Rosenbaum on L'Eclisse

On his blog today Jonathan Rosenbaum posts some brief comments on and images from Antonioni's L'Eclisse which nicely summarize my own feelings about this modernist masterpiece:

"The conclusion of Michelangelo Antonioni’s loose trilogy about modern life at mid-century (preceded by L’avventura and La notte), this 1961 film is conceivably the greatest in Antonioni’s career, but perhaps significantly it has the least consequential plot. A sometime translator (Monica Vitti) recovering from an unhappy love affair briefly links up with a stockbroker (Alain Delon) in Rome, though the stunning final montage sequence — perhaps the most powerful thing Antonioni has ever done — does without these characters entirely. And because these two leads arguably give the most nuanced and charismatic performances of their careers here, the shock of losing them before the end of the picture is central to the film’s devastating final effect.

"Alternately an essay and a prose poem about the contemporary world in which the “love story” figures as one of many motifs, this is remarkable both for its visual/ atmospheric richness and its polyphonic and polyrhythmic mise en scène. Antonioni’s handling of crowds at the Roman stock exchange is never less than amazing, recalling the choreographic use of deep focus employed in the early features of Orson Welles, where foreground and background details are juggled together in brilliant juxtapositions.

"But it is probably the final sequence, which depends on editing rather than mise en scène, that best sums up the hope and despair of the filmmaker’s vision."