278 L'eclisse
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ellipsis7
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 5:56 pm
- Location: Dublin
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Gordon
- Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2004 12:03 pm
Does anyone have any idea who owns the rights to The Red Desert?
I came this close to ordering the Italian DVD (which has no English subtitles) but I thought I'd better check here first. Having the incomplete Trilogy will start to bug me over the coming months, I just know it!
I have also heard that Sony Picture Classics may be releasing a new print of Professione: Reporter pretty soon - is this true? There have been various Antonioni retrospectives recently and it would be great to see it on DVD also, along with Zabriskie Point. We also need a decent DVD of La Notte.
I came this close to ordering the Italian DVD (which has no English subtitles) but I thought I'd better check here first. Having the incomplete Trilogy will start to bug me over the coming months, I just know it!
I have also heard that Sony Picture Classics may be releasing a new print of Professione: Reporter pretty soon - is this true? There have been various Antonioni retrospectives recently and it would be great to see it on DVD also, along with Zabriskie Point. We also need a decent DVD of La Notte.
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Michael
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 4:09 pm
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zedz
- Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 11:24 pm
I don't think anyone needs to get overly worried about not having the whole trilogy / tetralogy on hand (though the sooner they're out the better, obviously). All of the films stand alone (and for my money L'Eclisse and L'Avventura are the best of them). One's understanding of the filmmaker's aesthetic is enriched by seeing all of the films, but the films are as good on their own as they are considered as parts of a larger structure. In fact, I think Red Desert is better considered in isolation.
To the best of my knowledge, Antonioni acknowledged the trilogy, but not a tetralogy, and the lumping of all four films together seems a little lazy to me (so the director isn't allowed to recast his leading lady or revisit certain themes unless it's part of a grand project?). What really distinguishes Red Desert from the preceding films is its use of colour: it closes off one phase of the director's career while opening up the next.
Tacking Red Desert onto the end of the trilogy both minimises what's distinctive about that film and compromises the integrity of the progression we see in the three black and white films. The closing sequence of L'Eclisse seems to me a very deliberate extension of the increasingly pessimistic tableaux of alienation that conclude L'Avventura and La Notte. That sequence certainly feels like a point of no return, a definite conclusion, and the switch to colour with his next film makes sense as a break with the past.
After that kind of bleak intensity, if Red Desert is considered a continuation, it's a bit of a letdown, or at least a side-step: it works much better as its own film, with its own concerns, and as the opportunity for a whole new kind of visual experimentation.
To the best of my knowledge, Antonioni acknowledged the trilogy, but not a tetralogy, and the lumping of all four films together seems a little lazy to me (so the director isn't allowed to recast his leading lady or revisit certain themes unless it's part of a grand project?). What really distinguishes Red Desert from the preceding films is its use of colour: it closes off one phase of the director's career while opening up the next.
Tacking Red Desert onto the end of the trilogy both minimises what's distinctive about that film and compromises the integrity of the progression we see in the three black and white films. The closing sequence of L'Eclisse seems to me a very deliberate extension of the increasingly pessimistic tableaux of alienation that conclude L'Avventura and La Notte. That sequence certainly feels like a point of no return, a definite conclusion, and the switch to colour with his next film makes sense as a break with the past.
After that kind of bleak intensity, if Red Desert is considered a continuation, it's a bit of a letdown, or at least a side-step: it works much better as its own film, with its own concerns, and as the opportunity for a whole new kind of visual experimentation.
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Michael
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 4:09 pm
I agree with you, zedz.
La Notte is okay ... Jeanne Moreau is wonderful but Marcello Mastroianni and Monica Vitta seem uncertain or uncomfortable with their roles. Red Desert is disappointing despite the beautiful palette of colors and Monica Vitti.
But L' Avventura and L' Eclisse = absolute perfection. They can stand on their own.. forget trilogy, forget tetralogy.
La Notte is okay ... Jeanne Moreau is wonderful but Marcello Mastroianni and Monica Vitta seem uncertain or uncomfortable with their roles. Red Desert is disappointing despite the beautiful palette of colors and Monica Vitti.
