Elio Bartolini

Tells the story of a young woman who leaves one lover only to drift into a relationship with another. Using the architecture of Rome as a backdrop for the couple's doomed affair, the director reaches the apotheosis of his modernist style, returning to his favorite themes: alienation and the difficulty of finding connections in an increasingly mechanized world.

For the first and only time Antonioni abandoned the middle class in Il Grido placing Aldo, a refinery worker, at the centre. Yet Aldo's social position is not particularly significant. He wanders in a kind of no man's land, seemingly out of time and place, after the breakup of a longstanding relationship. Aldo becomes more detached as he drifts in and out of a succession of relationships. Unlike Antonioni's other male protagonists Aldo is aware of...