In this stinging rebuke to the Italian film industry and its treatment of women, the luminous Bosé stars as a simple shop-girl who is discovered by a movie producer and becomes a sensation. However, his jealousy leads to disaster when he casts her in a Joan of Arc biopic. Antonioni uses the movie-studio framework to gleefully dissect the cruelty and coldness of movie stardom. Print restored by Rai Cinema-Rai Teche.
"Far more than a footnote to Antonioni's career; it is a preface to . . . the work that later was to include L'Avventura, La Notte, Eclipse, Red Desert, Blow-Up and Zabriskie Point."- The New York Times