But L' Avventura and L' Eclisse = absolute perfection. They can stand on their own.. forget trilogy, forget tetralogy.
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swingo
- Joined: Fri Dec 31, 2004 2:35 pm
- Location: Mexico City
Haven't seen Il Grido, is it any good?Michael wrote:I agree with you, zedz.
La Notte is okay ... Jeanne Moreau is wonderful but Marcello Mastroianni and Monica Vitta seem uncertain or uncomfortable with their roles. Red Desert is disappointing despite the beautiful palette of colors and Monica Vitti.
But L' Avventura and L' Eclisse = absolute perfection. They can stand on their own.. forget trilogy, forget tetralogy.
Axel.
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zedz
- Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 11:24 pm
NY Times rave:
Released in 1962, "L'Eclisse" ("The Eclipse") followed "L'Avventura" (1960) and "La Notte" (1961) as the concluding film in Michelangelo Antonioni's trilogy on alienation and desire. It is the most radical film of a highly experimental group, and as time passes it increasingly seems to be the most pure and perfect expression of Mr. Antonioni's pioneering modernist sensibility.
Both "L'Avventura" and "La Notte" are reluctant narratives that seem ready to wander away from their ostensible story lines (a woman disappears on a yachting trip, a Milanese couple struggle with their disintegrating marriage) and lose themselves in the objects and textures that surround the characters.
In "L'Eclisse," Mr. Antonioni completes his break with storytelling. The film begins as Vittoria, a Roman translator played by Monica Vitti, ends her relationship with a passive, brooding novelist (Francisco Rabal), and ends as Vittoria seemingly runs out on a budding relationship with a hyperactive, unreflective stock trader (Alain Delon).
But Vittoria's gaze - the extension of Mr. Antonioni's own - frequently turns away from the melodramatic matters at hand, becoming lost in the arrangements of items on a table, transfixed by a bit of wood bobbing in a water-filled barrel, or drawn away to the treetops and mysterious towers that surround her apartment building in an eerily empty Fascist-era suburb.
It's as if Vittoria, and the film along with her, was shrugging off her narrative responsibilities, taking a vacation from meaning and emotion by drifting into the peaceful, blissful world of indifferent nature and inanimate objects. One haunting sequence finds Vittoria wandering around a small private airport in Verona, a self-contained world of sun, grass and solitude that may be Mr. Antonioni's idea of heaven on earth.
Hitting the freeze button at almost any point in the superbly mounted DVD of "L'Eclisse" that the Criterion Collection is releasing today yields an impeccably composed still photograph, suitable for framing. But Mr. Antonioni, who continues to film today at the age of 92 despite being rendered mute and partly paralyzed by a stroke in 1985, is no mere pictorialist. It is the succession of images that matters, and never more so than in the famous final seven minutes of "L'Eclisse," a montage of some of the places and things fleetingly associated with Vitti and Delon's flirtation.
The stars of the film simply vanish, and the outcome of the story along with them, as Mr. Antonioni emerges himself in a flow of apparently trivial images (a bus unloading passengers, a half-finished building tantalizingly shrouded in tarpaulins) that lead to the "eclipse" of the title - a street lamp that suddenly flares into searing brightness, and then goes dark. A preceding shot of a newspaper headline, describing the "fragile peace" between the nuclear superpowers of the time, suggests that we may be witnessing a nuclear holocaust. But in another sense, the world seems finally to have eclipsed its human inhabitants, driving their petty emotional problems off the screen and out of consciousness. Only material reality remains, impassive and majestic.
The Criterion double-disc set includes alternate track commentary by Richard Peña of the New York Film Festival, a pair of fine essays by the critics Jonathan Rosenbaum and Gilberto Perez, and an hourlong documentary, "Michelangelo Antonioni: The Eye That Changed Cinema," full of rare behind-the-scenes images from Mr. Antonioni's career. A superlative edition of an essential film. $39.95. Not rated.
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colinr0380
- Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 8:30 pm
- Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK
Does anyone here have any help for the poster on the Mobius Home Video Forum thread dedicated to L'Eclisse?
