Abstract

This article explores the rhythmic structure of Antonioni’s “L’eclisseµ as a choreographic principle that governs relationships between camera and subject, subject and environment, and subjects and objects. I argue that Antonioni mobilizes this structure – long stretches at the pace of a stroll, occasionally disrupted by short explosions of kinetic activity – to expose and critique the violence at the heart of Italian colonialism. I draw on and adjust Giuliana Bruno’s concept of traveling-dwelling to sense the tension in L’eclisse between bodily movement as a source of freedom on the one hand and social constraint on the other, and to ask the question: who is free to move?