stockbroker, the young and handsome Alain Delon, who is quite the stock market hustler. That night, Vitti meets up with some friends who debate the issue of colonialism in Africa while Vitti puts on blackface and dances, making the others uncomfortable even though one of the women refers to African natives as "monkeys." The next day, Vitti and Delon meet, and as they get further involved, he takes her to his wealthy parents' house where she tells him, "Two people shouldn't know too much about each other if they want to fall in love." They spend a couple of days hanging out and having sex, though they don't actually seem to be having fun, or getting particularly close in other ways. They make plans to meet that evening, but in a seven-minute sequence at the end in which the camera prowls the streets, they appear to stand each other up.

I wrote in my notes that Monica Vitti had perfected a "resting alienation face" which she uses for much of this movie. She is beautiful and sexy even when suffering from existential angst. Delon is more lively and less preoccupied with worrisome thoughts, but he has his own angst—his relationship with his family seems dicey, his behavior at the stock exchange is not always on the level, and before Vitti, his romantic encounters seem to have been with high-class hookers. When the two are on screen together, I can forgive the narrative doldrums. Francisco Rabal (pictured with Vitti) is only in the film for a while in the beginning, but he makes a strong impression as a man who seems exhausted by life (or maybe he's just exhausted by Vitti). Rabal can’t compete with the two stars in terms of looks, but he is a handsome man. In my notes, I referred to him as an older man, but Rabal was only five years older than Vitti, so he just looks more mature, more beaten down by life, perhaps. The settings, all drawn from real life, are fascinating, sometimes more interesting than what's happening with the actors. Of Antonioni's films of this era, this, at two hours, is probably the hardest to sit through without taking a break. I don't typically take breaks while watching films at home, but I did fidget quite a bit now and then. Still, a worthwhile experience for 60s film buffs. [Criterion Channel]