L'eclisse (Blu-ray + DVD)

Michaelangelo Antonioni's L' Eclisse is the climax of a trilogy that explores the emotional alienation between a man and a woman and the contemporary world of modernization. His first film L' Avventura in 1960 was followed by La Notte in 1961; and then with L' Eclisse in 1962. L' Eclisse was the most radical of the three films, which not only explored themes of the rise of the cold war and the threat of world nuclear annihilation, but it included one of the boldest and most experimental endings in all of cinematic history. Some U.S. exhibitors were in fact so troubled by the ending that they lopped off the entire seven minutes, perhaps the most powerful sequence all in Antonioni's work. Director Martin Scorsese, in his documentary My Voyage to Italy, describes how the film haunted and inspired him as a young moviegoer and that its ending was "a frightening way to end a film, but at the time it also felt liberating. The final seven minutes of L' Eclipse suggested to us that the possibilities in cinema were absolutely limitless."

Antonioni's film L' Eclisse seemed to take things to an even greater level. Within its plot structure and story telling, L' Eclisse begins in some ways at the end of one story and at the beginning of another. In one of the most sensational and abstract conclusions in the history of film, the final sequence plays out as if something dramatic is bound to happen but never does and yet the film continues to show the audience other things, which include a nun with a baby stroller walking down the street, a barrel of water with a piece of wood floating inside, several shots of modern housing developments and half constructed agricultural buildings, horse carriages, ants on the birch of a tree, the wind blowing the trees, a bus driving off, a sprinkler going off, lines on a cross walk, the emptiness of the streets, and some people waiting for the arrival of a bus with several close-ups on a elderly man's facial features. Antonioni continues to roll the camera long after its main characters have long after abandoned the narrative, presenting to the audience a frightening cinematic world that continues to go on...