Michelangelo Antonioni's L'eclisse (1962)

This is the scene where Monica Vitti dresses up in blackface and does an African dance around an apartment in Italy.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• L'eclisse
• michelangelo
• antonioni
• monica
• vitti
• africa
• kenya
• blackface

[cinephile12]

this movie is an extraordinary orgasm of beautiful cinematography!

[McPhillipsHearing]

Desperate bored rich beautiful white people with nothing better to do than act like idiots. Don't get me wrong...this film is a CLASSIC...masterpiece. I own the DVD and I love Antonioni! This kind of reminds me of myspace/facebook pictures of "Laguna Beach" type blonde girls dressing all Hip Hop and throwing up gang signs and speaking Ebonics. You know some of their white friends look at them acting like that and say bluntly..."That's enough stop acting like negroes!"

[cinephile12]

@frintop07 As far as going beyond the normal scope of mere cinematography and elevating it to more of an art-form, then yes he did 'break free of the definition'... and like art, it is about representation - with a single shot Antonioni could convey uncertainty or whatever other abstract emotion/idea he wanted - this is far from any petitio or circulus reasoning, it is the inherent nature of art...

[cinephile12]

@frintop07 Of course only Antonioni could answer such a question but if I had to guess: this desolation of the human spirit was wrought by the barren and cold materialism of modernisation. Antonioni probably thought this to be the greatest adversary to western civilisation and was he not on to something? This scene is a prime example, these Italians mock the 'barbaric' tribes of Africa, yet it is there that lies a simplistic, primal beauty that is more in touch with humanity than these women...

[frintop07]

I know this question is like asking the "can-God-make-a-rock-so-large-­that-even-He-can't-move-it" type, but my interest is legitimately piqued. Also: if it is isolation that he sought to convey, what was the context(reason for expressing isolation as opposed to other themes of the reduced individual).

[frintop07]

@cinephile12 ah. so l'eclisse is cinematography, which Antonioni embodies so much so in this work that he managed to break free of the definition/film itself. That's interesting. How does viewing each shot equate to viewing uncertainty itself? Seems a little circular reasoning(what does uncertainty look like?).

[cinephile12]

@frintop07 Asking how this film has extraordinary cinematography is like asking how to define what cinematography is - for L'Eclisse IS cinematography. His modernist mise en scène truly captures the alienation that he sought to convey. The rhythm and composition of every shot is just perfect... like visualising uncertainty itself... that is what cinematography is: a composing of images to get a point or feeling across - Antonioni does it with such style that he exceeds the definition!

[frintop07]

@cinephile12 how so?

[frintop07]

@cinephile12 how so?



[ljubohendrix]

--Fantastic movie--

[lovesGenet]

But what are they saying. Italian on the page looks similar to some Spanish but its sound is a world away. All of us will never stop the spell of Antonioni's films. they will be admired and written about as along as men can see.

[marcelmalheur]

MONICA e` grande grande grande.....