Philip French's classic DVD: Il grido

1957, 12, Eureka £19.56

This is a major transitional film in the career of Michelangelo Antonioni as he moved from neorealism to the elliptical, mannered style of his next picture, L'avventura, which shocked Cannes in 1960. Hollywood heavy Steve Cochran plays a depressed mechanic taking to the roads of the wintry Po valley, first with his six-year-old daughter, then alone, after his common-law wife (Alida Valli) leaves him for another man. He goes from job to casual job having unsatisfactory relations with various women ("I've met some odd types, but nobody as miserable as you," says one of them). The desolate landscape reflects his unhappiness and alienation. At the end, the private and public discontent combine as a community is bulldozed to create a Nato airbase. The movie is bracing in its calculated, aestheticised pessimism, and the wonderfully atmospheric photography is by the great Gianni di Venanzo, who shot several films for Antonioni, Fellini and Rosi before his sudden death aged 45 in 1966.