L’Eclisse (1962)

Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Starring Monica Vitti, Alain Delon, Francisco Rabal, Lilla Brignone, Louis Seigner, Mirella Ricciardi, Rossana Rory.

Antonioni’s final black & white film follows Vittoria (Vitti), a young woman who recently ended a relationship and finds herself intrigued by a cynical stockbroker (Delon). A slow-moving and intellectual abstraction, self-indulgent and self-defeating, which are qualities that the film’s devotees and detractors actually agree upon; as such, preferences and attitudes of the individual viewer may dictate how inspiring or distancing its effect is. It’s coated in an atmosphere of malaise, often beautiful, periodically dull, and only when the story and dialogue dissipate into the void can the haunting despair finally take a firm grip. Regardless of the fragmented storytelling and obvious themes, one aspect is formidably fascinating: its bold, wordless closing montage (incredibly, some US distributors chopped all seven minutes off of the prints because they found it too baffling). The final entry in the director’s so-called “Incommunicability Trilogy” after L’Avventura and La Notte. Title translates as “eclipse.”

78/100