Michelangelo Antonioni's Story of a Love Affair is ripe for American film noir treatment. But in his first feature, made in 1950 (ten years before L'Aventura brought him international recognition), Antonioni already shifts our focus to his preoccupations, which are James M. Cain's (or Tay Garnett's) without the melodrama. His distanced camera and seeming dispassion are already in evidence, turning a torrid love story into a tale of inevitable corruption and betrayal in postwar industrial society. Set in Milano five years after the war, the story involves a wealthy industrialist who hires a private eye to investigate his young wife, Paola's past. The investigation turns up a former lover, Guido, and the possibility of both lovers' implication in the death of Guido's girlfriend. They renew their affair, but with her new status, Paola cannot sustain an affair on love alone. A plot hatches to sacrifice the industrialist's life for his money.