Il Grido (1957) User Reviews

A Nutshell Review: Il Grido

[DICK STEEL · 8/10 · 28 June 2008]

For those who've been attending the Retrospective religiously, one of the best bits during the screening is the introduction to each movie as presented by Lorenzo Codelli, where he shares some little known facts of the movie with the audience. Today we were told that Monica Vitti actually was featured in Il Grido, not in person though but providing the dubbed voice behind Dorian Gray's character Virginia. So their collaboration stretched further back, even before L'Avventura.

The story centers on a working class sugar refinery worker Aldo (American actor Steve Cochran) who we learn has waited for 7 years cohabiting with Irma (Alida Valli), whose husband had recently passed away while in Australia. Thinking that this is a blessing in disguise in that he can finally marry Irma, Aldo gets the biggest surprise when he learns that the love of his life had in the last 4 months, given her heart to someone else. In rage he dished out unforgivable physical violence in public on her, and with a broken heart, picks up his daughter Rosina (Mima Girardi) to embark on an aimless road trip, wandering all over Po valley (which was the subject of one of Antonioni's early documentary).

Shot in the great outdoors, there's always a lingering mist in the first half of the movie, as if to accentuate Aldo's state of uncertainty and blur in his current state of life, without a clue what lies ahead as he drifts from location to location, and from person to person, as if like a person on a rebound, latching onto every opportunity that present itself to him, but all this while having absolutely no plans and unsure of what to do. While he seeks out his first love Elvia (Betsy Blair) and there comes this speed boat race, I thought Il Grido really picks up when he wanders toward a highway petrol kiosk, and meets with Virginia (Dorian Gray) and her alcoholic aged father (played by Guerrino Campanini).

Romancing the lady boss for food and lodging, having his daughter at his side demonstrated in truth that his relationship with and welfare for his daughter takes precedence over everything else, so while on the surface he might seem aimless, deep down he still bears a sense of responsibility to provide for Rosina, which probably gave him an invisible guiding hand in what he was doing, until of course he clinically evaluated and decided otherwise.

As he goes from woman to woman, having short temporal relationships with everyone we see on screen from Elvia to Andreina (Lynn Shaw), each played out like small skits, but a common thread running through it is that the characters here seem to be people who have wasted away their prime, missed the boat and are holding out for one last possibility at true love and happiness. Irma found hers although at Aldo's expense, and everyone else demonstrated memories with loved ones whom they cannot forget. The ending is nothing less than heart- wrenching, a discovery and affirmation of sad truths when people indeed have moved on, but then you realize that insofar you're still stuck in a rut. Very depressing if you ponder over it.

The last act also dwelt on impending change, with landscape changes ordered from the top, with common people on the ground being forced to accept these changes, with little regard to their livelihood. I thought it provided a poignant moment to reflect upon such frenzy, and sometimes the insensitivity that comes together with forced policies probably, and hopefully for the greater good.

an almost mature Antonioni

[wvisser-leusden · 8/10 · 18 October 2010]

In the total of Antonioni's films, 'Il grido' (= Italian for 'the outcry') makes an exception: it is entirely set in a worker's environment. Usually Antonioni's actors and actresses perform people who don't earn their living by physical labor.

Produced shortly before Antonioni's famous trio 'La Notte', 'L'eclisse' and 'L'avventura', this film from 1957 clearly shows the theme Antonioni got so famous with: men losing their roots, being dislocated & disoriented by the advancement of technology. Around 1960 this pessimism was very current.

On top of this, 'Il grido' carries every other Antonioni-feature. Fine shooting, while emphasizing on geometries in buildings and landscapes (Antonioni was educated as an architect). First class actors and actresses who seldom laugh and make joy. And, as I already mentioned, a pessimistic theme linked with some grand-scale technical advancement.

Antonioni is renowned as 'the poet of misery'; 'Il grido' is quite in line with this statement.

One of Antonioni's most underrated films

[MOscarbradley · 9/10 · 8 August 2018]

In the Antonioni canon "Il Grido" is often cited as one of his lesser works, superseded by the trilogy that began with "L'Avventura" and even his later English-language films, "Blow Up" and "The Passenger". Granted this remarkable film doesn't quite hit you between the eyes in the way others do but remarkable it is, a grim tale of working-class misery set in a misty, wet Po Valley and concerned, like much of Antonioni's work, with a loss or lack of love.

