Antonioni's "L'Eclisse" (1962)

Antonioni leaves clues everywhere, and begins here with the shelf full of books in the author’s apartment as the lovers are about to part. I couldn’t make out most of the titles, but one was something-“Economica,” and a subsequent shot of magazines on the table revealed something-“Socialista.” So the inept forsaken lover is an academic and Socialist.

Not that this matters to Vittoria (Monica Vitti): She’s not political; in fact, her next lover (Alain Delon) is a high-energy capitalist day-trader (who actually KNOWS something first-hand about "economics," and who also happens to manage her own mother’s stocks). Vittoria’s ennui isn’t assuaged by either end of the spectrum. 

She’s lethargic, mostly, until given the chance to role-play: She comes alive at a friend’s apartment, when enacting a Kenyan dance after looking at photos of Africa; and when later spending time with Delon, she’s most animated when re-enacting tableaux of other lovers she’s seen on the streets. Antonioni has also made her a translator by profession---again, she has no words of her own. (Her “flightiness” is also exhibited when she seems most satisfied when up in a plane piloted by her friend’s husband.) Delon’s own shallowness is parallel with Vittoria’s: Compare his dismay at his regular call girl’s new hair color---she’d suddenly changed from his preferred blonde (Vittoria’s hair color) to brunette---with Vittoria’s making a U-turn in the street while with Delon when another handsome man passes by.

All is set amidst one of Mussolini’s actual 1930s created-from-scratch suburbs: In this case, EUR---with its nuclear-cloud-shaped tower (nuclear annihilation also on everyone’s mind circa 1962) dominating the horizon, and deserted streets, and new construction, and puny trees supported by wires. There’s no history here whatsoever. Vittoria and her initial jilted lover live in this suburb. Delon’s Piero, on the other hand, has a historical family home in the city of Rome---he also actually is passionate about what he does, despite Vittoria’s disdain for it.