L'Eclisse review

The third of Michelangelo Antonioni's angsty trilogy of alienation and disaffection (after L'Avventura and La Notte), this 1962 movie stars the director's enigmatic muse, Monica Vitti, who drops one lover to take up with an eager stock-market trader. Everybody's sunk deep in modern-day malaise and Rome - - as seen through Gianni de Venanzo's elegant monochrome lensing - - seems a chilly limbo-world. Seen at the time as the cutting-edge of cinematic austerity, L'Eclisse now looks subtle, stylish and - - at this distance - - more than a touch arid.