Perhaps the critics of the time weren't too happy with Antonioni's decision to cast the American Steve Cochran as the brutish anti-hero Aldo. Cochran had to be dubbed as did a number of his co-stars, including Alida Valli and Betsy Blair. In his own country Cochran was never rated as much of an actor but he is superb here as a man deserted by the woman he had hoped to marry, (Valli), and who then takes to the road with his young daughter.

If anything, the film is proof that Antonioni wasn't just a great chronicler of upper and middle-class angst but someone who could deal with the universal themes of loss and grief. It's certainly downbeat. From the outset it's a film that offers no hope for its characters and is probably the director's most pessimistic work. His use of location is, of course, crucial; its bleakness mirrors its characters lack of hope and Cochran's Aldo is one of cinema's great existentialist working-class heroes while, even dubbed as here, both Valli and Blair are excellent and Gianni Di Venanzo's cinematography is superb. This is a film crying out for rediscovery and simply shouldn't be missed.

Searching for something that isn't there.

[bobsgrock · 25 July 2011]

Films like Il Grido are nearly impossible to qualify or calculate on any real scale simply because they do not adhere to conventional rules of filmmaking. Michelangelo Antonioni's existential journey is very episodic in nature as we watch a self-contained man travel away from his lover in search of more fulfilling relationships after she turns down his marriage proposal. What follows may or may not make an emotional impact on the viewer as it is very languid pacing and tediously told. Antonioni fills the screen with endless long shots and long takes of the most desolate, empty and vast areas possible, especially for a country known to be so vibrant and fruitful as Italy. This seems to represent the protagonist's soul, his yearning for some sort of satisfaction that he cannot seem to grab a hold of. Despite the downtrodden mood of the film, it is a captivating journey, exploring the depths and lengths to which humans seek pleasure in any form. Of course, this assumes that pleasure is the right word.

alienation and the modern man

[FrankiePaddo · 9/10 · 16 October 1999]

Known as "The Outcry" in the U.S. A wonderful if disturbing film about alienation and modern society. Not for those who like bouncy, happy films.

The great though relatively forgotten American actor Steve Cochran is near perfect as the worker who finds he cannot communicate, with those he loves, and so begins a downward spiral towards a state of mental disintegration. What is interesting are the Marxist and Freudian overtones that Antonioni puts on the character. The protagonist as the result of his economic position in a capitalist society ( he only has his labour to sell) is uprooted from his community and therefore alienated from his environment, and so becomes alienated from those he loves. The harder he tries the more he withdraws until he perceives he can suffer no more.

Cochran always was very good at playing "heavies" or "playboys", and here he manages to bring both to his underdog character who is strong, brutish and handsome. At the same time he manages to convey the loneliness and vulnerability the character lives through showing that those attributes are not enough to survive.

Antonioni directs with a sure hand a picture of a successful, postwar, industrial Italy where everything is not as easy as it seems. Needless to say the film is in black and white and photographed in grainy neo realist style. The landscapes, in true Antonioni fashion, are bleak, and the loneliness and isolation from others is reflected in the distance between buildings. The leisured pacing, adds to the feeling that life drags on without change.

Antonioni's characters normally, as his films L'eclisse and Red Desert, as with fellow Italian directors Fellini and De Sica during the same period, usually have uncertain futures, as if there is a hidden side to Italy's postwar economic miracle. Here, it's as if the protagonist has a manifest destiny from which there is no redemption.

Depressing and slow but still quite good.

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 29 October 2013]

Some folks watching "Il Grido" might be surprised to see some Americans in this Italian film. In the 1950s and 60s, quite a few Italian directors (such as Antonioni and Fellini) cast Americans and had them dubbed into Italian. Most were second and third tier actors at the time (such as Steve Cochran, Richard Basehart and Anthony Quinn) but later even some big name stars performed in the Italian films (such as Burt Lancaster). I think the reason they did this was to attempt to increase the marketability of the movies outside of Italy--and these stars would help.

