The Favorites - L'Eclisse (#53)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. L'Eclisse (1962/Italy/dir. Michelangelo Antonioni) appeared at #53 on my original list.

What it is • The story? Vittoria (Monica Vitti) breaks up with her boyfriend, and begins a romance with a young stockbroker (Alain Delon) in chic early sixties Rome. But is that really what the film "is"? At the very least, it's a stunningly photographed film, with some of the most gorgeous images in cinema history. But there are many films with jaw-dropping cinematography which nonetheless feel vapid - hell, a lot of TV commercials are quite nice to look at. L'Eclisse is something more. Like the greatest examples of still photography, L'Eclisse uses inventive compositions to capture our eye, stirring our senses on a fundamental level we weren't even aware of. Objects loom unusually in the frame, conjuring up uncanny sensations, while the actors' expressions convey deep sensitivity yet maintain an intriguing reserve. Even more importantly, this is cinema, not still photography. Antonioni is a master of subtle, arresting movement - of both camera and subject: sometimes only the actor's faces flicker or flinch but that's enough to thrill us. I can't find the exact quote, but Antonioni once claimed to be driving along a road flanked by a scenic landscape on the one side and rundown, abandoned industry on the other. He recalled shifting his gaze over to the empty factories, despite the natural beauty out one window. Why? Because "people had been there." However alienating/alienated his characters, however much he privileges the blocking and movement of performers over their dialogue, however dominated by empty space his frames can be, Antonioni's pictorialism is ultimately defined by a deep humanism.

Why I like it •

Sixties Rising 1959 - 1962 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 13

The thirteenth chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films.
(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)

View "Chapter 13: Sixties Rising"

Sixties Rising

They called it a new wave. When a young boy skipped school and went for a spin, when party guests stood frozen as sundials in a chateau garden, when Anna Karina tossed her hair to and fro, it was hard to shake the image of a terrific tsunami crashing down upon an unsuspecting film world. There was the tremendous vitality of the images themselves: that whirling dervish seen through a dizzyingly subjective lens, those guests posed with gigantic shadows like something out of a Dali painting, the beautiful girl captured - or unable to be captured - by a handheld camera shooting casually on the street (contemporary audiences would have to wait for that particular image, as the film was banned; but there were dozens of others in the same spirit). Then there was something else, something beyond the visuals, as if the frame was a window through which one peered into a new state of ecstatic, thrilling consciousness. There was a certain je ne sais quoi in the air, and not just in France; all across Europe the promise of the late fifties was suddenly spreading its wings and soaring skyward.