Blu-ray: Eclipse

What constitutes a “lost classic”? I guess we can’t say it’s an oxymoron, since we readily accept the concept of “instant classic”? Either way, the “classic” aspect may be in the eye of the beholder, but “lost" is more easily quantified. Simon Perry’s slippery 1977 psychological thriller Eclipse certainly fits the bill, having languished unseen in the BFI vaults for nigh on half a century.

Tom Conti plays Tom, twin brother to the deceased Geoffrey (also played by Conti), or “Big G” as he was known to everyone, including his son. Tom was present when Geoffrey died in mysterious circumstances, seemingly in an accident caused by their sailboat getting caught in a nighttime storm off the Scottish coast during the titular eclipse.

The lack of light that led to Tom being able to offer little clarity or detail to the postmortem inquest serves as a metaphor for the murkiness of narrative and meaning that percolates the story.

Viewers who feel uneasy with a film that lacks storytelling momentum or notable events may find themselves feeling that “nothing is happening” during much of Eclipse’s runtime. Those of a more ruminative nature, however, might find the film’s themes and unsettling atmosphere lingering in the mind long afterwards.

Centring a plot around twins, particularly where one of them dies in the presence of the other under circumstances that remain unclear, kicks up a dense cloud of questions around identity, unreliable narrators, and our inability to make categorical judgements about the nature of reality. 

Central to this is Conti’s performance. We can never be sure if he is portraying Tom as the brother who was merely an innocent bystander at his brother's demise, or if he's adding an extra layer of artifice. In short, was Geoffrey’s death a tragic accident, or is something more sinister lurking beneath Tom’s easy affability?

We see the fatal boating accident a number of times, and each depiction presents a different view of events, yet we are given nothing concrete to indicate which version is the truth. This isn’t a film that was ever going to shine brightly under restoration; in fact, the picture has a literal murkiness that suits the theme. 

The BFI disc is loaded with extras, including an entertaining interview with an avuncular, mirthful Conti, in which he talks about the dangers of working in water – the sea “is a hostile place, even near the shore” – and his approach to his craft: “Try not to act”. There’s also an erudite, illuminating commentary from the BFI’s Vic Pratt, who calls Eclipse “an unwieldy film” about the dangers of “taking people at face value”.

Emblematic of this is the weird painting of Geoffrey that his widow Cleo (Gay Hamilton) keeps hanging in their house, even while Tom is visiting for Christmas. It’s a full frontal nude that Tom angrily decries as “dishonest”, hinting that it looks more like him than “Big G”. Add to this the unreliability of timelines and flashbacks. A scene depicting Tom and Cleo in bed together is especially resonant given what's occurred.

Conti was a good choice to play such an ambiguous role. He’s a difficult figure to locate meaningfully on the fame spectrum. You could say he’s a household name, yet you’d be on equally solid ground if you called him relatively obscure. (There’s no entry for him in David Thomson’s The New Biographical Dictionary of Film; make of that what you will.) 

Conti continues to work – he appears, for instance, in Oppenheimer – but if he’s known to modern audiences, it’s for his scenery-chewing turn as father to Ross’s prospective bride Emily (Helen Baxendale) in one of the most egregiously annoying episodes of Friends.

Hamilton, meanwhile, has a slender filmography considering the strength and subtlety of her Eclipse performance: enigmatic, simmering, occasionally erupting then sinking back down below the surface of herself again.

Perry mortgaged his house to make this film. It wasn’t a success, and Perry was not to direct again. His sole feature deserved a better fate than being buried in an archive. It may not be a classic, per se, but at least it’s no longer lost. Even if we consider it a noble failure, it’s a lot more interesting than many more successful seventies films.

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