The film begins with Irma (Alida Valli) learning that her husband is dead. He apparently has been gone for many years and the interim she's been living with Aldo (Steve Cochran). They even have a child together. Here's the odd part, however, now that she knows she's a widow, she tells Aldo to leave! He is not at all happy and eventually he disappears along with his daughter. For the rest of the film, Aldo and his daughter move from town to town. However, Aldo has difficulty connecting with other women and he rejects opportunity after opportunity for relationships. Instead, he remains socially isolated and depressed.

Overall, you'll probably find this film a bit slow and depressing. While this is usually a big turn-off, it actually works here. Director Antonioni wants to create a depressing portrait of a lost man and does it quite well. The simple piano score sure helps with this. Not a film for everyone but exceptionally well made.

By the way, at one point in the film, you see folks saying they caught a couple porcupines and were going to eat them. These actually were hedgehogs--you never would hold porcupines the way they did nor do I think you'd eat them! This is simply a mistranslation.

The cry

[TheLittleSongbird · 7/10 · 6 February 2019]

Michaelangelo Antonioni is a polarising director and it is easy to see as to why that is the case. His directing style is unique, his themes are fascinating and there are many transfixing moments in his films (some amazing final shots and unforgettable endings for instance). His style and some of his films understandably perplex and alienate others, will admit to not liking all of his films when familiarising myself with him relatively recently and do feel that a few of his films do have what he can be criticised for (ambiguity and self-indulgence being common criticisms).

Personally more appreciate Antonioni and his style than love him, but really like to love most of his films, my personal favourite being 'La Notte'. With a few exceptions like 'Blow-Up' and particularly 'Zabriskie Point' leaving me indifferent. 'Il Grido' is from the period where he was making a good deal of interesting and generally films, before he properly hit his stride with the film that put him properly on the map 'L'avventura'. It may not be one of his best films or one of the best from this period because it is a well above average film that is definitely worth seeing, particularly if you have just gotten familiar with Antonioni and are aiming to see as many films of his as possible.

'Il Grido' occasionally meanders in the pacing and at times it's a touch melodramatic.

Steve Cochran's acting limitations can show here, though he is certainly not what one calls amateurish.

However, 'Il Grido', as always with Antonioni, looks great. Perhaps not exquisite, but the bleakness shown in the photography is remarkably vivid and still looks striking. The setting is simple but has a lot of atmosphere and the vivid photography really enhances it and makes it much more interesting than it could have been. The music score is haunting and sombre, adding enormously to the bleakness and emotion of the story and not being discordant with it. Did think that the dialogue avoided rambling and doesn't over-explain, like some later Antonioni films did.

Antonioni's direction is committed and doesn't come over as ostentatious, heavy-handed or trying too hard. The story is a familiar theme for Antonioni and has admittedly been done with more depth and insight elsewhere, but that doesn't stop 'Il Grido' from being quite intriguing and affecting. The story has more clarity too than other Antonioni films, do think that this is one of his more accessible films, and while the characters are not complex they aren't shallow either. Reservations with Cochran aside, the acting is good and it was an interesting line-up of actors in most likely a way to generate a wider audience.

Overall, good but not great. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Aldo's way

[bob998 · 8/10 · 12 February 2017]

Aldo's way takes him through the northern Italian region he knew in his youth. Gianni di Venanzo's photography is superb, capturing the bleak atmosphere of small towns: houses run down, cheap gas stations, a school in the middle of nowhere. There is nobody like Antonioni for portraying empty spaces leading nowhere.

Aldo is as confused a character as one can find in European cinema. His life with Irma is over-she doesn't love him anymore-but he insists on moving on with his daughter. Elvia and her sex pot sister Edera offer no shelter to this man, who can't afford to bring up a child. He gets lucky, it seems with Virginia and her crazy dad at the gas station, but still he manages to alienate her. The last stop is a rundown shack with a prostitute. The four actresses--Alida Valli, Betsy Blair, Dorian Grey and Lyn Shaw--all play well. Steve Cochran at least has the advantage of a sturdy build even if his acting skills are limited.

If Il grido is not as fine as L'avventura or Le amiche from the early period, it is still very good work.

More neo-realist than most Antonioni

[runamokprods · 7/10 · 31 January 2011]

Unique amongst the Antonioni films I've seen, in that it has a lower class and sympathetic lead character.

A worker is rejected by his long time lover when he asks to marry her, and takes their shared 7 year old daughter and hits the road in response, meeting and struggling with various women along the way.

