Monica Vitti and the Eclipse

More years ago than I care to count, I rented L’Eclisse from an artsy video store called Morris Classics (since gone the way of the dodo) just over the Michigan state line into Indiana. It was a place both magical and stuffy. The aisles were so desperately tight that turning a corner could mean hooking your shoulder on a display box, or knocking inventory off its precarious ledge and onto the grimy floor. If you were surefooted, though, and kept from having too much pep in your step, every one of those turned corners met you with a plethora of fascinating choices.

They had an entire section devoted to Fellini, one to hippie films, and still another to LGBTQ fare. To say that Morris Classics was an outlier in the world of Michiana’s video stores would be a huge understatement—it was like no other store for miles, and to my own narrow scope at that time, it seemed like the only one of its kind anywhere.

If I’m being honest, the day my hand found L’Eclisse had less to do with my desire to expand my film acumen and more to do with the image on that dingy VHS box—a transfixing blonde woman whose face was unlike any I had ever seen. Words fail me to describe the effect her haunting, enigmatic beauty had on me, but once I saw her image it was clear I was taking her home. Her name was Monica Vitti.

I already knew the name of Michelangelo Antonioni. I knew he was considered a master of the cinematic form. But I had never laid eyes on a single frame of one of his films, and I had no idea what I was in for.

I would later learn that L’Eclisse is considered the last part of an unofficial trilogy (along with L’Avventura and La Notte)—three films that starred Vitti and are unclassifiable treatises on the often failed efforts of human beings to make meaningful connections with each other. The three films share the same themes, although no characters repeat in any of their separate storylines. They were connected by style, concept, and Monica Vitti.

L’Eclisse is the third film in that triptych and the one I saw first. There’s really not much point in discussing the happenings in L’Eclisse—the film is virtually plotless. There are discussions of real estate, the stock market, and various other financial matters. None of that is what I recall in any essential way. What I remember is Vitti, and the near-equally beautiful Alain Delon coming so close to an affair, or possibly something more, and falling short.

Scene upon scene, the psychological dance the two perform is magical—aware of their attraction, yet hesitant to act upon it. You have to intuit what could be going on in their minds. Do they find the pursuit of true love to be folly? Do they see their attraction as something doomed to defeat, despite their repressed longing? Or do they simply wait too long for the other to come forward, with the result that neither does?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that the last portion of the film is so erotic and thrilling that I could feel the hair on my arms stand up and my breath escape me. I’ve never experienced anything like it. The entire film is about something almost happening, and when that something doesn’t happen, it all but knocked me to my knees.

After seeing L’Eclisse, I went back and watched L’Avventura and La Notte—remarkable films both. But it is L’Eclisse that haunts me to this day. It raises questions about the nature of existence, the desire for human contact, the effort to make sense of it all, and refuses to answer them. Even as I write these words now, I am transported back to that moment in time, thinking of that missed opportunity between two people who came so close, but not quite.

And once again, the hair on my arm rises to attention, my brain swims without form, and my ability to breathe is hindered.

What do you say to a moment like that? What do you make of a film where nothing and everything happens at once? What do I make of the face that compelled me to select that videotape, take it home, and have an experience that I can only struggle today to describe?

I have no clear answers to those questions. But I do know who that face belonged to. 

How could I ever forget?

Monica Vitti died today. She was 90 years old.