project film school

pfs meeting 8/28/07 : l'eclisse

(directed by michelangleo antonioni)

a late starting, small, but good pfs was had last night.

we got together and watched michelangelo antonioni's l'eclisse

the ending stirred discussion amongst the group, some loving it, some finding it a strange choice. for me, it brought about a sense of the everyday and also of general unease, especially when for a brief moment, a blond woman enters the screen, making us wonder where our protagonists have gone.

jonathan rosenbaum's essay that we wrote for the criterion release of the film highlights the beauty and importance of the ending:

"It’s almost as if Antonioni has extracted the essence of everyday street life that serves as a background throughout the picture, and once we’re presented with this essence in its undiluted form, it suddenly threatens and oppresses us. The implication is that behind every story there’s a place and an absence, a mystery and a profound uncertainty, waiting like a vampire at every moment to emerge and take over, to stop the story dead in its tracks. And if we combine this place and absence, this mystery and uncertainty into a single, irreducible entity, what we have is the modern world itself—the place where all of us live, and which most stories are designed to protect us from."

comparisons between our introduction to monica vitti's vittoria and alain delon's piero were also brought up : vittoria being introduced to us in a quiet scene between soon to be ex-lovers that seems to be missing an intensity, while piero in contrast comes to us in a stock exchange of sorts a - place devoid of real human connection but filled with intensity. likewise the two characters reactions to the death of a drunk who stole piero's car seems to highlight two differing senses of isolation and interaction with the world.

the visual construction of the film is breathtaking - the way in which characters are framed and how surroundings effect where the camera is and who and what we see, tends to define the film over any plot that exists concerning two lovers coming together.

as jonathan rosenbaum also said:

"Only a large screen can do full justice to the virtuosity of Antonioni’s mise en scène; a sense of monumentality is basic to his conception throughout, whether the focal point happens to be a rotating electric fan at dawn, a car with a corpse being hauled from a river, an illuminated streetlamp at dusk, a couple necking on a sofa, or a crowd of screaming speculators. And, again as in (Tati's)Playtime, even our misrecognition can play a role in overall dynamics: characters with fleeting resemblances to Piero and Vittoria pass through the intersection where their meeting fails to take place, teasing us with possibilities. What Roland Barthes has called Antonioni’s vigilance of desire has become our own, though it remains unsatisfied."