Il Grido

Il Grido (1957), known in English as The Cry, is a Michelangelo Antonioni drama you can watch online on iFILM. It follows a refinery worker who loses the woman he loves and drifts, without aim, across the wintry Po Valley.

For years Aldo waited for the husband of his lover Irma to die so the two could marry. The husband finally dies — and Irma tells him she loves someone else. Hollowed out, Aldo takes his small daughter by the hand and walks away from his hometown. What follows is a string of roads, fog, and other women, each a chance to start over that he cannot hold onto. Steve Cochran carries the film almost wordlessly, his emptied-out face doing the work. Alida Valli, Dorian Gray and Betsy Blair circle around him.

This is early Antonioni, before the famous trilogy of alienation, yet the sickness of his later heroes is already here: a man who has lost the ability to feel connected to anyone. Grey skies, bare fields and deserted riverbanks turn the flat landscape into a diagnosis of its own. A slow, comfortless picture for viewers who love European art-house neorealism and will follow a character to the bitter end. Stream Il Grido (1957) online on iFILM.