Remembering Monica Vitti (1931–2022)
Screening Dates
  • April 29, 2022 8:50
  • April 30, 2022 6:15
  • May 1, 2022 8:30
  • May 3, 2022 6:15
New Restoration

Strange and brilliant … A twilight zone of anxiety and alienation … Monica Vitti was never more sensual or sphinx-like.”

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Of all my old films, L’Eclisse is the one I like best” (Antonioni). A young Roman woman (Monica Vitti) breaks off with her lover (Francisco Rabal), then shortly afterward drifts into a relationship with her mother’s handsome stockbroker (Alain Delon). L’Eclisse concluded an informal Antonioni trilogy—on the great emotional sickness of our era”—that began with L’Avventura and La Notte; the director’s overriding theme in each film was alienation, and in each he used architecture and landscape to echo his characters’ utter sense of emptiness. L’Eclisse posits a world where people are bereft of feeling for another, where lovers have nothing left to say to each other.” In the trading frenzy of the film’s stock exchange sequences, the chaos and disorder of modern existence seem to find their perfect expression; the film’s haunting apocalyptic finale offers a chilling reminder of the ultimate eclipse that modern industrial society has made so dangerously possible.

Restored DCP courtesy of StudioCanal

Advisory: L’Eclisse includes a scene of blackface.

Conceivably the best in Antonioni’s career … Remarkable both for its visual/​atmospheric richness and its polyphonic and polyrhythmic mise en scene.”

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

An entrancing performance from Monica Vitti … One of the most disturbing films about life and relationships in the mid-20th century.”

David Sin, British Film Institute
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