278 L'eclisse

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oldsheperd · #51 Post by **oldsheperd** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 5:00 pm

I'm Enzo Da Baka, I'm 'ere to see you Fada, You Fada!

unclehulot · #52 Post by **unclehulot** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 12:48 am

I find the flickering pretty distracting. Anyone happen to note it on the technical problems link on Criterion's site? I just did, for the heck of it. I'm not sure how one would correct such a problem, and if that's what it took to utilize such an (otherwise) amazingly detailed & richly scaled source, then I guess I'll live with it. Certainly an explanation of the problem would be welcome from the mouth of the "critters".

Gregory · #53 Post by **Gregory** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 3:48 pm

My favorite part is the last paragraph, where he mentions the "international way of storytelling" and then miscalculates the film's age by 10 years.

unclehulot · #54 Post by **unclehulot** » Wed Apr 06, 2005 7:33 am

JM on the flicker issue (from an email):

The flicker you notice is inherent in the film elements used for this
transfer. Noise reduction equipment was utilized to reduce the flicker, but,
despite our best efforts, we were unable to eliminate it completely.

Anthony · #55 Post by **Anthony** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 9:32 pm

I just watched this movie on my 23" HD Apple Cinema Display and was blown over by just how good the picture looked. Criterion did an excellent job with the transfer of this film. I don't understand how a future HD-DVD version of this film could look any better than it does right now on this current Criterion disc. WOW!

peerpee · #56 Post by **peerpee** » Sun May 08, 2005 12:00 am

I just saw this film for the first time, and was completely bowled over (didn't notice any flickering until the very end).

My favourite Antonioni so far (but I've not seen LA NOTTE).

I do love these films "about a multitude of things within an international flavour"!

It's Delon's 70th in November 2005. He was 27 when he made this (Monica was 31, or 29 (depending on whether she was born in 1931 or 1933)).

-
Wasn't much a fan of Peña's whiny, repetitive commentary.

ellipsis7 · #57 Post by **ellipsis7** » Sun May 08, 2005 5:01 am

I just saw this film for the first time, and was completely bowled over

Yes, it is quite something. Maybe his best... Antonioni on the top of his game is up there with the best of them, and ploughing his own determined furrow all the time... The unrelenting and all seeing 'gaze'...

I have some 14 of his films, and a similar number of books... The NFT in London is also running a full Antonioni season in June, while it would be good to see improved DVD editions of LA NOTTE, RED DESERT and others, plus the rights issues surrounding THE PASSENGER sorted out (may for that reason not make London)....

I wonder if MoC could be tempted to dip a toe in the Antonioni pool?

Cinephrenic · #58 Post by **Cinephrenic** » Sun Jun 05, 2005 3:14 am

I did a search and didn't see any info, but Kim Hendrickson appeared on Speakeasy with Dorian back in May. Not sure if this is new or old to the forum. But here's the link:

http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/SE

Start at 33rd Minute

Red Desert was mentioned, but no confirmations.

Who owns the rights?

godardslave · #59 Post by **godardslave** » Sun Jun 05, 2005 1:58 pm

near the beginning of the interview, she also says:

"we hope to get to la notte soon".

skuhn8 · #60 Post by **skuhn8** » Mon Jun 06, 2005 8:14 am

just finished viewing for the first time. Wow. Excellent, but must admit that I still find L'Aventura better (imho Antonioni's best). They both have very hypnotic elements, setting a Vitti among towers, brilliant cinematography. But L'Aventura throws in a brilliant tour of the Sicilian islands to boot, allowing for the region's geology to play a role in the skeletal narrative.

But then, there were those zebra crossings in L'Eclisse.

backstreetsbackalright · #61 Post by **backstreetsbackalright** » Mon Jun 06, 2005 2:34 pm

I was working while listening, but I missed the reference to a La Notte acquisition....

godardslave · #62 Post by **godardslave** » Mon Jun 06, 2005 6:55 pm

backstreetsbackalright wrote:I was working while listening, but I missed the reference to a La Notte acquisition....

its quickly mentioned...around minute 35. =P~

#63 Post by **Matt** » Tue Nov 29, 2005 6:22 pm

I'm seeing a lot of votes for PeÃ±a's commentary as Best Commentary for 2005, but there's no praise for it in this thread, just peerpee's "Wasn't much a fan of PeÃ±a's whiny, repetitive commentary." It's been a while since this disc came out, and I don't think I listened to more than 20 minutes of the commentary before switching it off out of boredom. It's becoming apparent that I ought to give it another go, but can anyone tell me what they find so good about it?

