Antonioni reminds us what still matters in this political era.
Another return to good sense: Film Forum and Rialto Pictures have boldly brought back Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1957 Il Grido to defy failed social-justice delusions about problems that are far greater than politics.
Replacing the leisure-class figures of Antonioni’s most famous films (L’Avventura, Il Notte, L’Eclisse, Red Desert, Blow-Up, Zabriskie Point), Il Grido concerns a working-class man who is unable to grasp the source of his depression — the famous “Antoni-ennui” as critic Andrew Sarris called it. Maybe the folks at Rialto appreciated how Antonioni predicted Millennial sexual unrest, making the newly restored Il Grido, a.k.a. The Outcry, almost an intervention.
Antonioni recruited tough-guy American actor Steve Cochran, who went from playing goons to misunderstood social outcasts. Cochran’s factory-mechanic Aldo is a sexual magnet, yet he is spiritually impotent. Accustomed to women’s attention, he sees his confidence crumble when Irma (Alida Valli) leaves him. He initially shows thuggish resentment, then he is simply, utterly lost. The greatness of Antonioni’s vision shows us that in these circumstances, women and men both suffer the same despair.
When Aldo hits the road, taking along his school-age daughter Rosina (Mirna Girardi) is an act of desperate bravado — against the “Papa was a rolling stone” idea — but it’s also selfish. Seeing the itinerant man and child on the road intentionally replaces the father/son sentimentality of Vittorio DeSica’s neorealist classic Bicycle Thieves. They’re always seen against the desolate horizon of Italy’s Po Valley (shot by the incomparable Gianni Di Venanzo), illustrating Antonioni’s fascination with the place, time, and circumstances of human choice. These natural yet abstract confrontations play out Antonioni’s crucial theme, the impasse between men and women that is complicated by sexuality but remains unresolved.
Aldo meets gas-station owner Virginia (the brassy Maria Luisa Mangini billed as Dorian Gray), who tends to her aged, drunkard father — mirroring Aldo and Rosina’s confounding interdependence. The foolish old man teaches Rosina “The Internationale,” further proof of Antonioni defying Marxist nostrums. (J. Hoberman’s recent New York Times recap cites Aldo’s fling with a “sex worker” — the anachronistic Anora term indulges leftist sentimentality despite Antonioni’s honest view of all of Aldo’s liaisons, including Betsy Blair as a woman Aldo originally jilted.)
Decades later, Il Grido’s hard-edged sexuality seems as startling as it is unillusioned. Aldo, a quintessential “existential” figure, corrects how political pundits have misused that term. The desolate, exterior love scenes anticipate the breathtakingly bleak desert coupling in Bertolucci’s The Sheltering Sky.
When Virginia asks Aldo, “Are you staying or going?” he responds, “It depends on my finances, my willingness, or my job.” She narrows his indecision: “Which do you have the least of?” And the ultimate revelation is still the most shocking scene Antonioni ever directed.
Broad-shouldered Cochran is more moving than Antonioni’s other rough-hewn protagonists — a line-up that goes from Gabriele Ferzetti and Richard Harris to Rod Taylor and Jack Nicholson, each cocky type personifying the director’s mea culpa. Once dubbed the “Hollywood Elvis” for his dark hair and bedroom eyes, Cochran brings a threatening, romantic depth to Antonioni’s universe, where alpha male instincts get exposed, confessing our common sensitivities and desperation.
At the time Il Grido was first released, Federico Fellini wrote, “To learn to live with a human being is as important as to learn to live a rich sociopolitical life. . . . Solitude will be the greatest pain of modern man.” The outcry of Il Grido powerfully refutes the rumor that Antonioni was anything so feeble as a Marxist artist.