A Vigilance of Desire: Antonioni’s L’eclisse
by Mar 14, 2005Your vigilance as an artist is an amorous vigilance, a vigilance of desire.—Roland Barthes to Michelangelo Antonioni, 1979It’s lamentable that Michelangelo Antonioni, one . . .
Synopsis
The conclusion of Michelangelo Antonioni’s informal trilogy on modern malaise, L’eclisse (The Eclipse) tells the story of a young woman (Monica Vitti) who leaves one lover (Francisco Rabal) only to drift into a relationship with another (Alain Delon). Using the architecture of Rome as a backdrop for the couple’s doomed affair, Antonioni reaches the apotheosis of his modernist style, returning to his favorite themes: alienation and the difficulty of finding connections in an increasingly mechanized world.
Cast
| Vittoria | Monica Vitti |
| Piero | Alain Delon |
| Riccardo | Francisco Rabal |
| Vittoria’s mother | Lilla Brignone |
| Stockbroker | Louis Seigner |
| Anita | Rossana Rory |
| Marta | Mirella Ricciardi |
Credits
| Director | Michelangelo Antonioni |
| Screenplay | Michelangelo Antonioni and Tonino Guerra |
| with the collaboration of | Elio Bartolini and Ottiero Ottieri |
| Producer | Raymond Hakim and Robert Hakim |
| Cinematography | Gianni Di Venanzo |
| Editing | Eraldo Da Roma |
| Sets | Piero Poletto |
| Music | Giovanni Fusco |
| Sound | Mario Bramonti and Claudio Maielli |
| Assistant directors | Gianni Arduini and Franco Indovina |
| Production Design | Danilo Marciani |
Disc Features
SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET:
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer
- Audio commentary by Richard Peña, program director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, in New York
- Michelangelo Antonioni: The Eye That Changed Cinema, a 56-minute documentary exploring the director’s life and career
- Elements of Landscape, a new, 22-minute video piece about Antonioni and L’eclisse, featuring Italian film critic Adriano Aprà and longtime Antonioni friend Carlo di Carlo
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- Plus: a 32-page booklet featuring new essays by film critics Jonathan Rosenbaum and Gilberto Perez, along with reprinted excerpts from Antonioni’s own writings about his work
From the Current
L’eclisse: Antonioni and Vitti
by Mar 14, 2005In the history of cinema, there have been several notable collaborations between a director and an actress over a series of films. Think of D.W. Griffith and Lillian Gish back in the silent era, Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich in the early 1930s, Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina at the . . .
Antonioni on Antonioni:
“Making a Film Is My Way of Life”
Mar 14, 2005
The first time I put an eye behind a camera (a 16mm Bell & Howell), it was in a lunatic asylum. The head of the institution was a great big hulk of a man with a face so ravaged by time that it resembled those of his patients. I was still living then in the quiet old town of Ferrara where . . .
On His Art: L’eclisse
by Mar 14, 2005A director is naturally a man like everyone else. Yet his life isn’t normal. For us, seeing is a necessity. For a painter, too, the problem is to see. But while the painter has to discover a static reality, or even a rhythm, perhaps—but a rhythm stopped in midair—the problem for a director is . . .
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Antonioni (and DiVenanzo) L'eclisse
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