With faint echoes (both in narrative terms and with the presence of Massimo Girotti) of the first neorealist film - Visconti’s Ossessione (1942) - Michelangelo Antonioni’s feature debut is a prime example of the post-neorealist shift in Italian cinema toward an ‘interior neorealism’ of which Antonioni was the most acute proponent. In an interview from 1961, the director observed that with Cronaca di un Amore ‘I wanted to examine the spiritual aridity and moral coldness of some of the Milanese bourgeoisie.’ The film tells of a married woman, Paola (Lucia Bose’), who persuades a former lover Guido (Girotti) to murder her husband. Both in its relative disinterest in conventional narrative development (a narrative here which in generic terms is that of the giallo) and in the representation of a disquieting urban landscape (often captured through beautiful, probing sequence shots), the film displays for the first time the singular aesthetic of one of cinema’s great modernists and looks forward to the ground-breaking tetralogy of the late 1950s to mid-1960s for which Antonioni is most famous.
After making highly regarded documentaries, Story of a Love Affair was Michelangelo Antonioni's first feature length dramatic film. It also signalled a significant change in the direction of post-war neo-realism. Antonioni, the future director of L'Avventura, L’eclisse, Blow Up and Zabriskie Point had already begun to set down the fundamentals of his future films, exploring the uneasy emotions that lie between the gazes of his characters. This masterpiece exudes extraordinary and intensely innovative power, and there is a suggestion of film noir as he breaks away from neo-realism.
Groundlessly jealous of his wife’s romantic past, Enrico Fontana hires a private detective to finally determine whether she is faithful or not. Ironically, his suspicious attitude unconsciously brings his wife Paola (Lucia Bose) together with Guido (Massimo Girotti), a man with whom she had once been in love. Paola and Guido’s past was clouded in tragedy. Guido had been involved with Paola’s close female friend’s death. Their passion rekindled once again, the lovers even get to the point where they are thinking about murdering Enrico.
Renowned filmmaker Martin Scorsese has declared Story of a Love Affair to be one of his all-time favourite films and it is finally available on DVD in the UK, remastered from restored 35mm print.
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Story of a Love Affair
