IL GRIDO by Michelangelo Antonioni
September 18th, 2007 by Dan Schneider
Il Grido / The Cry (1957)
Direction: Michelangelo Antonioni. Screenplay: Michelangelo Antonioni, Elio Bartolini, Ennio de Concini. Cast: Steve Cochran, Alida Valli, Dorian Gray, Betsy Blair, Lyn Shaw, Gabriella Pallotti
By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
So much attention has been paid to Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni’s later New Wave films that his earlier Neo-Realist efforts has been overlooked, as if they represented the work of nothing more than a talented tyro. But even though Antonioni was not as consciously ‘experimental’ in those films as he was in those of the ‘L’Alienation’ trilogy (L’Avventura, La Notte, and L’Eclisse), and in later classics such as Blowup and The Passenger, his earlier films were both well written and visually well composed, playing upon the viewers’ emotions and giving them believable characters and situations. That Antonioni’s film career started out in documentaries should come as no surprise to those familiar with his earlier output.
One of the best of those is Il Grido / The Cry, a 1957 black-and-white drama that Antonioni also co-wrote, along with Elio Bartolini and Ennio de Concini. The nearly two-hour-long Il Grido has much in common with Federico Fellini’s 1954 classic La Strada, save that Antonioni’s film is a bit more believable and less patently heart-tugging. Il Gridoalso prefigures many of the themes that would recur in the director’s later work — e.g., alienation, apathy, anomy — and it possesses a political edge those later films lack.
The lead character is Aldo, a small-town — actually, crappy shacks and huts — refinery worker and mechanical engineer played by American B-film actor Steve Cochran, who is utterly believable as a (dubbed) Italian native. Cochran’s reputation in the United States rested mostly in gangster films, but here he plays a member of the Italian post-war proletariat as the country is on the verge of pulling out of its long economic slump.
Aldo has been having an affair with Irma, a sexy older blonde played by Alida Valli — perhaps best known for her role in the 1949 film noir classic The Third Man, opposite Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles. Irma is married, but her husband has been working in Australia for almost seven years. The Aldo-Irma pair even have a young blonde daughter together, Rosina (Mirna Girardi).
As the film opens, Irma finds out that her husband has died. Aldo now assumes that they are free to marry, but Irma’s been cheating on him and wants to move away and take their daughter with her. Aldo explodes, and several times slaps and physically abuses her, until Irma finally dumps him. As an act of revenge, Aldo takes Rosina on the road with him, after quitting his job. In the camaraderie the pair exhibit, their adventures together recall both Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief and La Strada.
Aldo heads to another small town to meet an old flame, Elvia, also convincingly played by an American, Betsy Blair. Elvia is thrilled that he stops by to see her. Aldo is one of those men with women strewn across his past, all of whom would take him back in a heartbeat. But just as things between them seem to be going well — i.e., Aldo sponges off of her for a time — his past returns, albeit without his knowledge.
Irma shows up with a valise filled with clothes for him and Rosina. As she explains the circumstances of her breakup, Elvia realizes Aldo did not return for her. He decides to take off again. But not before her younger sister Edera, (Gabriella Pallotta), makes a play for him after arriving home from a night on the town. Aldo responds a bit, then rejects her. Subsequently, she laughs at him as he lays down to sleep.
The next morning she finds out that he has left. Elvia knows the real reason, but there is a look of distress in Edera’s eyes that reveals that she believes that she has caused his disappearance from her sister’s life — either with her flirtations or by her emasculating him with the ridicule of her laughter. It is in such small but heartfelt moments that the difference between great and simply average film directors is shown; and it also betrays Antonioni’s background as a documentarian who sees even the smallest actions as holding keys to a character, story, or a telling psychological moment.
Three months later, Aldo and Rosina hitchhike on the top of a gasoline truck — a dangerous ride if there ever was one. But they have to stop at a gas station along a stretch of highway, where Aldo meets and connects with a widow named Virginia (Dorian Gray), who sold her family farm when widowed, and bought the franchise to support her old father (Guerrino Campanini), a loony lush who gets into fights with neighbors, causes fruit trucks to spill their cargo, and does many other wacky things that draw Rosina to him. That is, until he is shipped to an old folks home.
