SOURCE: “Chance Encounters,” in Sight and Sound, Vol. 4, No. 12, December, 1994, p. 61.

In the following essay in praise of L’eclisse, Peck selects several sequences which show Antonioni’s ability to convey the subtleties of alienation, uncertainty, and dread which characterize “The Atomic Age.”

I was 15 when I first saw Antonioni’s L’eclisse. It was screened for only one afternoon at the Tooting Classic. I skipped school games to go and see it and as a result got slapped into a two hour detention. The impact the film had on me in 1963 was devastating. It was unlike anything else I had seen, and it seemed to describe the kind of world into which we were moving—it was almost science fiction.

L’eclisse was made some months before the Cuban missile crisis and my memories of it are strongly linked to that terrifying week of nuclear brinkmanship. I...