Tribe · #64 Post by **Tribe** » Tue Nov 29, 2005 6:38 pm

matt wrote:I'm seeing a lot of votes for PeÃ±a's commentary as Best Commentary for 2005, but there's no praise for it in this thread, just peerpee's "Wasn't much a fan of PeÃ±a's whiny, repetitive commentary." It's been a while since this disc came out, and I don't think I listened to more than 20 minutes of the commentary before switching it off out of boredom. It's becoming apparent that I ought to give it another go, but can anyone tell me what they find so good about it?

From my own uninformed perspective, Matt...I found it very insightful into what Antonioni was doing visually in the film. Whether Pena know what he's talking about or not, I'm certainly in no position to know. But, he appeared to know what he was talking about and I found that his commentary helped me appreciate the movie more than I would have otherwise. It's been a while since I listened to it, but from what I remember Pena had a tendency to spoon feed ideas behind Antonioni's work. For those who are versed in his work, perhaps the commentary wouldn't be terribly helpful or worth listening to, but for me, I thought I gained a lot perspective from which to watch it.

Tribe

Fletch F. Fletch · #65 Post by **Fletch F. Fletch** » Wed Nov 30, 2005 10:00 am

Tribe wrote:From my own uninformed perspective, Matt...I found it very insightful into what Antonioni was doing visually in the film. Whether Pena know what he's talking about or not, I'm certainly in no position to know. But, he appeared to know what he was talking about and I found that his commentary helped me appreciate the movie more than I would have otherwise. It's been a while since I listened to it, but from what I remember Pena had a tendency to spoon feed ideas behind Antonioni's work. For those who are versed in his work, perhaps the commentary wouldn't be terribly helpful or worth listening to, but for me, I thought I gained a lot perspective from which to watch it.

I would second this. I don't know much about Antonioni's techniques and I found that Pena packed in a lot of factual information and I found the way he expertly dissecting the film's style and themes very informative. For me, it was kinda like sitting in on a really good film lecture.

ellipsis7 · #66 Post by **ellipsis7** » Wed Nov 30, 2005 1:59 pm

Pena's commentary is well grounded in the literature (at least in the 16 or so Antonioni related books that I have)...

bunuelian · #67 Post by **bunuelian** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 1:26 am

My principle gripe with the commentary is that he constantly apologizes for his interpretations. "Maybe", "perhaps" and "a kind of" feature very prominently. I.e. "You can see how Antonioni emphasizes this kind of dichotomy between documentary and a more expressionist approach in this transition."

Compare this with: "You can see how Antonioni emphasizes this dichotomy between documentary and an expressionist approach in this transition." There's absolutely no need for the "kind of" and "more."

This may be a standard habit of critics who don't want to sound like they are stating what a filmmaker's intent actually was, but in a commentary it merely takes up valuable time that could be better spent with informative language on the track. It may have value where doubt exists about the meaning of a sequence or shot, but there's little room for it in plenty of places, such as:

"Sequence B being caused by sequence A which then causes sequence C, etcetera, in that kind of linear fashion . . ."

Couching propositions in these terms only weakens them, and suggests that the speaker isn't entirely sure of what he's saying. It's a lazy mode of speech that shouldn't be a part of a professional commentary. A good deal of time is wasted with this excess verbiage. I strongly suspect that the commentator would welcome the additional time saved and the richness of the commentary would deepen if he removed all these words.

At the same time, pointing out the documentary aspects of Antonioni's approach is a welcome revelation especially for viewers like me who are still getting to know his work and who haven't read much (or anything) about him. It's a very strong commentary and raises a lot of interesting points, and I'm glad to have it.

Tribe · #68 Post by **Tribe** » Fri Dec 02, 2005 5:31 am

This may be a standard habit of critics who don't want to sound like they are stating what a filmmaker's intent actually was, but in a commentary it merely takes up valuable time that could be better spent with informative language on the track.

In terms of style and grammar, I can't disagree with your post (although I think Pena was just being informal in his presentation...whether your observation is needlessly nit-picky is neither here nor there), but I can't for the life of me see how any additional information could have been presented because of any "time savings" had the offending words been omitted. If you timed all the phrases you find objectionable, I'd bet they all wouldn't have added up to more than a minute or two at most. How long does it take to say "kind of?" A nano-second perhaps?