A much more naturalistic and neo-realist film than other Antonioni films, interesting and moving, with a much clearer POV and story. It's also very well shot, although in a more subtle, less breathtaking way than his other work. But it does succumb to melodramatics at times, and the acting is OK, not great. There's also a touch of misogyny. But this is still a solid work by a master film-maker, so worth checking out if Antonioni is of interest to you.

Echo of Winterreise

[tooter-ted · 8/10 · 9 March 2006]

Other reviews to the contrary, if you found Le Notte or L'Eclisse lacked sufficient plot, I doubt you'll enjoy Il Grido. However, unlike later Antonioni, the focus here is not on fear of commitment & loss of passion, but on a classic spurned lover. Like L'Eclisse, Il Grido begins with breakup, magnificently acted & powerfully filmed; we feel each shudder of pain. In fact, both films' power rests on us sharing this experience, second by second, nerve-end by nerve-end. Note Irma's efforts to hold to the fabric of order & routine to keep a lid on Aldo's fury & the careful portrayal of Aldo's frustrations.

Il Grido's opening builds to a very public & final breakup. It initiates Aldo's journey away from Irma & home. I kept thinking of Schubert's song cycle, Winterreise. In both, after rejection the protagonist's world ceases to hold together. Only here the descent isn't into winter but into fog, industrial sprawl, & ever more spartan existence. Even the piano which accompanies Aldo reminded me of lieder.

The opening's not quite picturesque scenery may suggest nurturing home values. Unlike couples in other Antonioni classics, Aldo & Irma have a daughter, & to Aldo their lives seemed fulfilled. The almost picturesque is soon replaced by encroaching industrial sounds & images. Several times we see trees felled as an old order is being swept away. At film's end, the whole town is slated for demolition, & we are asked to contemplate the relation between the Winterreise-like main text of lost love & this subtext of industrial sprawl & oppressive, intrusive government. No clear connection is given, but as in later Antonioni, the images work their effect as much on our subconscious as on our intellect; whether we can verbalize our thoughts or not, we feel this rupture with earlier values & social structures. For me, Il Grido is a more honest film than L'Avventura. If it lacks a bit of the elegant, refined photo compositions of Antonioni's trilogy, it rests on the same detailed, carefully structured cinematography.

Moments are not everything

[Konstantin_A · 6/10 · 20 August 2020]

You should not expect any kind of active action from the film, this is a very inexpressive and unhurried work. The first time the movie noticed me only an hour later, at the moment when the child realizes that the mother will no longer be in her life, and that the father was not going to see her. The unjustified destructiveness of the actions of the main character - he just left - just threw - just beat him up - he just does what he does, spitting on the child along with his girlfriend, ready to sacrifice her life for their comfort. Well, at least they didn't, and thanks for that. Completely unnecessary, lonely, as a result, the father sends back to his mother, but asks her not to tell anyone that he is deeply unhappy in the life he is living. Further, I liked the moment where the engineer says to the proletarians in solidarity that: "If a piece of land is taken away from you, it's all for the good of the country, and these peasants live even better than you", at the moment when these very fields set on fire by the military for the construction of a new airport are on fire. Then we see a happy child returning home, and a father who looks through a lattice window at the happy life of his ex-wife. He decided everything for himself, before the "Hitchcock ending", as I would call it.

Emptiness and Search

[claudio_carvalho · 8/10 · 24 September 2007]

After living seven years with the mechanic Aldo (Steve Cochran), having a daughter with him, the simple woman Irma (Alida Valli) is informed that her absent husband had just died in Sydney. She becomes upset when Aldo proposes to marry her and she tells him that she is going to leave him. Unable to explain how much he loves her, Aldo takes their daughter Rosina (Mirna Girardi) and travels with her, meeting different women in different places, trying to establish a new relationship and fill the emptiness of his sentimental life. He visits his former lover Elvia (Betsy Blair); he meets and lives with the widow Virginia (Dorian Gray), who owns a gas station; he lives with the prostitute Andreina (Lynn Shaw). But these relationships never complete the needy Aldo.

Michelangelo Antoniani is the filmmaker of the troubled relationships and "Il Grido" is a depressive story of a worker seeking a woman to fulfill the emptiness of his sentimental life after his seven year mate breaks their marriage. Without possessions, he needs to work to survive with his daughter while trying to live with another woman, in a sad and tragic story. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "O Grito" ("The Cry")

A good film that is also not very interesting up until the end.