Tim Lucas wrote:I am fascinated by the construction site in Rome's EUR district where the meetings between Monica Vitti and Alain Delon take place. With internet searches, I think I have successfully identified one of the streets of this intersection as Viale Europa... but does anyone know the name of the other street at this intersection, and the name and nature of the building that was under construction on this spot in 1962? I need the information for a writing project I have in mind.
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neuro
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 11:39 pm
- Location: New Jersey
After having only seen it on a horrible bootleg VHS, like a lot of you, my viewing experience of the Criterion version tonight was absolutely amazing.
Being that this is one of my favorite films, I find it hard to talk about (aside from hyperbolic gushing). I think that what attracts me to it is its general worldview - the alienation, the moments of stillness, the overbearing-quality of industrial life and the way in which it threatens to overtake human life. Something about this reminds me of depression and loneliness; there seems to me, at best an uneasiness, at worst a deep sadness, in the way in which Antonioni's camera views the world, especially in the famous ending sequence. I'm also attracted to the sonic vibrations this film seems to give off in its virtually wall-to-wall sound textures and overall rhythm. In a way, it's Antonioni's version of science fiction, and some of the landscapes are depicted as such.
Viewing this again in a pristine print, I was really taken by the painterly aspect of Antonioni's compositions; his documentarian nature really shines through at certain points. Also, I was taken by how carefully and masterly Antonioni manages to build everything toward that final sequence; the subtle, yet perfect way he emphasizes gestures, places and especially sounds so that they resonate in the memory. I also noticed this time that Antonioni seems to say that people are at their worst when they are in crowds, prone to being piggish and noisy. I'm thinking of the masterful stock market scene (which is orchestrated perfectly, like a dance) or when the crowd gathers around the discovery of the dead drunk in Piero's car. People, Antonioni seems to say, are at their purest when they're in combos with a loved one; otherwise, whether in crowds or alone, are prone to being, like eveything, just a piece of the scenery.
Many people criticize Antonioni's characters as being cold and hollow, and while that perhaps part of the point of his examination of "the idle rich," I find Vitti and Delon in this film to be very warm, humane characters. In fact, they have to be by design; otherwise their absence will not be as resonant in the viewers mind once they're not there. They want to love, but can't, victims of the world around them; Scorsese said it best perhaps - they're like flowers trying to grow through concrete.
It's a truly unique film because it's primarily concerned with negative space; what's not there is more important than what is. This extends to the external, our enviroment, or the internal, modern man's lack of genuine emotional feeling. Such is why the ending is so perfect in so many ways.
Being that this is one of my favorite films, I find it hard to talk about (aside from hyperbolic gushing). I think that what attracts me to it is its general worldview - the alienation, the moments of stillness, the overbearing-quality of industrial life and the way in which it threatens to overtake human life. Something about this reminds me of depression and loneliness; there seems to me, at best an uneasiness, at worst a deep sadness, in the way in which Antonioni's camera views the world, especially in the famous ending sequence. I'm also attracted to the sonic vibrations this film seems to give off in its virtually wall-to-wall sound textures and overall rhythm. In a way, it's Antonioni's version of science fiction, and some of the landscapes are depicted as such.
Viewing this again in a pristine print, I was really taken by the painterly aspect of Antonioni's compositions; his documentarian nature really shines through at certain points. Also, I was taken by how carefully and masterly Antonioni manages to build everything toward that final sequence; the subtle, yet perfect way he emphasizes gestures, places and especially sounds so that they resonate in the memory. I also noticed this time that Antonioni seems to say that people are at their worst when they are in crowds, prone to being piggish and noisy. I'm thinking of the masterful stock market scene (which is orchestrated perfectly, like a dance) or when the crowd gathers around the discovery of the dead drunk in Piero's car. People, Antonioni seems to say, are at their purest when they're in combos with a loved one; otherwise, whether in crowds or alone, are prone to being, like eveything, just a piece of the scenery.
Many people criticize Antonioni's characters as being cold and hollow, and while that perhaps part of the point of his examination of "the idle rich," I find Vitti and Delon in this film to be very warm, humane characters. In fact, they have to be by design; otherwise their absence will not be as resonant in the viewers mind once they're not there. They want to love, but can't, victims of the world around them; Scorsese said it best perhaps - they're like flowers trying to grow through concrete.
