Il Grido

This muddled feature from Michelangelo Antonioni (released in Italy in 1957) is the only one of his black-and-white films that centers on a male character. Cochran, a worker in a Po Valley sugar refinery, lives in the northern Italian town of Goriano with the married Valli and their daughter, Girardi. When Valli receives word that her husband has died, Cochran proposes marriage. She refuses him and takes another lover. Disillusioned in love and life, Cochran takes Girardi and begins to wander through the barren, weatherworn countryside. He meets an ex-lover, Blair, then service station owner Gray, and then Shaw, a field hand and prostitute. But he finds he cannot f...