L' Eclisse [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni

Overview

Monica Vitti leaves her much-older lover Francisco Rabal in favor of arrogant young stockbroker Alain Delon. All they have in common is sex, but they make an effort to sustain the relationship on an intellectual level. The action--or lack of it--is played out in the tempestuous Borsa section of Rome. Eclipse (originally L'Eclisse), Antonioni's follow-up to the equally slow-and-steady L'Aventura, La Notte was the winner of the Grand Prize at Cannes. Unlike the other two above-mentioned films, Eclipse hasn't remained in as high esteem as it was once held.

Product Details

Release Date:	03/06/2018
UPC:	0715515210911
Original Release:	1962
Source:	THE CRITERION COLLECTION, INC
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W]
Language:	English
Time:	2:06:00
Sales rank:	12,012

Special Features

High-Definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack; Audio Commentary by film scholar Richard Pe?a; Michelangelo Antonioni: The Eye That Changed Cinema (2001), a fifty-six-minute documentary exploring the Director's life and career; Elements of Landscape, a twenty-two-minute piece from 2005 about Antonioni and L'eclisse, featuring Italian film critic Adriano Apra and longtime Antonioni friend Carlo di Carlo; Plus: Essays by film critics Jonathan Rosenbaum and Gilberto Perez, as well as excerpts from Antonioni's writing about his work

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Monica Vitti	Vittoria
Alain Delon	Piero
Francisco Rabal	Riccardo
Lilla Brignone	Vittoria's Mother
Louis Seigner	Ercoli
Rossana Rory	Anita
Mirella Ricciardi	Marta
Cyrus Elias	Drunk
Giovanni Fusco	Composer

Technical Credits

Michelangelo Antonioni

Tonino Guerra

Elio Bartolini

Ottiero Ottieri

Robert Hakim	Producer,Producer
Michelangelo Antonioni	Screenwriter
Tonino Guerra	Screenwriter
Elio Bartolini	Screenwriter
Ottiero Ottieri	Screenwriter
Claudio Maielli	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

Michelangelo Antonioni furthers the ambitious efforts of his two preceding films with L'eclisse, making it a fitting conclusion to his early-'60s trilogy. With this in mind, the film's motifs seem familiar -- again Antonioni employs a cold, unromantic view of life and love centered on a dubious heroine. Yet even if L'eclisse doesn't explore any new territory, thematically or technically, one cannot deny its power. If anything, Antonioni refines his themes and techniques for this film, making Monica Vitti's central character undeniably infatuating, and complementing his lumbering pacing with a wealth of meticulously composed images. In fact, the way Antonioni makes such a fraught film of such an arid script makes L'eclisse his most impressive yet. Still, this same gift for sublime nuance is admittedly challenging, almost too challenging for its own good: masterfully crafted or not, the long sequences and barren plot test one's patience, particularly when the emphasis shifts away from Vitti's male encounters. The film's merits far eclipse these minor complaints, however. The opening sequence -- when a confused Vitti struggles to escape Francisco Rabal's obsessive character -- sets the precedent for the remainder of the film, with its unsure characters, desperate aura, and hovering ambience. The film's conclusion operates similarly, communicating its confusion lyrically, body language contradicting speech; it becomes even more striking when Antonioni employs a final haunting silence, ending the film with an epic, despair-laden montage sequence. Given its reduced narrative and obsessive emphasis on Vitti's enigmatic sense of sadness, L'eclisse's strength -- its ambiguity -- is also its most frustrating characteristic.