Kenya
Were the comments about the natives of Kenya necessary? I know it was early 60's Europe, but still. Unforgivable!!!
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MovieChat Forums > L'eclisse (1962) Discussion > Kenya
Yes. The whole sequence although amusing to some must be offensive to anyone of African heritage. Also Monika Vitti looked like a giraffe with that wig on and dark paint. It almost ruined the usual erotic fever I associate with her.
Yes, probably it was; why would Antonioni put something in his movie if it was of no relevance whatsoever? Don´t make sense. Besides, it´s pretty amusing.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
A good chunk of scene's relevance was obscured because of some post production editing decisions. In its present form it comes off looking like little more than a humorous diversion, but in its original context its purpose was more complex and deeply tied into the film's apocalyptic overtones.
The "Kenya" bedroom scene, among other things, introduces Marta, who is deeply nostalgic for the Kenya she grew up in…a Kenya that no longer exists. There was a later sequence Antonioni shot and then edited out, which, if he had kept, would have tied into the "Kenya" scene and firmed up its context. In the lost footage, Anita and Vittoria visit a natural history museum in Verona after the airplane had been delivered (I could be wrong about the location). While looking over several examples of local fossils they note that primordial Italy once abounded in tropical plants and animals…much like, one of them remarks, Marta's Kenya (which, like these flora and fauna has too become extinct.) I don't know why this ended on the cutting room floor. Given Antonioni's style it was probably a long, deliberate and ponderous scene. Perhaps time constraints were a factor. Perhaps the apocalyptic illusion was too much or too awkward. Whatever the reason(s), its omission more or less orphaned the "playing African slumber party" scene, and transformed it into an incongruous spell of sometimes over the top (by today's standards) comic relief.
Now that was educational; thanks.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
I remember when I first saw this film a few years ago, I had the sense that - "…damn that scene is funny, but there just has to be a deeper reason for it other than Antonioni wanting to see Monica Vitti prancing around in blackface". Of course Antonioni and Vitti were a couple when the film was made and thus the scene might have been nothing more than a self indulgent excursion by a director eager to show off his girl to the world. However my instincts were against this. That wasn't Antonioni's style. He wasn't one of those needy directors who inserted lovers into his own films to use as a tool to stroke his ego, like Bergman with Liv Ullmann and Harriet Andersson, or Godard with Anna Karina and Anne Wiazemsky (and Woody Allen too…but I don't even want to go there now..)
So a couple years ago, when I ran into the info about the deleted scene shot in Verona's natural history museum, things sort of came together. Anita and Vittoria's lumbering visit at the Verona airport, which to me had an awkward resonance and sat uneasily next to the film's other pieces, now emerged as a part of a larger unrealized whole. The airport scene that was left on the screen was a remnant - the last remaining segment of a now truncated sequence that was originally intended to push the action forward to the trip to the museum. It was there that the "Kenya" slumber party scene would, in retrospect, be somewhat redefined by shifting the focus away from Vittoria's detached languor and more towards Marta and her sense of loss.
Anyway this "lost scene" was a pleasing revelation for me and I was glad to be able to share it.
I have absolutely no problem digging in the dirt around directors whose work, in order to be fully appreciated, requires the viewer to become an active participant in an ongoing and evolving process of discovery (thus making this kind of exercise meaningful.)
Nuff said. Now I'll shut up.
Well I guess one must also know where to look to best perform acts of such film fan vigilance to unearth lost treasures - apparently, some do know (where to look). But in defense of Bergman it still has to be said that Liv Ullman is also a fine actress, arguably much better than Vitti, so it´s hard to hold her inclusion in so many Bergman´s pictures against the Swede. I just saw Autumn Sonata a few days ago and, just as Ingrid Bergman´s, her performance was quite amazing.
And why not talk Stiffy Allen in these regards? Both Keaton and Farrow are at least decent at what they do (even though the latter is probably the most annoying woman to currently roam the earth).
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
With Bergman I certainly didn't mean to imply that his casting of Liv Ullman was in any way not warranted from an artistic standpoint. She abounds in talent, works that talent to its fullest and the results speak for themselves. What I was reaching for with Bergman, and still haven't been able to clearly find (which is why I might have been hasty in mentioning him at all), is an example of a scene that represents something beyond the normal artistic collaboration between a director and an actress…a situation where the director has selfishly, or for other non-creative reasons, chosen to define the scene so that both he and his actress/lover have a personal stake in what we are seeing on the screen. There were one or two moments in Persona that might have been subject to that interpretation - scenes where the words being directed toward the mute Elisabet by other characters are indirectly words being directed toward Liv Ullman by Bergman himself. I can't really come up with any solid specifics in this film or in other Bergman films, so again, maybe I should have kept him off my list.
