Il Grido [The Cry] [The Outcry] **** (1957, Steve Cochran, Alida Valli, Dorian Gray, Betsy Blair, Lynn Shaw) – Classic Movie Review 6280

This downbeat and ambling 1957 Italian personal drama and study in alienation is impressively filmed along Neo-Realist lines by master director Michelangelo Antonioni, who was soon about to make his international name with L’Avventura (1960),

Steve Cochran stars as sugar refinery mechanic worker Aldo, who wanders Italy’s Po Valley with his little girl Rosina (Mirna Girardi), looking for new hope and meeting different women after his live-in lover companion, partner Irma (Alida Valli) tells him that she is going to leave him when Aldo proposes to marry her after she is told her husband had just died in Sydney. The women include Aldo’s former lover Elvia (Betsy Blair), the petrol station widow Virginia (Dorian Gray) and the prostitute Andreina (Lynn Shaw).

The depressing downer of a story still intrigues and involves to a considerable degree, and Gianni di Venanzo’s well photographed black and white images of barren scenes impress, while Antonioni offers a detailed, meticulous, intelligent film with plenty of provocative ideas. Valli, Blair, Gray and Shaw all exude allure but Cochran is more shaky in the star role.

Also in the cast are Dorian Gray, Betsy Blair, Lynn Shaw, Gabriella Pallotta, Pina Boldrini, Guerrino Campanili, Mirna Girardi and Gaetano Matteucci.

It is written by Michelangelo Antonioni, Elio Bartolini and Ennio De Concini, produced by Robert Alexander and Franco Cancellieri, and scored by Giovanni Fusco.

Antonioni’s muse Monica Vitti dubs the Italian dialogue for Dorian Gray.

It runs 116 minutes but only 103 minutes in the censored version.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6280

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