[mrpinbert · 7/10 · 25 September 2015]

A local theater is currently showing an Antonioni Exhibition and doing a retrospective of several of his films.

Although I am familiar from film studies with this period of Italian cinema I had not yet seen any Italian Neo-Realist films, or any Antonioni films for that matter.

The film starts of well with some decent drama but quickly evolves into a meandering tale. Throughout the film I often found myself on the verge of boredom, thankfully Aldo's encounters with different women kept me still somewhat entertained. The existentialist themes of this story are not lost on me but I did find this somewhat of a chore to sit through.

I only really put together the films themes in my head after watching it. So it did leave me thinking but not very much.

This is a film I could only recommend to someone that is actually interested in this period of Italian cinema and this particular director. A solid film but nothing spectacular. I followed it up with watching L'Eclisse for the first time a couple of days later, which I enjoyed a great deal better.

Competent, but emotionally distant....

[cesarat37 · 5/10 · 11 August 2020]

"Il grido" is one of the (very few) Antonioni films which i somewhat liked, but this is partly due to the superb photography of desolate, misty landscapes, which stress the loneliness of the main character Aldo, a factory worker who wanders from place to place with his daughter, searching for love, a mother for Rossina, and a new job. The film is like an early road movie, and also the only "Neorrealist" movie which Antonioni directed. It's also one of the few collaborations between the Italian director and Hollywood actors, and Steve Cochran does a fine job in the role of Aldo. Technically, this is a flawless movie, but frankly I didn't feel empathy for any of the main characters...because they're all quite unlikeable, especially Aldo and Irma. Antonioni seems to imply that Aldo's problems are more of an emotional/psychological nature, rather than economic (although this is later seen towards the end, as he doesn't have a steady job). Aldo is always bitter, nervous, impatient...and physically agressive towards women when he doesn't get his ways. He doesn't seem to adapt anywhere or to make a stable bond with any of the women he meets, always complaining, always searching for something he will never get or achieve. Overall, this film has a very bleak, pessimistic tone, but it does have some artistic merits which will make Antonioni a household name of "author cinema" of the 1960s and 70s. 5/10

Good film

[Cosmoeticadotcom · 8/10 · 12 September 2008]

So much attention has been paid to Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni's later New Wave films that his earlier Neo-Realistic films of the 1950s have been overlooked, as if the work of merely a talented tyro. But, even though he was not as consciously 'experimental' in those films as he was in the films of the L'Alienation trilogy (L'Avventura, La Notte, and L'Eclisse), and later classics like Blowup and The Passenger, his earlier films were visually well composed and well written films that both played upon the viewers' emotions and gave them believable characters and situations that could be related to. That Antonioni's filmic career started out working in the documentary format should not come as a surprise to those familiar with those earlier films.

One of the best of those films is 1957's black and white Il Grido (The Outcry), which Antonioni also wrote, along with Elio Bartolini and Ennio de Concini. It's a nearly two hour long film that has much in common with Federico Fellini's 1954 classic La Strada, save that the film is a bit more believable and less patently heart-tugging. It also prefigures many of the themes that would recur in Antonioni's later work, such as alienation, apathy, and anomy, as well as possesses a political edge those later films lack.

The lead character is a small town (actually crappy shacks and huts) Italian refinery worker and mechanical engineer named Aldo, played by American B film actor Steve Cochran, who is utterly believable as an Italian native. His reputation in this country was mostly in gangster films, but her he plays a member of the Italian Postwar proletariat, as the country is just on the verge of pulling out of its long economic slump. He has been having an affair with a sexy older blond woman named Irma, played by Alida Valli- most famed for her role in the 1949 film noir classic The Third Man, starring (and likely directed by) Orson Welles. Irma, though, is married, but her husband has been gone for almost seven years, working in Australia, thus letting Aldo squire her at will. The pair even have a young blond daughter together, named Rosina (Mirna Girardi)…. The film has been compared, in some circles, to the plays of Samuel Beckett, and this is one of the rare times that such comparisons are apt. No, even Antonioni's landscapes are not as bleak, nor his characters as satiric, as Beckett's, but much of the film is a physical journey to nowhere, for Aldo ends up back where he started, except having failed even more frequently. Il Grido is not as praised as much as Antonioni's later films, but it is better than the film that proceeded it, L'Avventura- which saw him break with his past totally, even if a failed break, and skirts near and above greatness. Only its 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, this film contains many moments that show how good a screenwriter Antonioni was, such as a shot of a man briefly entering Elvia's house, asking her out on a date- a movie or dancing, and her rejecting him casually- offering to go out on another Sunday evening. He cynically scoffs that her promise will be 'like every other Sunday.' In that brief scene, with a minor character- Elvia, and a small unnamed role, we know all we need to of 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 up with wonderful poesy and concision. Would more filmmakers learn the lessons that Antonioni did half a century ago, with Il Grido, and more of them would produce films of quality, and a few would augur great art. Ah, perchance to

