Story of a Love Affair

Cronaca di un amore
Directed by	Michelangelo Antonioni
Produced by	Stefano Caretta Franco Villani
Written by	Michelangelo Antonioni (also story) Daniele D'Anza Silvio Giovannetti Francesco Maselli Piero Tellini
Starring	Lucia Bosè (as Paola Molon) Massimo Girotti (as Guido) Ferdinando Sarmi (as Enrico Fontana) Gino Rossi (as detective Carloni) Marika Rowsky Rosi Mirafiore Rubi D'Alma Franco Fabrizi
Music by	Giovanni Fusco
Cinematography	Enzo Serafin
Editing by	Eraldo Da Roma
Distributed by	Fincine
Release date(s)	1950
Running time	98 minutes
Country	Italy
Language	Italian

Cronaca di un amore (released as Chronicle of a Love in the UK, and Story of a Love Affair in the USA) is a 1950 Italian black-and-white drama film and the first full length feature film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. It stars Lucia Bosé, then 19-year old Miss Italy 1947 and a flame of Antonioni of that time. Despite some neorealist background, the film was not fully compliant with the contemporary Italian neorealist style both in its story and image, featuring upper-class characters portrayed by professional actors. Ferdinando Sarmi was, however, a fashion designer rather than a professional actor. In Cronaca di un amore, the camera pans the same street corner in Ferrara, the director's native city, that appears in Antonioni's Par-delà les nuages 45 years later.

Synopsis

The core of the story is apparently offered by the protagonists' feelings of guilt and responsibility for two ambiguous deaths. Enrico Fontana (Ferdinando Sarmi), wealthy Milan industrialist and jealous husband, becomes interested in his young and beautiful wife's shady past and hires a detective. At the same time his wife, Paola Molon (Lucia Bosè), native of Ferrara, meets her former lover Guido (Massimo Girotti), who tries to sell cars to Enrico, and partly due to the ongoing investigation reunites with him again in an attempt to cover a mysterious death of Giovanna, former fiancee of Guido and school friend of Paola, fallen into an open lift shaft in Ferrara many years before. As a result, they fall in love again. Paola urges Guido to kill Enrico, and her lover, armed with a gun, waits for Enrico's car on a roadside. However, approaching the ambush, Enrico gets in a deadly car accident. After all, Guido leaves Paola again and departs from Milan.

Cast

• Lucia Bosè as Paola Molon
• Massimo Girotti as Guido
• Ferdinando Sarmi as Enrico Fontana
• Gino Rossi as detective Carloni
• Marika Rowsky as Joy (model)
• Rosi Mirafiore as barmaid
• Rubi D'Alma as a friend of Paola
• Anita Farra
• Carlo Gazzabini
• Nardo Rimediotti
• Renato Burrini
• Vittorio Manfrino
• Vittoria Mondello as Matilde
• Franco Fabrizi as fashion show presentator
• Gino Cervi

External links

• Venturi, Lauro (1951). Notes on Five Italian Films. Hollywood Quarterly 5.4, pp. 389–400
• Johnston, Ian (2006). “We're not happy and we never will be”. Bright Lights Film Journal 53.
• Antonioni, Michelangelo (1996). The Architecture of Vision: Writings and Interviews on Cinema. Ed. by M. Cottino-Jones, C. Di Carlo, G. Tinazzi. N.Y.: Marsilio. ISBN 1568860161
• Cronaca di un amore at the Internet Movie Database
• Cronaca di un amore at AllRovi