I found a crazy 70s movie that’s hardly been seen since it came out in theaters in ’77, and I just had to tell you about it. Listen on YouTube or read below, and then tell me your favorite movie about a painting.

I just watched something really weird. I know you can’t believe it. I found this movie from the 70s called Eclipse with Tom Conti that’s streaming on the BFI Classics Player.

And can you hear my cat purring? I wouldn’t let my cat anywhere near this movie, but I’ll let you find out when you watch it. And you have to watch it because it is both a Christmas movie that isn’t Christmassy. And it has an ambiguous ending…

In fact, the whole movie is ambiguous, Tom Conti plays twins. And you know that he’s two different people because one has a mustache and one doesn’t, and they have different accents. And they decide foolishly to go out sailing during an eclipse, and the dominant twin, the mustache twin, dies! And so the movie begins with the thing already having happened.

And then you have the whole movie to find out what led up to what happened, but you don’t, it’s beautiful, and it’s gorgeous…

He goes and stays with his sister-in-law and nephew in this house on a cliff, there’s a beach and an ocean and wind and a lighthouse.

And it’s Christmas, and they play with the model train set and drink too much and say things that don’t make a lot of sense, and there’s lots of film grain over all of this, and it makes it so beautiful.

And there’s a giant painting of the brother that died. His name is Geoffrey, and they call him big, G (even his own son calls his deceased dad big G). So…there’s a life-sized painting of him, looking at them in the living room around the Christmas tree, judging them, and he’s totally nude, except for a mustache.

So if that doesn’t sell you to go and watch Eclipse, I don’t know what will. This is a lost film. It’s very obscure. I need you to come and talk to me about it.