Forces that move us

[chaos-rampant · 27 May 2011]

Antonioni is one of the sages of cinema, perhaps the wisest of them. His cinema is a stunning edifice; a structure rigid and harmonious as shaped by a visual vocabulary which articulates with few words a place and a time; pattern and blueprint, whereby each film as individual level informs and is informed by the whole; these levels filled with doors to insight and intuition. To all these doors he holds the keys, and in the spaces behind the doors, which are closed to most filmmakers, he moves freely and sees everything. Meditation as stillness of mind, which enables awareness.

Naturally some of these levels are more aptly functional, staircases that lead higher. Il Grido is one of those (and La Notte later).

Nonetheless we see here the early sketches of what is to come. We see a man cast adrift after a painful breakup as passing through various lives, affecting them with shortlived passions and vexations. Each of these lives he briefly shares could be a possible new home, a safe harbor where peace and happiness are finally possible. But he moves on, still clinging to a mad hope and frustrated desire that his old affair could resume at any point.

So this is the fascinating stuff. A man alone, itinerant, ostensibly free to be what he may, but captive of his desires so that he's nothing at all, except perhaps a painful memory. The downward spiral into squalor and misery is not simply the upkeep of a bad karma, but a reminder of what fuels the restlessnesss. What negativity keeps him going, regret or unfulfillment, will only be encountered ahead of him, it cannot be escaped by running from it.

In passing through these phases the film perhaps stalls for too long. We understand what is going on, the proverbial journey of an empty, unfulfilled life, but Antonioni wants to shape these lives as lived, meaning we get the mundane details of their routine. The comings and goings and side characters, as vignettes. This is the neorealist baggage ostensibly cinema in the service of revealing/documenting society, which Antonioni is about to shed for his next film, and be free as a creative spirit.

For the end Antonioni reserves defeaning symbolism, by contrast to the hazy allusions he would favour onwards. The man climbs on the refinery tower, the place and time where he was for once happy in his life and which now seems impossible to attain again, and we don't even have to guess what happens next.

A Cry for Change

[ricardojorgeramalho · 8/10 · 5 December 2022]

The Scream is a transitional film, not only in Antonioni's work but also in Italian and world cinema itself. The director's next film would be L'aventura (1960), where a new cinematographic language would debut in the author's work.

Like other directors of his generation, Antonioni starts with a more conventional language, passing through neo-realism before embracing the nouvelle vague (Italian version) and becoming one of the most important authors of the new Italian and world cinema.

The Scream is precisely the film that anticipates change and even symbolizes it. In a way, that rejected man who unsuccessfully seeks to rebuild his life, to the point of fatal destruction, is a symbol of the director's creative process, in the construction of a new cinematographic language on the remains of neo-realism, which no longer responded to the desires of the new generation, eager to build progress and forget the hardships of war.

And yet this Scream is a beautiful film. A work where, in a bare setting still populated by the debris of war, both material and human, one already glimpses an existential absurdity that would mark the cinema of the following decade.

An evolution that would link the two most beautiful and creative periods of Italian cinema. Its golden period.

I don't like melodrama

[noahgibbobaker · 6/10 · 20 June 2021]

Unremarkable Fellini-esque melodrama (a never-before-said sentence), performances are a little more nuanced than those in 'La Strada' or 'Nights of Cabiria'. 'Il Grido' sent Antonioni in a new direction, one with characterful grand landscapes, and much less subtlety.