Woody Allen is different, especially with his use of Farrow. She appears in a number of scenes where her character is responding to a situation that has a very close parallel in her life with Allen. The dinner table scene in Hanna and Her Sisters where Hannah and Elliot discuss his feelings about having a child with her is one example. There are others.
In the end, these are small issues and have little effect on the merits of any film…they're just a fleeting annoyance, like a tiny pebble stuck in my shoe.
Actually Bergman wasn't involved emotionally with liv Ullmann until sometime after they started making Persona. So, keeping in mind that Bergman is the kind of directors that has his screenplay finished and ready before he starts the real making of the film, the probability that their relationship in that movie can be a subject to you interpretation is weak. And he wasn't also involved emotionally with her in many of their later movies in the 70s which could be interpreted, if misunderstood, the same way you interpreted those moments you are referring to in Persona. Same goes for Harriet Andersson.
shareI appreciate that this discussion dates back nearly four years, but since i see it was brought up again and I had just posted on the airplane trip to Verona, I noticed this discussion on the Kenya aspect of it.
The assertion of there being a deleted scene, showing a visit to Verona's natural history museum and there being a possible connection to some explication of the Kenya scene in Marta's apartment is interesting. It would have helped if there had been a link citing support, not to say I doubt the veracity of 9984's recollection as that I would appreciate the ability to read the source for myself. But before proceeding with the airport scene and possible relation to the Kenya theme, I was troubled by 9984's reference to Persona, one of my favorite films. As franz pointed out the relationship between Bergman and Liv Ullmann did not precede the film, and it is very unlikely that there is anything in Persona that even vaguely would have to do with a personal injection of the director's lover and their relationship into that film.
Returning to the airport scene in Verona, we do not know even assuming the museum visit scene and its contents as described why Antonioni chose to not include it. But he was a director who made that choice himself, and we as viewers are essentially left with the film as edited and released to understand it as his intended final work.
Certainly one must assume that the way the airport scene exists in the film is representative of what Antonioni wanted the viewer to understand about it. And if the notion is that the airport scene was part of a larger but in the end "unrealized whole", that seems to suggest that the "remnant" that is left behind is somehow inadequate, or at least less so than if what would have made it part of a "realized" whole was included. And it may well have shifted the focus as indicated.
But that is not the film Antonioni made. And yes the thread on the airport scene indicates a questioning of what is intended by it. Perhaps the randomness of the event as it seems to appear would have been less so as part of a putative realized whole, and the effect of it in its released form was therefore possibly inadvertent.
But I think Antonioni can safely be described as among the most intentional and careful of directors, and surely he knew what the airport scence in context looked and felt like. And that is the film he in the end made.
So, in other words, I think it best to interpret that scene along with the rest of this carefully made film as it is without resort to references to left out scenes. The approach that in effect involves too much dirt digging inevitably becomes an exercise in attempting to interpolate why such scenes were left out, and how the director made that decision, as well as how the director felt about the film that was actually released.
I feel that the airport scene is in large part related to the overall theme in L'Eclisse of how we find meaning in the world, not by interpreting and understanding it as a linear unfolding narrative, with each new development building on the previous. Instead when we perceive something new, something occuring as we perceive it, we must attempt to relate it to our understanding, and ascertain relative importance and relation to larger meaning.
Having said that it would be ridiculous to ignore the connection of the two black men sitting with their backs to the airport's visitor center building and the Kenya scene. That is a subject for further discussion. But I think it is more than adequate to do so in terms of what is in the film.
If this information is true, thank you for sharing it. I wish he would/could have kept the scene. It sounds perfectly in tune with the rest and I would gained even more from watching it.
Man what an experience his films are! Now, on to Red Desert
A good chunk of scene's relevance was obscured because of some post production editing decisions. In its present form it comes off looking like little more than a humorous diversion, but in its original context its purpose was more complex and deeply tied into the film's apocalyptic overtones.
Thanks for the explanation. But in that case Antonioni should have cut out the whole Kenya bedroom scene as well. share
Marta 'defends' herself against her deep identification with the natives by this slur and Vittoria even calls her on it later in the movie. The African scene is beautifully done and is a 'breath of fresh air' in the movie - the 'idealized primitive' escape of the bored moderns played with then thrown aside.
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