Eclipse Rating: Sorry, this product is not currently available. Cast: Alain Delon Monica Vitti

Eclipse Reviews

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Antonioni's Eclipse is a masterpiece!
Michelangelo directed a trilogy of sorts in the 1960s, beginning with his breakthrough film L'Avventura, continuing with La Notte, and ending with my personal favorite, L'Eclisse (The Eclipse). All were preoccupied with the theme of alienation, and all featured more or less neurotic and disaffected performances from the striking actress Monica Vitti (as a blond in L'Avventura and L'Eclisse, and as a brunette in La Notte). L'Eclisse begins with the Vitti character's romantic breakup, and continues with her affair with a young stockbroker. The affair is destined for failure, however, as she ultimately finds it impossible to experience meaningful contact with other people. There are several notable sequences in the film - the dull fatigue of the opening breakup scene, raucous and frenetic scenes in the stock market, even Vitti and her friends dressing up and dancing as African natives! The most striking for me, however, is the final several minutes, in which the lovers have agreed to meet but neither shows up, and we see a series of deserted spots (mostly locales from earlier scenes) in a mounting crescendo of emptiness and apathetic horror. The stark and impersonal "modern" sixties architecture, headlines about nuclear terror, and a quietly eerie and horrific musical score combines to make this one of the most powerful sequences ever filmed. It shocks me to learn that when originally released in America the sequence was cut as extraneous!

It's a shame that this masterpiece is currently out of print. There are copies floating around that are dubbed from British sources, and there are also some from an American release several years ago, which had generally very good picture and subtitle quality. I can only hope that someone, maybe Criterion, chooses to release L'Eclisse on DVD - I would give my right arm to get it!

Brillaint Antonioni. A must!!
For years this film was not available, and when it was made available, only in a dubbed format. The VHS I am reviewing from is fine, but not excellent. DVD engineeers need to get at this film, it is most important in understanding the other two films of Antoninoni, which, with Eclipse, constitute a loose trilogy, with Eclipse as the last entry.The other two: L'Avventura and La Notte, both available on DVD.

The performances here are electrifying, as Monica Vitti and Alain Delon bring out in stark ways the meaninglessness of the so-called high vibration Italian tech world they live in. The conclusion is not be missed, for there is nothing like it in all of cinema.

Try to get a tape, and pray for the DVD to come forth!

Criterion or some other company must get this and re-release it.

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