In this film Antonioni depicts the inability of men to connect with the reality surrounding them. The director draws on a demising love story to depict a neorealist-like itinerant drama where the drifting protagonist mirrors an inner incurable malaise inevitably leading to a tragic epilogue. In a desolated Po plain hinterland made of gloomy lands and foggy landscapes, unravels the inner ordeal of Aldo (Steve Cochran), former blue-collar worker of a sugar refinery, wandering aimless after that his partner, Irma (Alida Valli), left him for another man; with the sole company of his little daughter (Mirna Girardi) he will first visit an old lover (Betsy Blair) and then will look for comfort in a resolute service station female worker (Dorian Gray) and then in a lonely and desperate call girl (Lyn Shaw), however, nobody seems able to ease his pain.

LOCATION Originally the film had to be shot between Pontelagoscuro, Occhiobello, Ca’ Venier and Punta Maistra but the Po route in 1956 led to some script cuttings and an overall change of locations. The fictionary village of Goriano and the houses of Aldo and Irma were set in four different locations: Francolino, for the sequences shot in the village streets, the outskirts of Ravenna, in the Pontelagoscuro area, the Po bank near Ravalle, where is located Irma’s house, Stienta, for the village seen from a distance.
Elvia’ house was located along the bank between Pontelagoscuro and Occhiobello.
Virginia’s service station was located in the Cervia saltworks area, near Tantlon (along the Strada Statale Salara 254).