Il Grido

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni Michelangelo Antonioni

Overview

The grim, drab life of a man who labors in a Po Valley sugar refinery in northern Italy provides the center of this black-and-white drama from Michelangelo Antonioni. The worker lives with a married woman and their young daughter. One day, the woman learns that her legal spouse died. The refinery worker immediately proposes, but she spurns him in favor of another. Deeply depressed, the laborer begins to drift aimlessly across the northern wasteland with his daughter in tow. Along the way, he meets many people, including a woman from his past. Despite his many low-key adventures, he is unable to forget his daughter's mother and so returns to find that she lives in a new home with a new child. The story comes to its climax during a demonstration protesting the building of a U.S. airfield where the refinery stands.

Product Details

Release Date:	09/26/2000
UPC:	0738329017620
Original Release:	1957
Source:	Kino Lorber
Presentation:	[B&W]
Language:	English
Time:	1:55:00
Sales rank:	53,527

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Steve Cochran	Aldo
Dorian Gray	Virginia
Alida Valli	Irma
Lyn Shaw	Andreina,Actor
Betsy Blair	Elvia
Gabriella Pallotta	Edera
Mirna Girardi	Rosina
Guerrino Campanili	Virginia's Father
Gaetano Matteucci	Edera's Fiance
Pietro Corvelatti	Old Fisherman
Pina Boldrini	Actor
Lilia Landi	Actor
Vittorio Duse	Cesare
Lia Golmar	Matilda's Cousin
M. Levi	Actor
Carlo Lizzani	Don Camillo, priest
Egisto Olivieri	Laura's Father
Lea Padovani	Laura
Elli Parvo	Donna Matilda
G. Pontecorvo	Actor
Marco Sarri	Cesare's Brother
Massimo Serato	Major Heinlich
Giovanni Fusco	Composer

Technical Credits

Michelangelo Antonioni

Elio Bartolini

Ennio de Concini

Michelangelo Antonioni	Director,Screenwriter
Elio Bartolini	Screenwriter
Ennio de Concini	Screenwriter
Franco Cancellieri	Producer
Danilo Marciani	Executive Producer
Vittorio Trentino	Sound Effects

Scene Index

Side #1
0. Chapter Selections
1. Opening Titles [2:32]
2. Bad Tidings [6:25]
3. Irma's [9:50]
4. Family Counsel [3:22]
5. A Flare of Anger [1:53]
6. Departure [3:33]
7. Elvia [9:47]
8. Popularity Contest (Edera) [6:44]
9. A New Beginning [10:15]
10. Virginia [8:40]
11. Life at the Outpost [8:29]
12. In the City [4:42]
13. Rosina [7:25]
14. Andreina [16:25]
15. Seeking Home [13:55]

Menu

Side #1
   Feature Start

Editorial Reviews

Il Grido is a landmark Michelangelo Antonioni film from early in his career, before the big breakthrough with L'Avventura (1960) established his international career, and led to the U.K./U.S. hit Blow-Up (1966), which remains for many the quintessential Swinging London film. In Il Grido, Antonioni uses the fading American actor Steve Cochran as Aldo, a rough and tumble refinery worker who is involved in a tempestuous relationship with Irma (Alida Valli, best known for her role as Anna Schmidt in Carol Reed's The Third Man [1949]), who is married to another man. When Irma receives word that her husband has died in Australia, Aldo hopes that he and Irma can now be married; they have a daughter together, Rosina (Mirna Girardi), and now perhaps the couple can find some peace and stability. But, as in all of Antonioni's films, this is not to be: Irma is in love with another man, and she abruptly tells Aldo that their relationship is over. Stunned, Aldo tries to use violence to make Irma stay, but this only makes the break in their relationship irrevocable. Left with no other recourse, Aldo and Rosina leave their home and begin to wander through the Italian landscape, searching for some sense of meaning in their lives. Antonioni's sense of perpetual alienation is as strong as ever here; Aldo moves through a world of fog and shadow, in which everything is mechanized, and machines dominate the soundtrack of the film, which offers up a vision of existence as a desolate hell from which death would be a merciful release. Cochran gives the performance of his career in this, perhaps the actor's most ambitious project. Antonioni is developing themes that he would pursue in such classics as Il Deserto Rosso (1964), L'Eclisse (1962), and La Notte (1961) to even greater effect. While not one of Antonioni's major works, Il Grido is still a compelling vision of spiritual bankruptcy and betrayal from the typically uncompromising director, and an interesting indication of where he would go in the years ahead, which would seal his reputation as one of the key filmmakers 1960s, the poet of detached ennui.

All Movie Guide - Wheeler Winston Dixon