Tahiti Eclipse

Eclipses don’t feature frequently in movies.

If the word “eclipse” appears in some movies titles, it is not always a reference to the astronomical phenomenon.  It is rather a metaphor of the ambiguity of a character or a situation.

Significant encounters in Classics of the cinema

Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Eclisse (1962)
”L’eclisse” was realized in 1962 by Antonioni, the famous Italian filmmaker.  This movie expresses the impossibility of communication between human beings in the modern world. It depicts Vittoria (Monica Vitti), a young worried and indecisive woman. She has a poetic vision of the world, and is at odds with her family and social environment. While she has just split with her fiancé, breaking with a comfortable thus oppressive way of life, she engages a love affair with Piero (Alain Delon), a stockbroker who is her total opposite. This relationship gives rise to complex feelings.

Below is a scene featuring Vittoria dancing on African rhythms, with her face is masked with black color.

The following extracts show how Antonioni expressed the isolation of individuals, in a deserted urban landscape. The final scene is an obvious reference to the eclipse.

In 1961, the movie director Richard Fleischer took the advantage of the occurrence of an eclipse in Tuscany. He shot scenes of Christ crucifixion for his film “Barabbas”, and incorporated the phenomenon as one of the supernatural events surrounding the agony of Christ.

This phenomenon adds a dramatic intensity to this movie, whose symbolic and religious content is then reinforced.
In addition, the changing character of Barabbas throughout the story also refers to the different stages of the eclipse. According to the Gospels, he was a murderer and a thief, before his fate was suddenly linked to the one of Jesus Christ. When the population, influenced by Pontius Pilate chose to forgive Barabbas, condemning Christ to death, Barabbas eclipsed the light represented by the Son of God. Barrabas was marked by this episode, and gradually evolve from dark to the light, adopting the religion of his Saviour, and fighting for it.

The Russian director Alexander Sokurov in “Days of the eclipse” tells how a young doctor leaves everything to take care of the inhabitants of an isolated village of Central Asia. Trying to establish itself in this wild and unknown country, he meets a hostile universe marked with fear, hate and death.

Ectoplasm and vampires in popular culture

Some more recent productions invest on the threatening aspect of phenomenon as a manifestation of the supernatural.

Some figures borrowed to ancient myths and stories, such as vampires or ghosts are then used.

The movie “Vampires 3: The last eclipse of the sun” by Marty Weiss, released in 2005, attends the misadventures of a young American kickboxer struggling with Kiran, a vampire thirsting for human blood.

In “The Eclipse” by Conor McPherson, the main character finds his life disrupted by the recent arrival of a horror novelist in his village situated on the coast of Ireland. He has just lost his wife and is haunted by nightmares, believing he sees ghosts.

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