It's a truly unique film because it's primarily concerned with negative space; what's not there is more important than what is. This extends to the external, our enviroment, or the internal, modern man's lack of genuine emotional feeling. Such is why the ending is so perfect in so many ways.
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Gordon
- Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2004 12:03 pm
Yes, very eloquently put, Neuro.
It's an amazing film. I don't know if this has been noted before, but the worldview of the film seems to foreshadow Godfrey Reggio's masterful, Koyaanisqatsi, with the juxtaposition of insectile crowds againt the concrete and steel landscape bringing forth a powerful, disturbing, yet hypnotic response in the viewer.
As great a job Visconti did with Camus', The Stranger, one can only imagine what Antonioni would have accomplished with the material. Why is this such a difficult film to see, btw?
It's an amazing film. I don't know if this has been noted before, but the worldview of the film seems to foreshadow Godfrey Reggio's masterful, Koyaanisqatsi, with the juxtaposition of insectile crowds againt the concrete and steel landscape bringing forth a powerful, disturbing, yet hypnotic response in the viewer.
As great a job Visconti did with Camus', The Stranger, one can only imagine what Antonioni would have accomplished with the material. Why is this such a difficult film to see, btw?
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jesus the mexican boi
- Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2004 9:09 am
- Location: South of the Capitol of Texas
Yes, everything neuro said, times three. Finding the affinities with Koyaanisqatsi is also quite apt, I think. But the vision that kept coming to me after watching the hauntingly beautiful L'ECLISSE was the early films of David Cronenberg. Antonioni's work (probably beginning with IL GRIDO, and certainly through to the later work which I haven't yet seen) seems to prefigure Cronenberg's sense of space, and empty space, of inhabited/vs./uninhabited locations. The mushroom-like tower of the EUR might fit among the buildings of THE BROOD, or perhaps the institutes of CRIMES OF THE FUTURE. I think both directors explore this disconnect between our physical bodies and the spaces we inhabit. There is so much to explore in L'ECLISSE, I can easily see how it is a favorite of many on this list. I confess that I was first much more enamoured of LA NOTTE than L'AVVENTURA, but L'ECLISSE is so much MORE... labyrinthian, evolving, evocative. There is much to be discovered there.Gordon McMurphy wrote:Yes, very eloquently put, Neuro.
It's an amazing film. I don't know if this has been noted before, but the worldview of the film seems to foreshadow Godfrey Reggio's masterful, Koyaanisqatsi, with the juxtaposition of insectile crowds againt the concrete and steel landscape bringing forth a powerful, disturbing, yet hypnotic response in the viewer.
And La Vitti says more with a look than many actresses say in pages of dialogue. Beautiful. Big ups to the homiez at Criterion for putting out such a stellar disc.
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ellipsis7
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 5:56 pm
- Location: Dublin
I've checked in the encyclopaedic two volume Italian work MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI: ARCHITECTURE IN VISION...Does anyone here have any help for the poster on the Mobius Home Video Forum thread dedicated to L'Eclisse?
Tim Lucas wrote:
I am fascinated by the construction site in Rome's EUR district where the meetings between Monica Vitti and Alain Delon take place. With internet searches, I think I have successfully identified one of the streets of this intersection as Viale Europa... but does anyone know the name of the other street at this intersection, and the name and nature of the building that was under construction on this spot in 1962? I need the information for a writing project I have in mind.
The location of the meetings in L'ECLISSE...
The distinctive incomplete building surrounded with scaffolding and screening too at the lower level, and the pedestrian crossing in front of it are identified as being on VIALE DELLA TECNICA, EUR, Rome...
A revisit to the location in 1984 shows pictures of the building now complete, and the trees and zebra crossing remaining...
Hope this of some help...
Is near to, but does not intersect with Viale Europa...
