The first feature film of revered Italian auteur Michelangelo Antonioni, Cronaca di un amore (US: Story of a Love Affair) is as much art house as it is noir. Hinting at the masterpieces to come in Antonioni’s oeuvre, the film is a visual orgy of lighting, composition, editing, and blocking, all in lush black and white and all wrapped around a story of shame, obsession, and doom. The impossibly beautiful Lucia Bosé plays femme fatale Paola, the bored wife of rich industrialist Enrico Fontana (Ferdinando Sarmi), who’s informed by a former lover that they’re being investigated for the murder of Paola’s best friend seven years earlier. (The lover, Guido Garroni, is played by Massimo Girotti, who starred in what many consider the first true European noir, Luchino Visconti’s 1943 Obsession.) What the erstwhile lovers don’t know, but the viewer does, is that Fontana has simply hired a private investigator, Carloni (Gino Rossi), to look into Paola’s past; the investigation ignites not only Paola’s and Guido’s guilt but also their passion for one another, which leads to an adulterous affair, then manipulation, then murder. Bosé does an admirable job of maintaining just enough relatability in a character who is utterly unlikable, her opulent surroundings and benighted social circle smothering her with decadence. (Considering this isn’t a period film, Antonioni goes marvelously over the top on costumes: dresses like cotton puffs and aquatic birds, hats like peacocks and reindeer antlers, veils like elaborate spiders crawling on porcelain faces.) Outside Paola’s bright and shiny environs, however, the scenes are darkened by shadows, entombed in narrow streets, and Paola’s emotions are freed to explore her most primitive instincts, her white gloved hands strangling Guido for attention, sexual arousal clearly intertwined with their bond of murder.