At a time when French New Wavers were romanticising Paris, Michelangelo Antonioni was intent on showing that even a city as eternally vibrant as Rome could dehumanise inhabitants with seemingly everything to live for.
Consequently, the setting becomes as important a character as Monica Vitti's commitment-shy translator or Alain Delon's suave stockbroker, and Antonioni packs scenes of frantic activity or intense contemplation with a symbolic significance that makes the isolation imposed by modernity all the more tragic.