Tribe

Godot · #69 Post by **Godot** » Fri Dec 02, 2005 6:34 am

I also enjoyed Pena's commentary. The film had me almost as confused as L'Avventura, what with the jumbled timeline and (seemingly) disconnected ending, but Pena did as good a job as Gene Youngblood in explaining how the images disoriented the viewer while also telling the story (or at least advancing Antonioni's theme of society on the edge of destruction). He does comment/describe the on-screen images often, but I found that very useful particularly for the jarring (but beautifully composed) scene transitions and the 10 minute epilogue (prologue?), wherein Pena tied these images to previous similar images in the film, and noted the tension of anticipating the couple's appearance due to standard narrative structure, how their absence highlights the randomess of their central focus in the film, and the armageddon reference in the final blinding lamplight (and also circling around to the first lamp image). That's the kind of explanation that really exictes me about film. Maybe it's all obvious stuff to those of you who went to film school, but that focus on the film/image's structure and attendant meaning is eye-opening for me, and helps me to appreciate other works.

bunuelian · #70 Post by **bunuelian** » Fri Dec 02, 2005 1:08 pm

If you listen to the commentary with an ear for how much excess verbiage he puts in there to qualify what he's saying, you'll see that it's much more than just mere nanoseconds. He draws out his "kind ofs" and "seems" and "if you wills." They come in bunches, where entire paragraphs of commentary will be chock full of them and then other scenes will go by without any. Some sentences are essentially long chains of qualifiers to make a fairly simple statement.

I don't see why commentaries shouldn't be held to a standard similar to that of essays, though naturally (and you're right to point it out) some casualness is important. It's hard to strike a balance between casual dialogue and strict dictation, I'm sure. For the sake of listening, it's better than a lot of "uhms," but it has the same information value.

Put another way, I wouldn't want to attend a class taught by anyone who speaks like this. At first I wouldn't mind, but by the third class or so I'd only hear the qualifiers. But then again I'm in law school so it could be that I'm oversensitive about language use anyway.

Tribe · #71 Post by **Tribe** » Fri Dec 02, 2005 4:08 pm

But then again I'm in law school so it could be that I'm oversensitive about language use anyway.

Hey, I went to law school also...and I'd take Pena for Commercial Paper and Secured Transactions over some of the boobs I had any day!

Tribe

denti alligator · #72 Post by **denti alligator** » Fri Dec 02, 2005 10:36 pm

it's better than a lot of "uhms,"

Like Tony Rayns? Had to turn him off after a few minutes because of these. Couldn't stand it. I'll take "kind of"s anyday over "um"s or "ah"s.

neal · #73 Post by **neal** » Sat Dec 03, 2005 12:08 am

bunuelian wrote:My principle gripe with the commentary is that he constantly apologizes for his interpretations. "Maybe", "perhaps" and "a kind of" feature very prominently. I.e. "You can see how Antonioni emphasizes this kind of dichotomy between documentary and a more expressionist approach in this transition."

Compare this with: "You can see how Antonioni emphasizes this dichotomy between documentary and an expressionist approach in this transition." There's absolutely no need for the "kind of" and "more."

This may be a standard habit of critics who don't want to sound like they are stating what a filmmaker's intent actually was, but in a commentary it merely takes up valuable time that could be better spent with informative language on the track. It may have value where doubt exists about the meaning of a sequence or shot, but there's little room for it in plenty of places, such as:

"Sequence B being caused by sequence A which then causes sequence C, etcetera, in that kind of linear fashion . . ."

Couching propositions in these terms only weakens them, and suggests that the speaker isn't entirely sure of what he's saying. It's a lazy mode of speech that shouldn't be a part of a professional commentary. A good deal of time is wasted with this excess verbiage. I strongly suspect that the commentator would welcome the additional time saved and the richness of the commentary would deepen if he removed all these words.

Now, I haven't heard the commentary track in question, but neither of your examples sounds like language that weakens PeÃ±a's arguments. The phrase "kind of" is being used in a manner synonymous with "type of" rather than as the weakening qualifier "somewhat." The word "more" serves to draw attention to a contrast.

They may not be neccesary, and they may weaken the strength of the sentences, but they don't weaken his arguments.

tryavna · #74 Post by **tryavna** » Sat Dec 03, 2005 1:17 pm

denti alligator wrote:
it's better than a lot of "uhms,"
Like Tony Rayns? Had to turn him off after a few minutes because of these. Couldn't stand it. I'll take "kind of"s anyday over "um"s or "ah"s.

For a fun example of "uhs," check out the Schickel's commentary track on The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I was demonstrating the extras to my brother, and I swear that the first sound you'll hear on chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 is Schickel going "uh." It sounds ridiculous when you skip immediately from chapter to chapter. My brother was unimpressed and didn't think commentary tracks were worth all that much -- and in the case of Schickel commentary tracks, he's absolutely right.

As for the qualifying-words issue, I'm torn on this. Obviously they're unnecessary, but they sometimes give the commentator a chance to inject a little variety and off-the-cuff moments into otherwise scripted tracks. And while I like the amount of info that scripted commentaries are able to pack into a viewing, they can become exhausting after a while.

blindside8zao · #75 Post by **blindside8zao** » Mon Jan 02, 2006 7:22 pm

I can't stand the guy that does commentaries on ALL, I think all, maybe cept serpents egg, on the Bergman box set with Shame and stuff in it.