Very good and sad!

[RodrigAndrisan · 10/10 · 21 September 2021]

Steve Cochran looks so much like Sean Connery, you can say he's his twin brother. Twin but licensed to kill only himself, at the end of the film, to make it as dramatically as possible, to increase the drama. Because it's a drama, a drama with some exceptional acting performances, Steve Cochran himself, in the lead role, then his daughter, the excellent little girl Mirna Girardi, and then the adult women, Alida Valli, the only one who was really loved by the character played by Cochran, Dorian Gray, the beautiful gas station attendant, Betsy Blair, an old friend, Gabriella Pallotta, a young woman from the home of the character played by Betsy Blair, and the beautiful Jacqueline Jones, a woman ready to sell her body for food. Antonioni, a hypersensitive director, well acquainted with human nature. And one of my favorite directors, after Fellini.

Il Grido

[moamedaliebaid · 9/10 · 15 May 2023]

A cinematic "cry" from one of the most revered of all auteurs, Italian maestro Michelangelo Antonioni (L'avventura, La notte, Il deserto rosso) depicts a world of heartbreaking alienation, with characters riven by trauma, cast against the stunning backdrop of northern Italy's Po Valley - where the director spent his childhood.

When sugar refinery worker Aldo (American actor Steve Cochran in a career-best performance) is jilted by his mistress, Irma (Alida Valli, famed for her role in The Third Man), he takes to the road. With daughter in tow, Aldo wanders the Po River delta, seeking temporary - but always illusory - respite with a series of lovers, who only serve to remind him of Irma. Unable to find a new life, Aldo's haunted past gives way to a fateful finale.

With a script conceived by Antonioni, exquisite cinematography (including a signature concern with desolate vistas), and a plaintive score by renowned composer Giovanni Fusco, the award-winning Il grido - which scooped the "Golden Leopard" at Locarno - is an early key work in the director's much-celebrated oeuvre.

IL Grido - The Cry

[krocheav · 5/10 · 4 October 2018]

IL Grido (The Cry) is a bleak Italian drama of a young de facto husband and father (Aldo, played by Steve Cochran), trying unsuccessfully, to overcome his grief at his relationship falling apart. Beautiful Alida Valli plays his 'partner' (Irma) who has taken up with another man. She's unsure if she's making the right decision but as she's done this sort of thing before, it appears maybe she has an unstable mental condition. In fact this picture tends to paint a rather unflattering picture of womanhood. Aldo takes to the road looking for work with his young daughter in tow. Most of the women he comes across are either loose or uncommitted to a lasting relationship. One of the only stable women is Elvia played by Betsy Blair (Mrs Gene Kelly) She's an old girlfriend of Aldo's who's still hopeful of rekindling the relationship - unfortunately for both, Aldo is unable to get over the loss of Irma and following a drunken flirtation by Elvia's sister, played by beautiful Gabriella Pallotta, he decides it's best to move on.

The locations are as dismal as the story situations and there appears to be some minor continuity problems but, it's the rather ambiguous ending that seems to be more 'tacked on' as a means to an end - relying on tragedy elements to make it memorable. This received some Awards but these look to be more from an industry trying to 'sell' the picture - than for art's sake. It's always a curious watch and director of Photography Gianni Di Venanzo (8 1/2) gives it a class look. The music score by prolific composer Giovanni Fusco (The Confession) is rather unusual with a nice piano soliloquy giving some haunting quality - all performances are generally good but the story and settings may not please a big audience. At least it's more approachable than director Antonioni's later pretentious efforts and the DVD Mastering offers a good transfer - sub titles are also OK.

Awful movie

[cesare-petrillo · 1/10 · 21 October 2014]

I just watched Il Grido after many years and surprisingly I regret to say that this is a completely awful movie, especially if you get to realize how fake the Italian dubbing sounds. I have no idea what kind of language they were speaking while filming, but the final result sounds like a silent movie with an added soundtrack. Steve Cochran was an outstanding actor always delivering unforgettable performances. (Try and see Come Next Spring, Tomorrow Is Another Day, Highway 301 or Don Siegel's Private Hell if you need any proof). Unfortunately his actual voice (and acting) is lost here. Well, maybe for non-Italian and non-Cochran audiences, this might become an interesting item. Cesare Petrillo