February 22, 2008
L'AVVENTURA TO L'ECLISSE
This is a short argument I wrote for one of my classes which I ultimately abandoned. I decided not to throw it away and post it here; perhaps there is something interesting in it.
Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Eclisse is as much a continuation of L’Avventura as it is an evolution of it. I will argue that it is its sequel, of sorts, much in the same way that Wong Kar-wai’s 2046 is to his In the Mood for Love; meaning that though the film’s narratives have no straightforward connections, the sequels are the progression of the first film’s main character’s archetype in a tangent journey.
The most obvious connection between the two films is Monica Vitti, arguably the protagonist of both. She plays women suffering from a malaise brought upon by the inability to connect to their modern social class and country. She does not play as prominent a role in La Notte as in the films that bookend it, so it is safe to ignore it in this context; though one interesting point is that her hair in it is different, in style and color, from the one she shares in the other two. Vitti is made up as the same person in them; Antonioni makes no effort to create a visually different person. Her use of expressions, which move from sullen blankness and distance to quick, occasional outbursts of joy, are also the same.
The films play like a continuing story. L’Avventura ends with Claudia coming to terms with who she and Sandro are. It is implied that she will be leaving him with her gesture of pity. L’Eclisse begins with the actual breakup of Vittoria and her boyfriend, Riccardo. Causes for this are not explicit, but we can make out that he shares a quality of neediness with Sandro. In the first scene they are placed in the same configuration Claudia and Sandro are in at the end of L’Avventura: she standing and he sitting. The balance of power remains intact as the scenes flow in a logical progression.
Vitti’s characters spend their time with similar men. In addition to similar personality traits, Riccardo looks suspiciously like Sandro. Even Piero is the equivalent of what Sandro must have been like in his youth: a rich, confident, playboy in an elite field of work in which his heart is not fully immersed. Piero is connected to the upper class through birthright and his work, but his clients are housewives that gamble with their extra income, not important financial giants. Like Sandro, he is not great at what he does and never will be. It is no surprise that Vittoria hesitates to, and ultimately does not, connect with him.
The spirit of Sandro permeates physically through L’Eclisse. The location of the Esposizione Universale Roma (EUR) is exactly the modern Italy men like him built. Throughout L’Avventura, Sandro is overwhelmed by rich and complex ancient architecture. The simple and uninspired EUR is the opposite of that older tradition and it reflects the type of architecture he is capable of creating. This has an adverse affect on the setting. “The whole layout of a city can thwart communication and connectivity…It is not only a place where a representative couple fail to meet but a culprit for that failure.” (Chatman, 108) The EUR is a psychodynamic space that is an important element through which Antonioni, with his form of subtle, realistic expressionism, conveys the emotion, or lack thereof, that haunts Vittoria. Since she, in essence, is a continuation of Claudia, who previously gave up on that world, it makes sense that no explanations are explicitly given within L’Eclisse as to why she wanders through EUR unable to relate to it.
Through the use of architecture, Antonioni marks a progression from the natural to the man-made. The final shot in L’Avventura sets this theme up for us by splitting the frame between Claudia’ emotive and natural half and Sandro’s barren and man-made half; visually portrayed through Mt. Etna and a wall, respectively. Because of an increasing absence of nature in urbanizing Italy, it becomes a refuge. Vittoria is most emotive when she is in the presence of it: whether it is materialized by wind that moves flag poles or clouds she flies by. Vittoria does not find solace in the man-made objects which begin to take over the roles of the natural; items which, in addition to the buildings being constructed throughout the EUR, include fans and street lights.
In addition to portraying Claudia and Vittoria rejecting a relationship, both films’ endings project the same relationship between them and their malaise. Since the films have progressed away from the natural toward the man-made, the metaphor made by the volcano in L’Avventura is made with nuclear weapons in L’Eclisse. This is the only man-made object that has the equivalent power of a volcano. The film moves between the worlds of Vittoria and Piero: hers open and desolate and his compact and manic. Therefore, it can be assumed that the ending and reference, which take place in the EUR, project feelings that belong to Vittoria. Both objects reference the respective women’s malaise because they are objects which, once erupted, are beyond the control of them. Not only that, the power represented by them is dormant. The objects are also at a distance from the women. Mt. Etna is much further away from Claudia than the wall is from Sandro, despite the flatness created by the camera lens, and the nuclear weapons are presented theoretically through a newspaper. These characteristics clearly describe Vitti’s characters’ malaise. The progression from the natural to man-made can also be explained through the relationship of the women to it. Claudia is a victim and thus her problems are external, and conversely, Vittoria is conscious of her problems from the beginning, and therefore, they are internal.
Posted by Fran at February 22, 2008 12:21 PM