Naturally, Aldo and Virginia get it on, until Rosina catches them, doing it on the side of a road. This is the excuse Aldo needs to abandon the widow. He does so — after sending Rosina back to Irma on a bus — and ends up in a small fishing town where he takes up with the local ‘lady of the night,’ a young woman named Andreina (Lyn Shaw).
Yet, he cannot stay with Andreina, either, for his personal disintegration has gone too far. Additionally, she does not idolize him the way the other women in his life have. So he decides to head back to his daughter and Irma, whom he has never really gotten over. On the way back to his hometown he hitches a ride that stops back at Virginia’s gas station, and the duo exchange sarcastic remarks, as he gets the valise he forgot.
When he returns to his town, he finds it cordoned off by police, as the town has been targeted for razing for a military airport. Aldo sees Rosina head into her mother’s home, and when he looks into the window he sees Irma has a new baby. Aldo assumes the worst, that she’s moved on, and makes it to his old place of work, the refinery tower where the film opened. He climbs the tower.
The plant is deserted. Irma saw him through the window and followed Aldo there. She calls up to him at tower’s top, where he has returned. Earlier, he told Andreina that he loved that spot for it gave him a feeling of power, besides serving as a phallic motif. He hears and sees Irma below, but is so distraught that he has lost her for good that he seems to get woozy, holds his hand up to his head, and falls to his death as Irma is horrified. The film ends there.
Many critics see the ending as showing Aldo committing suicide, but clearly it is an accidental death. Yet, the idea that Aldo is a victim of his social status has some merit, even if the near-universal claim of suicide does not. Although a skilled worker, Aldo — as a single parent — cannot get back on his feet, and rejects jobs that he could take if alone.
Il Grido also focuses on Italy’s working class, as opposed to Antonioni’s later interest on the idle bourgeoisie. But to read too much ideology into this small and personal film takes too much away from Steve Cochran’s excellent acting. That Cochran lucked out by getting this role after a long career playing one-dimensional heavies shows that an actor’s career is as dependent upon luck as that of any other person.
The DVD, put out by Kino Video, has absolutely no extras, and only the original 1950s white subtitles. Those are interesting to watch, for they flash on-screen for a shorter period than most modern DVD subtitles. There is also much that goes untranslated, including epithets like ‘goddamn,’ which is rendered as ‘G_damn.’ The print is also utterly uncleaned, filled with scratches and with a muddy quality to it. Yet, none of this is as big a distraction as it might seem, for it adds to the ‘realistic’ documentary-like feel of Antonioni’s film. The muddy print, in fact, accentuates Antonioni’s own dreary, often cloudy and desolate landscapes, shot in the Po Valley region near Bologna (where he also shot his first documentary during World War II, Gente del Po).
The shots of depressed industrial landscapes enshrouded in fog lend the film a dreamy state, not unlike Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr. Gianni de Venanzo does an excellent job as cinematographer, but even better is the musical score, especially a haunting Erik Satie-like piano theme by Giovanni Fusco, which details Aldo’s inner turmoil even more convincingly.
The film has been compared to the plays of Samuel Beckett, and this is one of the rare times when such comparisons are apt. No, Antonioni’s landscapes are not as bleak and his characters are not as satirical as Beckett’s, but much of the film is a physical journey to nowhere for Aldo ends up back where he started — except that he has failed even more frequently.
Il Grido is not as widely praised as Antonioni’s later films, but it is better than the one that followed, L’Avventura — which saw him break with his past totally — while skirting near and above greatness. Only Il Grido’s rather abrupt, if appropriate, ending can be argued against its greatness, just as Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon can be said to miss greatness only for its weak ending.
Still, Il Grido contains many moments proving that Antonioni and his collaborators were more than capable screenwriters. Among those is the scene of a man briefly entering Elvia’s house, asking her out on a date only to be casually rejected while being offered a potential date on some other Sunday. He cynically scoffs that her promise will be ‘like every other Sunday.’
In that brief scene, we know all we need to about Elvia — that she is still obsessed with Aldo, as we see her out dancing with him in the next scene, and that her hurt when she knows he is using her to forget Irma is genuine. There is no need for a flashback on Elvia’s past with either man, for that brief scene and comment sums it all up with wonderful poesy and concision.
If only more filmmakers learned the lessons Antonioni taught by way of Il Grido half a century ago. More of them would produce films of quality, and a few would even augur great art. Ah, perchance to…
© Dan Schneider
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of Mr. Schneider, and they may not reflect the views of the Alternative Film Guide.
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