The consensus opinion that the aimless 1958 movie "Il Grido" (The Cry) was a tuning point for Antonioni from neorealism to portrayal of alienation and failed human relationships seems must have been made by persons who saw his early documentaries, but not Antonioini's earlier feature films in which one or the other member of a couple walks away, leaving the surprised "partner" distraught. For, seemingly, the second time, it is the man who walked away in Antonioni's first feature film, "Cronaca di amor." It is a man refusing to leave his wife that sets off the suicide in "Les Amiches."

If there it a turn, it is from male characters dropping overwrought female would-be life-partners to women unsatisfied with their male partners that begins in "Il Grido" and continues through the famous 1960s trilogy (L'Avventura, La Notte, L'Eclisse). Although most of "Il Grido" accompanies Aldo (Steve Cochran) after he has left town, his young daughter in tow, before that happens he was rejected by Irma (Alida Valli) the woman with whom he has been living the previous seven years and who bore his daughter. At the start of the movie she receives a telegraph that her husband, who has been working in Australia has died. Aldo is ready to regularize their relationship (that is, marry her), but she tells him she has stopped loving him and now loves someone else.

Aldo does not take the news well, slaps her up in public, and then runs away with the daughter. The first stop is at the girl-friend, Elvia (Betsy Blair) who had been expecting Aldo to marry her before he set up with Irma. is indeed still carrying a torch for him and establishes immediate rapport with the girl. After finding out that Aldo has returned to her only after Irma dumped him, she shuts down. His pride and/or inarticulateness prevent him from trying to persuade her to take them on.

Aldo and the girl next land at a service station in the midst of nowhere (somewhere in the Po River Valley with long, straight roads and long, straight canals and rivers).. There is a restless young woman, Virginia ((Dorian Gray) and a useless (irascible alcoholic) old man (Elli Parvo) , but the set up is not "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (Italianized by Lucho Visconti during the war was "Ossessione" also in the Po Region, and echoed to some degree in the last third of Antonioni's first feature film, "Cronaca di amor"), because the old man is the father rather than the husband of the woman who is running things and is happy to have help--particularly a trained mechanic.

After the daughter sees her father and Virginia doing it in the dirt (something of a trademark of Antonioni films, culminating in the "Zabriskie Point" orgy), Aldo sends her back to Irma and goes on to hook up with yet another lonely but cheerful woman, Andreina (Lyn Shaw). It seems to me that Aldo could have won Elvia (or her flirtatious younger sister) back, or made a life with either of the later two bedmates, but he remains obsessed by Irma, returns, sees that she has a new baby and a more comfortable life... and does not get involved in the political ferment (land being expropriated to build an airport). Even spurning the chance to talk to Irma, he climbs the tower in the refinery where he used to work and jumps off. (That was all I remembered from having once watching "Il Grido" dubbed in English and interrupted with commercials on tv.)

Cochran (dubbed into Italian) provides the look of inarticulate disintegration. Betsy Blair (having recently encouraged Ernest Borgnine's "Marty") comes across as a potential savior. The other two women with whom Aldo shacks up with are more sympathetic characters than he (or Valli's Irma). But the scenario is for the man to give up his skilled-labor job as a mechanic in a refinery and fall apart without the woman he's used to. His clothes get dirty, though not ragged, and his grief seems more egotism than anything else. I couldn't find any reason to care about what happened to him and found the movie boring (far more so than "Les Amiches" and "Cronaca di un amore", close to what I remember of the tedium of "La Notte," which was supposed to be about its characters' suffering tedium, not broken hearts).

Cinematogrpher Gianni Di Venanzo achieved a very gray (multishaded gray) look for a glum, wet northeastern Italian winter's portrayal of snowballing depression. (The same region's industrial landscape is shown in preternatural color in "Red Desert.")

To get through Aldo's descent, I think the viewer must have some pre-existing interest in Antonioni, so that it is interesting to see Antonioni fail in portraying a lower social stratum (skilled workers) than the one in which he usually set his films (la dolce vita). The attempt to work in some popular political resistance in the last section fails miserably, since Aldo is beyond caring about anything except his being cast out by Irma. The suggested parallel between the destruction of the milieu Aldo left and his destruction is very late, very unconvincing, and IMO an insult to the intelligence of the viewer, who has been shown no reason to care about the survival of the man or of the community that has only been shown as standing by while Aldo slaps down Irma in the street before he fled the town.

The KINO DVD has readable subtitles, no bonus features, and a not-at-all-good image with nearly continuous speckling and scratches. Another reminder of why Criterion rules!


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© 2007, Stephen O. Murray




Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age