Monday, August 6, 2007
Film Mysteries of Mike
Posted by Pat Graham on Mon, Aug 6, 2007 at 9:22 PM
With Michelangelo Antonioni's death last week, I started thinking again about something that's been puzzling me off and on for years: is the first half of Antonioni's L'Eclisse (Eclipse) an intentional hommage to Marcel L'Herbier's 1928 silent masterpiece L'Argent? The best argument against the idea is that nobody's ever really argued for it—not to my knowledge, at any rate. But consider the circumstantial clues:
Gods of finance. Stock-exchange business figures prominently in both films, as mounting impressionist frenzy in L'Argent, as controlled, clinical dissection in L'Eclisse. Since life on the trading floor has never been a popular motif in films, its doppelganger appearance in these two, not to mention an equivalent intensity of focus, seems more than coincidental.
Third world exotica. Black colonial Africa's the locus of European mystery in L'Eclisse, with Monica Vitti and friends cavorting in impromptu tribal mascara and whatnot; in L'Argent it's the jungles of South America, where the capitalist pilot hero whacks his way through virgin foliage in search of petroleum bonanzas. Wherever Europe isn't, there be promises of salvation ... all of which comes with a laser-eyed deconstructive edge.
Flight patterns. L'Eclisse has its landing strip in Verona, L'Argent the aerodrome in the jungle. What seems daringly avant in 1928 becomes considerably less so by '61, so the question arises of why Antonioni inserts this aviation diversion in the first place? Not that any linear explanation's needed—it's Antonioni after all—but the notion of hommage makes the whole thing seem less arbitrary.
Which is all fine speculation, but where's the smoking gun of personal connection? Unfortunately, there isn't one, aside from my vague memory of having read years ago that Antonioni worked as an "assistant" on L'Herbier's 1942 occupation fantasy La Nuit Fantastique, a phantom reference I haven't been able to track down since. What we do know, though, is that Antonioni was working on Les Visiteurs du Soir with Marcel Carné in Paris at approximately the same time that Nuit Fantastique was in production there. So supposing some kind of creative affiliation doesn't seem that far-fetched. Not to mention that at least one L'Herbier enthusiast finds anticipations of L'Avventura in the tracking shots of Nuit ...
But hommage or not, what difference does it actually make? L'Eclisse would probably still rank among my all-time top-ten films whichever way you slice it. Which—maybe more surprisingly—goes for L'Herbier's L'Argent as well!
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nice entry. l'eclisse is so awesome. on a side note, about this blogsite, you guys suck, none of the writers here support one another, defeating one of the main advantages and benefit of blogging. so much potential but so not so good execution. (Embarrassingly, you were the first comment on Jon's most recent entry)
As the L'Herbier enthusiast quoted in the article, thank you for the link! More importantly, thank you for a very interesting article. All the ideas in it were new to me. Had no idea that there might be a personal connection between L'Herbier and the great Antonioni. Mike Grost
It's perfectly possible that Antonioni was aware of the L'Herbier. However they're radically different filmmakers. "Eclipse" is my very favorite Antonioni. The stock exchange sequence is amazing, the ending is startling in all its crypic glory, and Alain Delon has never been more beautiful
VILLAINX--thought my comment was pretty collegial, though maybe you've got a point ... but "support" and criticism seem equivalently double-edged: it all depends on how you put them to good use--but i guess that's the nietzschean in me talkin' MIKE--obviously my thanx to you also * one possible barrier to appreciating these likenesses is the order in which you view the films: typically it's L'ECLISSE first, then L'ARGENT, if at all * in my case the opposite was true, and when subsequently i saw L'ECLISSE a few years down the road, all these thematic analogues just kept tumbling off the screen * utterly unexpected ... and that putative "ghost" citation i mentioned came prior to this as well: i wasn't even that interested in antonioni then! * still, it's all speculative--unless delusional's a better description ... DAVID--the stock exchange sequence in L'ARGENT is pretty amazing too!
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