The third installment of Antonioni’s “trilogy” of early 1960s Italian classics, L’Eclisse (1962) leaves me wanting more. While the first two films of his productive spree, 1960’s L’Avventura and 1961’s La Notte, had moments where they felt aimless and cold, L’Eclisse feels entirely empty. I’ll concede that this emptiness is perhaps the result of the progression of feelings for which Antonioni was striving with these efforts, but with the first two installments he did not seem lost amongst his convictions, or lack thereof. I wish also to concede that L’Eclisse is a strikingly beautiful film at points. The cinematography of Gianni Di Venanzo and the editing of Eraldo Da Roma combine throughout the movie to create several moments which could be amazing free-standing short films, but here they seem lost amongst the heavy-handed nothingness of the feature.
While that last clause may seem oxymoronic, it feels like the only way to describe Antonioni’s picture. In both L’Avventura and La Notte the director presents some aimless and lonely characters and provides little resolution for their plight, but by L’Eclisse he’s proven his point and needs to move on. These three pictures are referred to as a trilogy often, as all three are read as commentaries on Italian culture of the late fifties and early sixties and the directionless tone of the national ethos. In many ways Antonioni deals here with the same themes as Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960), albeit in a manner less reliant on spectacle. But where the characters in Fellini’s picture seem relentless in their radiantly pathetic pursuit of the sweet life, Antonioni’s characters don’t actually seem to want to find happiness, despite what they may say.
Of the three films, I find La Notte to be the most engaging. Like most of the Antonioni I’ve seen, it is a simple story about complex emotion. In that film, a couple whose marriage is disintegrating find, after a night of heavy partying in the suburbs, that they cannot break their connection to one another so easily. While based in deep relational emotions, it clearly separates itself from L’Avventura’s ostensive plot involving a missing girl and the resulting relationships between those who search for her. L’Avventura’s structural metaphor is plane: we get lost as we search for that which we cannot find. La Notte takes a less direct approach to addressing the difficulty of separating ourselves from that which we have found.
As Antonioni moves through his trilogy it becomes obvious that he relies less and less on premise. Events mean little here and serve only as the external basis for internal struggle. It comes as no surprise when the third film has almost no premise at all. Primary characters break off relationships, meet friends, and have bad days at work, but rarely are these events more than catalysts for reserved emotional turmoil. In the film’s final sequence, the eclipse of the title takes place. It has not been referenced before in the film, and is perhaps not even observed by the characters. It simply is. The only statement here may be that the world moves in and out of darkness with little care or attention paid to its meager inhabitants.
Grade: 1.5 Hats Off
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