Filed under: 1960's, Antonioni, Cinematheque, Delon, Alain, Italian, Vitti, Monica
Antonioni, 1962.
Saw this long ago. Hated it. Excruciating long shot of – I don’t remember what. A clock? It might have well have been nothing.
Now it’s got Monica Vitti and Alain Delon, so we’ve got something to look at for sure. But ui still went to see Blow Up this year (2009), in part because it’s in the film canon, and because of teh Mel Brooks spin off. Blow Up shows you that the fellow had a glimpse of that horrible,stifling plague on film we call narrative – who could imagine such a terrible restriction? Plot! Something to hold your attention! Sunstance, attached to style…
But as far as I recall L’Eclisse was a real auteur film, meaning in the unfortunate way, where the film becomes a sort of pragmatic neurotic expression of goodness knows what fetish the director has on that certain day, instead of being a cohesive tale for an audience. Myself, I’m not very keen on a diary, simpley because it is indescernable, being passed off as art. Um, so, I dont recommend this film.
Filed under: 1960's, Cardinale, Claudia, Cinematheque, Delon, Alain, Italian, Lancaster, Burt, Visconti
dir. Visconti
Burt Lancaster – the Prince, Fabrizio , Alain Delon as Tancredi), Camille Claudelle
—
1963
Over 2 hours
Viewed at Cinematheque summer 2004. Had gone to view another film; on the wrong night. The Leopard was sold out, however someone had phoned in to cancell their pre-purchased tickets, and so the cinema gave them away (!) to first comers. I’ve seen it there since, a couple of times. It’s always just as good.
—
utube – the entrance of the heroine
IMDB 8.0
but it is my favorite film, of all time, and all places.
—
A masterpiece. Lancaster is the late middle aged aristcrat, father of the young, debonair Tancredi, and observer of the fall of his era to the red shirted Garibaldians swarming Sciliy – the rioginomoso. He makes a magnificent speech, saying that “we are the lions and the leopards, now of a past age�”. Lancaster knows his time is doomed and so votes with the inevitable regime, so as to, as he describes, at least slow the demise of his finer age, which is, in any case, inevitable. Thus we see and elegant bowing out by an elegant age.
Tancredi is also a very interesting study, who by his father’s own description would be useless at making money and in practical matters, but has everything in terms of magnetism, boldness and a certain new nobility about him. One could think of him as that famous young man from Stendhal’s novel Lucien Leuwen, in that he has “waged war ceaselessly on cigars and new boots” (a description by the boy’s father). Thus he should marry rich. He is, they say, the product of his age and family, and ‘one who is not only the product of his circumstance, but would be possible only under such circumstance’ – that being the last flowering of a declining nobility. There is your movie – an elegant, beautiful, historical tale of nobility in noble decline.
Five Stars.
—
QUOTATIONS
—
“Something had to change, for everything to stay as it was.”
Fabrisio (Lancaster) to his friend the poor artist, who voted no in the plebiscite (the plebiscite which reported 515 registered voters, 512 votes, 512 YES and zero for NO!). Fabrisio (the Prince) says that the interests of the monarchy are maintained by the Savoys, and that the plebiscite was necessary to avoid anarchy. A lesser of two evils.
