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The Scream, not Munch's but Michelangelo Antonioni's, a cruel title for characters whose anguish barely permits them a shrug. News of a man's death in Australia reach his wife (Alida Valli) in an Italian village so she breaks up with the mechanic she's been living with (Steve Cochran), a seven-year relationship "propio finita." He leaves with their tiny daughter (Mirna Girardi), the town at dusk seen from the back of a cart is lit up "as if everyone there were happy." Return to the Valley (Gente del Po), the gray lay of the land. Boxing bouts, boat races and dancing contests are fleeting distractions on the road, women are outposts in the void. The former girlfriend who anticipates disappointment (Betsy Blair) and the blithe prostitute in the fishing shack (Lynn Shaw) are more suited to "un tipo sedentario," the prole can only keep moving, increasingly sapped by the muddy landscape. "You drive a person nuts—first you ramble on, then you clam up!" Stripped of luxury, the Antonioni walk with high horizons and a lingering mist that may be smoke from burning fields. "Willingness" is in short supply, still the protagonist forges a near-connection with a sensuously frazzled widow (Dorian Gray) who, with no taste for farming, runs a gas station. (Stranded dreamer and elderly rascal in the middle of nowhere derive visibly from The Petrified Forest.) Spindly trees are torn down in the vista of leaky rooftops and mislaid postcards, closely studied by Wenders and Hopper. The very young and the very old can share La Marseillaise, in between them is the numbness finally diagnosed as Marx's Entfremdung from the top of a refinery tower. "Ma che razza di storia è questa?" The Germania Anno Zero coda marks the definite break with neo-realism, and from there L'Avventura. Cinematography by Gianni Di Venanzo. With Gabriella Pallotta, Guerrino Campanilli, and Elli Parvo. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |