The first narrative feature by Italian avant-garde director Michelangelo Antonioni (L'AVENTURA, L'ECLISSE, BLOW-UP), released in 1950 with modest success, exhibits the interest in themes of infidelity and the shifting tides of relationships that would haunt all of his films that followed. The director's cool, reserved touch that maintains an austere beauty is already in evidence, as he weaves the tale of an illicit love. Paola (Lucia Bose) is the beautiful and jealously-guarded younger wife of a shady factory owner, Enrico Fontana (Massimo Girotti). In order to investigate her romantic history he hires a private detective, which ironically brings Paola back into contact with former lover Guido (Massimo Girotti), with whom she resurrects a lost passion. Dogged by the suspicions of their respective mates, they are drawn closer to each other in the face of adversity, and begin to plot Enrico's demise. But when the challenge of being together falls away, will the passion start to wane' A masterpiece of intensity and finely-wrought emotion, Antonioni's noir gem won the 1951 Silver Ribbon at the Italian Journalists Awards.