Bare trees, constant fog, barren industrial set pieces (that finale—astonishing)- it’s another glorious triumph for Antonioni
Antonioni’s only film subject set in the blue-collar working class (which in a way touches neo-realism as close as he would)
The set pieces and landscapes are both formally sound and indicators on character- it’s perpetually winter through the changing seasons (4 women)—life’s sadness and struggle
prison bars in natural life
Immaculately desolate photography in the gray color ranges
Bookends with deaths- another formal achievement
Welles’ influence- deep background daughter in several shots
Adultery- there’s certainly soap opera tendency in Antonioni’s oeuvre
Powerful scene Steve Cochran’s Aldo slapping of Alida Valli in the town square
Like L’Avventura (his next film) the women drop off- Aldo drops them and the town (daughter) and eventually himself- disintegration
Bare trees
Great shot of them standing elevated on a hill in front of a shallow basin
Alienation- the pull of loneliness in contrast with poisonous love
Muddy, rural, desolate roads, rivers, grey, harsh
I’d love to read a piece comparing the film with Fellini’s La Strada– this is almost like from Quinn’s character’s viewpoint. An awful father—another is Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces
Clearly chases his dick around, abandonment of daughter scene,
Four women, great shot of the 4th framed through multiple sets of doors
Driving away from the gas station in the bed of a car shot
the climax is magnificently set amidst a political land dispute- macro in the micro like Cuaron’s Y Tu Mama, Children of Men or Roma– and then we get Aldo at the abandoned factory with architecture and the barren set pieces indicating character- like Ozu’s A Hen in the Wind (1948)- then the ambiguous death
[…] Il Grido – Antonioni […]