Cinema Italian Style: Il Grido
November 10, 2024
Deserted by the mother of his child, a factory worker wanders through the gray landscape of the Po Valley in search of solace and meaning. Startlingly bleak, Antonioni’s rare departure from exploring affluent society is among his most politically trenchant films. New 4K restoration from Janus Films.
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Years before L'Avventura, his international breakthrough, Michelangelo Antonioni crafted his first masterpiece with Il Grido, a raw expression of anguish that remains one of Italian cinema’s great underappreciated gems. Bridging Antonioni’s early, neorealism-inspired work and his hallmark stories of existential rootlessness Il Grido centers on Aldo (Steve Cochran), a sugar-refinery worker in the Po Valley. When Irma (Alida Valli), his lover of seven years, learns that her estranged husband has died abroad, Aldo hopes they can finally marry. These plans are ruined, however, when Irma declares she’s fallen in love with another man. Shocked and demoralized, Aldo leaves town with his daughter, Rosina (Mirna Girardi), and attempts to woo an old girlfriend (Betsy Blair), only to find himself rebuffed. As Aldo continues to drift through the Po’s small villages, his prospects dwindle and his connections with other women—including a gas-station owner (Dorian Gray) and a sex worker (Lyn Shaw)—fizzle out into alienation and despair. Strikingly composed and boldly using environment to convey character—like Antonioni’s later classics—Il Grido reveals a director in the process of discovering his artistic signature and applying it to this most personal of statements about the human condition.
- Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
- Principal Cast: Steve Cochran, Alida Valli, Dorian Gray, Lynn Shaw, Gabriella Pallotta
- Country: Italy, USA
- Year: 1957
- Running Time: 116 min.
- Producer: Franco Cancellieri
- Screenplay: Michelangelo Antonioni, Elio Bartolini, Ennio De Concini
- Cinematographers: Gianni De Venanzo
- Editors: Eraldo Da Roma
- Music: Giovanni Fusco
- Filmography: The Passenger (1975), Blow-Up (1966), La Notte (1961)
- Language: Italian
- US Distributor: Janus Films