The dark side of Tom Conti… Eclipse (1977), BFI Flipside #51 Blu-ray, out now!

 

In his commentary, BFI Flipside supremo Vic Pratt recalls interviewing Tom Conti for another recent release, Heavenly Pursuits (1986) in which he mentioned that Eclipse was one of the few of his films he didn’t have a copy of. Vic dutifully sought it out to make Tom a screener and discovered this disturbing and atmospheric thriller was ideal for the quirky, strange charms of the Flipside range.

IMDB describes Simon Perry’s film as a “… story of the possession of one man - his mind, heart and soul - by his twin brother”, but it’s rather more than that and possibly less. For all those in search of a neat Columbo-style ending to this emotional mystery they’d better look elsewhere as Eclipse is as full of shadowy meaning as a Mark Rothko picture painted with all the lights off and wearing sunglasses. It’s based on a novel by Nicholas Wollaston and by all accounts with less specificity.

Tom Conti is the most unreliable of narrators playing twin brothers Tom (oh yeah?) and Graham who is found dead on the beach at the start of the film with a nasty gash on his head and a moustache to match on his fore lip. Having recently seen him as the soulless advertising executive trying to manipulate the band Slade in Flame, you’re reminded of his deceptive skill in portraying empty vessels and, even when he’s emotionally wrought you’re unsure in this film what is driving him.

Tom was the only other person on the boat with his twin and throughout the film’s numerous flashbacks to the incident you’re never sure whether this is his own faulted memory or a gradual unrolling of the truth. In stormy seas out to view a total eclipse, the brothers lose control of their vessel and Graham falls into the water either struck by the boom or by something else… the flashes we see may be Tom’s imaginings or his recovering memory.

At the inquest Tom is equally hard to read with Conti playing with just a hint of guilt even as he tells the most plausible of tales. It’s death by misadventure and of a man referred to as The Big G by Tom’s sister-in-law and her son. Graham’s widow Cleo is played by Gay Hamilton who Conti had recommended for the role and who is every inch his equal in portraying her own range of barely decipherable emotions. Cleo had her darker views of G and the painting Tom finds on visiting her for Christmas shows him slighter of stature and naked on a beach. Tom cannot stand the image and asks for it to be removed.

There are clearly strong undercurrents running between Cleo and Tom, not just their mixed feelings about G but for each other too; a path well-trodden and now with new possibilities. Tom is also welcomed as the most familiar of uncles by young Giles (Gavin Wallace) who treats him almost like a father. But, as they play trains on Christmas day, Giles runs them backwards upsetting Tom by not playing to his rules and echoing Big G’s more dominant position.

The Christmas is tense as the discourse between Cleo and Tom unwinds with the former having developed a taste for gin since the accident – maybe before – and the latter still unable to recall the events of the fateful journey. Both are grieving and yet both have reason to resent Big G’s dominance in their lives. Tom, twenty minutes younger, has been overshadowed by Graham and the two would conduct conversations by completing each other’s sentences. Graham wasn’t just dominant he was the driver of so much of his brother’s choices, driving him to extremes in order to stake a claim to his identity.

Is this reason enough to kill or just to be ambiguous about his brother, and for Cleo, is she too now liberated in terms of her feelings for Tom and her choices.

It’s a broody and unsettling tale and one that offers no easy answers or resolution, you are wrongfooted throughout and the skill of the actors keeps you guessing. Vic mentioned thematic similarities to Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men (2022) and there are similarities in a narrative that shows and certainly doesn’t always tell as well as the brutal psycho-geography of the coastal location. At one point Cleo jumps into the stormy sea as if communing with the unrelenting power that took her husband and then there’s almost a re-run of the fateful voyage when Tom takes Giles out on a small sailing boat.

It’s fascinating and well worth inclusion in the Flipside alternative canon of British and Irish oddities and should have beens!

 

The special features below clinch the deal… especially the three classic public information adverts that amused and frightened my generation of children. Be very careful near deep waters… stay in your depth.

 

• Newly remastered in 2K and presented in High Definition
• Audio commentary by Vic Pratt, co-founder of BFI Flipside
• Sun & Moon – Tom Conti Discusses Eclipse (2025, 10 mins): the actor on his experience of making the film
• Relative Strangers: two stylish short films, The Chalk Mark (1989, 24 mins) and Marooned (1994, 20 mins), that echo the disjointed relationships central to Eclipse
• Not Waving, Drowning: Joe and Petunia: Coastguard (1968, 2 mins); Charley Says: Falling in the Water (1973, 1 min); Lonely Water (1973, 2 mins): three haunting water-safety Public Information Films eerily adjacent to the psycho-geographic headspace of the main feature
• 2025 trailer
• Image gallery

 

The first pressing only includes an illustrated booklet with new writing on the film by Vic Pratt, an archival interview with director Simon Perry, an original review, an essay on the film’s locations by Douglas Weir and writing on The Chalk Mark and Marooned by the BFI’s William Fowler.

 

You can order direct from the BFI from their online shop. Another winner and a missing piece for Mr Conti’s shelves as well as those of us who appreciate under-appreciated British film!