Il grido
(The Cry)

Screening on Film

Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni .
With Steve Cochran, Alida Valli, Betsy Blair .
Italy/US, 1956, 35mm, black & white, 116 min.
Print source: Kino Lorber

In one of his greatest roles, the Hollywood star Steve Cochran (White Heat, The Best Years of Our Lives) stars as a laconic, brooding loner whose ostensibly stable, organized life effortlessly dissolves, sending him on a harsh, aimless journey with his young daughter through the bleak, post-war landscapes of Antonioni’s homeland, the Po Valley. Parenthetical, irresolute events surround the heartbroken man’s elliptical wanderings – heavy with the weight of psychological silences, negative space and delicate instances of remarkable, naked humanity. Trapped between traditional and modern existences and needs, the wounded working-class figures that dot his journey only push him further away from his soul and toward the end of his nomadic path, a closed circuit which seems to complete itself of its own accord.