Empty, silent spaces are loaded with meaning in Antonioni; it is the tension of that which is between, of estrangement, the inability to connect or find resolution. We are perhaps more familiar with Antonioni's interior spaces of bourgeois existence (see L'Avventura), but in this early work he returns to "the landscape I remember from my childhood," the desolate vistas of the Po Valley, to film a study of a man who, deserted by his mistress, sets out with his little daughter in search of peace of mind and a new life. But the image of his lover and the failure of their union never leave him. Its rhythm and shot duration make Il Grido one long, slow, drawn-out cry. But while it has the look of neorealism, its protagonist and landscape of indifference fit into a chain leading up to 1964's Red Desert.