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vertovfan
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 11:46 pm
I noticed some flicker in the darker scenes. I also noticed one solitary shot in the last sequence with vertical lines of what appeared to be film damage - it stood out because the surrounding shots were all pristine. I wondered if Antonioni might have been filming through some kind of netting. Anyone else notice this?
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Dylan
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 1:28 am
I noticed the very slight 'flickering' in the dark scenes (though I seen to recall seeing this same effect for many black and white films, though none I can mention off hand {except for "Children of Paradise"}), but it didn't even slightly malign my viewing. This is probably as good as the film will ever look.
And with that said, this is such a magnificent film! A haunting, hypnotic, beautiful meditation on society, human behavior, endurance, and architecture. I adored it.
Dylan
And with that said, this is such a magnificent film! A haunting, hypnotic, beautiful meditation on society, human behavior, endurance, and architecture. I adored it.
Dylan
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Napoleon
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 10:55 am
RE: The second stock exchange scene. While watching the film it stuck me that Antonioni was fascinated by the futility of it all. Watching the participants work them themselves up into a fever as the market absorbs them. This view was cemented by Vittoria's conversation with Piero about where all the money goes.
So when Rosenbaum states in the liner notes 'his wonder at the vitality of the stock market', does he not mean bemusement?
Or (and this is more likely) did I just read the scene completely wrong?
So when Rosenbaum states in the liner notes 'his wonder at the vitality of the stock market', does he not mean bemusement?
Or (and this is more likely) did I just read the scene completely wrong?
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colinr0380
- Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 8:30 pm
- Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK
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zedz
- Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 11:24 pm
It's been a while since I've seen the film (the disc's in the mail, apparently), but my recollection is closer to your interpretation. One thing I admired about the film was how Antonioni had staged big 'action' scenes, specifically the dynamic stock market episodes, in which nothing is really happening plot-wise, while the real 'action' of the plot (the relationship between the lovers) occurs in scenes in which very little is happening on the surface - the most striking example being, of course, the concluding sequence, when they're not even there.N. Wilson wrote:RE: The second stock exchange scene. While watching the film it stuck me that Antonioni was fascinated by the futility of it all. Watching the participants work them themselves up into a fever as the market absorbs them. This view was cemented by Vittoria's conversation with Piero about where all the money goes.
So when Rosenbaum states in the liner notes 'his wonder at the vitality of the stock market', does he not mean bemusement?
Or (and this is more likely) did I just read the scene completely wrong?
Antonioni is celebrating the energy of the stock market in those sequences, but I think it's a hollow energy and an ironic celebration.
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oldsheperd
- Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2004 9:18 pm
- Location: Rio Rancho/Albuquerque
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ellipsis7
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 5:56 pm
- Location: Dublin
Those are not actors, apart from the principals, in the stock exchange scenes... They are the actual brokers playing themselves and doing their stuff on their weekend days off... Delon largely had to follow the flow, and improvise, which suited him... Of course they were all subject to Antonioni's 'gaze', but I think it would be reading too much into the direction if it was suggested that he had devised an elaborate staging of the market procedures himself...
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FilmFanSea
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 5:37 pm
- Location: Portland, OR
I don't claim to be a great writer, but DVD Authority has posted a review of this DVD by Christopher Bligh that is an absolute train wreck. The first paragraph:
I hesitate to criticize Mr. Bligh since his first language doesn't appear to be English (the review reads as though it was [poorly] written in a foreign tongue, translated in the garbled syntax of Babblefish, and then posted as-is). I want to look away, but I can't ...
And it gets worse from there.Many directors like Federico Fellini and Vittorio De Sica have emerge as some of the best that Italian cinema can offer. Another that happen to have his own vision using images with very little dialogue was Michelangelo Antonioni. In the early sixties he had comprised a trilogy of sorts depicting a multitude of things within an international flavor. This started with L'avventura and continued with La notte. In this third entry, he explores the tale of a woman in transition with a few men and the results of that in the modern day world of the sixties. This is L'Eclisse.
I hesitate to criticize Mr. Bligh since his first language doesn't appear to be English (the review reads as though it was [poorly] written in a foreign tongue, translated in the garbled syntax of Babblefish, and then posted as-is). I want to look away, but I can't ...