L’eclisse

Piero (Alain Delon) is a stockbroker, whose life is defined by money and speculation. When he meets Vittoria (Monica Vitti), who has just ended a relationship, an attraction develops between the two of them, which is marked by uncertainty and emotional distance. Antonioni portrays the relationship with a radically modern visual language. The city of Rome and the stock exchange become the settings for a world, in which money, movement and alienation are omnipresent. Delon’s character also embodies the transformation: he is elegant, self-assured, and successful, yet at the same time impenetrable. His relationship with Vittoria develops is depicted less through grand gestures than through glances, spaces and moments of silence. Delon plays a charismatic yet internally unapproachable representative of a new social class driven by economics. (mm)