The first truly great film I've seen from Antonioni. Moody photography, desolate landscapes, and a totally depressing ending, IL GRIDO is the kind of blackish cinema that speaks directly to how dour my taste can be. A pastoral road movie (not too unlike Fellini's LA STRADA) that reflects the gray and cheerless world of Italian neorealism, even as it elliptically reaches towards dreamier heights and poetic visuals draped in fog and misery. 

Antonioni sets the story apart from previous films by focusing on working class despair, as opposed to hollow bourgeoisie, and the results are perfectly hopeless in all the most moving ways. 

IL GRIDO is a small and personal film that gives its attention to an alienated drifter, proletariat, failed romantic, etc. He's lost the love of his life, refuses stable work, and, in shock, rage and frustration, embarks on a journey across endless roads that look about as bleak and bereft as his inner life. It's this kind of chilly expressionism, so gorgeously shot, that sets it apart from the grunginess of traditional neorealist fare.

In Aldo there still exists a reflection of a larger Italian country pulling out of a long economic sag, as nearly every where he wanders he's met with torture and disillusionment. Regardless of the work that comes his way, or soulmate who tries to fill the void in his heart, he’s simply unable to bounce back. He's lost not only love, but a cherished, family-centered existence. He's reached the bad place, the sunken place, with set back after set back leading him on a cyclical jaunt that ends precisely where he began—feeling like a failure.

I love the focus on lower class despondency. The dreary, postwar Italian landscape is always framed monolithically larger than our tragic hero, who traverses through crumbling industrial spaces that never pay out the dividends that capitalism has promised. Everything is eclipsed by mist and memory. Pay attention to empty spaces, disheveled spaces, for they are what once held business, opportunity and steady labor. In classic neorealist tone, these spaces have now been reduced to rust and rubble. Antonioni accentuates the mood even further by pulling back much of the music and dialogue, which creates an eerie portrait of working class frustration. His most sympathetic picture to date, perhaps a transitional work of things to come? If so, I'm very, very excited.

Antonioni Ranked