Red Desert (1964) User Reviews (63)

Sublime Monica Vitti shines in Antonioni's abstract masterpiece

[Yaaatoob · 8/10 · 11 January 2011]

Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni's 1964 piece 'Red Desert' is, on the surface, a film that deals with the changing face of the world under rampant industrialisation, but far more than that it's a comment on alienation and human adaptability in such a society. Guiliana (played by Monica Vitti) is the wife of petroleum plant manager Ugo. She lives in a spacious, modern apartment with Ugo and their small son, but there's an undercurrent of instability in Guiliana's persona, a feeling of unease and angst that Monica Vitti exhibits in Guiliana's every action. Vitti's portrayal of Guiliana is one of a woman on the point of a nervous breakdown, always fidgeting, wringing her hands, looking at unease and full of angst and continually walking away from conversations, forcing others to follow her. The way her character hugs close to walls at every opportunity is allegorical of her need to be surrounded by friends, family and loved ones, claiming that she "is only ill when I'm alone". We find out that Guiliana had recently been in a car accident and had spent a month in hospital being treating for shock, but unbeknownst to Ugo, Guiliana isn't adjusting well after her accident, while her husband remains entirely oblivious. Into the frame comes Corrado Zeller (Richard Harris), an engineer friend of Ugo on his way to set up a new petroleum plant in Patagonia. Zeller is a quiet, reserved man who, like Guiliana, is visibly at unease with his surroundings, however his life and work afford him the luxury of moving from place to place, while Guiliana feels increasingly trapped in her existence. Inexorably, Zeller and Guiliana are drawn to each other, Zeller recognising a kindred spirit of sorts and Guiliana casting out a cry for help that only Zeller is capable of recognising. The fact that Zeller picks up on this and is continually drawn to Guiliana, despite her unstable, demanding behaviour, immediately points to his attraction to her, but it's only after acting on his attraction that Guiliana comes to accept her station and encounters her defining realisation; people aren't cured, they adapt.

But it's not just Guiliana's life she has to adapt to, it's her surroundings, beautifully brought to screen in what was, quite surprisingly, Antonioni's first foray into colour. With a telephoto lens to flatten the perspective, framing scenes purposefully out of focus and the use of disarming long-cut shots, Antonioni paints a bleached and chemical picture of post-war Italy, an Italy that expanded into an industrial super-power at an alarming rate. Antonioni was so adamant about how this world should be presented that he insisted on painting trees, barrels, walls and even whole fields to ensure the results he envisioned. An extreme measure, certainly, but a welcome one as the stark, sterile greys of this industrial Italy, juxtaposed here and there with flourishes of artificial, man-made colour, are often brought to the forefront of the viewer's mind when at times the pacing and ambiguity of the narrative create a lull in interest. Those man-made colours provide another allegorical point, alluding to how the society of this industrial community has adapted to the bleak repetitiveness of the environment by injecting splashes of primary colour into their surroundings. One criticism that's easy to level at 'Red Desert' is that it's an entirely singular film - Guiliana is undoubtedly the protagonist of this piece, but everyone else, even the ambiguous love interest Zeller, appears on screen barely defined. This might be a problem for anyone expecting a traditional narrative, but that's not what 'Red Desert' is about. There's no real progression of story here, only the progression of Guiliana's mental state, everything else is quite incidental and as such, is not admitted entry into Antonioni's vision. It's this bold vision that provides the films defining hallmark; the wonderful cinematography that surrounds Monica Vitti's accomplished, if somewhat overwrought, performance.

Artistic Triumph at the Expense of Complete Storytelling

[drqshadow-reviews · 6/10 · 10 July 2017]

In this, his first step away from moody black and white cinema, experimental filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni sets out to "paint with color," and he succeeds with spectacular effect. Each shot resonates with artistry, from the lingering, hazy landscapes to the more complex, structured confines of a factory warehouse. Magnificently well-composed, it truly is like a moving painting. Slow-moving, I should say, because the famed director isn't shy about letting the camera linger and roam. Often, we'll wander away from subjects at the end of their scene to follow a line of paint up the wall or trace a curve of pipes through the cement ceiling. This seems essential, as the light storytelling and rambling, philosophical dialog constantly relies on such subtleties to deliver a sense of deeper meaning. The scant plot, focused around a timid, depressed housewife and her struggle to come to terms with the sad state of her life, can be a tall ask at times because it's so excruciatingly glacier-paced and spiritually draining. The bleak, industrial setting - where billowing towers of man-made chemicals and haunting, noisy machinery are the rule of the day - contains loud metaphors for the character's internal conflict, but you'll have to look and dig to find them. Not an easy film to watch, it can be fascinating but also extremely demanding. I'd call it a mixed success. In terms of proving the medium as a legitimate art form, it's a roaring triumph. As an engaging narrative, it falls very short.

RED DESERT (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964) ***

[Bunuel1976 · 7/10 · 22 August 2007]

Antonioni’s fourth film in a row with muse Monica Vitti sees the actress in perhaps her most difficult role yet; her co-star was Richard Harris: it was certainly interesting that the director wanted him so soon after having achieved stardom with Lindsay Anderson’s THIS SPORTING LIFE (1963) but, in retrospect, his is a part that anybody could have filled in adequately. It was ironic, then, that Harris and Antonioni didn’t see eye to eye and, reportedly, the former walked off the set (or was “kicked off”, depending on what sources one reads) and the film had to be completed with a double for its male star!

Anyway, the industrial wasteland (full of fuming factories, polluted rivers, massive steel structures, plague-ridden merchant ships) against which the events are set is supposed to mirror the lead character’s emotional turmoil; we first see her literally “scrounging for her next meal” (as Bob Dylan famously sang). Despite being ostensibly a character study, what we get – as is Antonioni’s fashion – are vaguely-defined characters and half-disclosed information (such as the nature of work in which both Harris and Vitti’s husband are involved, her own traffic accident which brought on her mental collapse, her son’s sudden and apparently inexplicable disability, the plague outbreak, and the source of the singing heard by the girl in the fable recounted by Vitti to her convalescent offspring).

As in BLOWUP (1966), the Italian surroundings here are made to seem other-wordly – as if the narrative was taking place in some forbidding science-fiction landscape; this is augmented by the electronics-infused soundtrack (occasionally interrupted by ethereal vocals, as mentioned earlier) and the meticulous color scheme (RED DESERT marked Antonioni’s departure from black-and-white cinema – in retrospect, it also emerges as one of his most haunting efforts). The film is quite long, however, and drags a bit during its second half…but the ending is, once again, inspired – with Vitti finally opening up, even if it’s in front of a foreign (and, therefore, non-comprehending) sailor.

The undeniable highlights of the piece are the Sunday afternoon outing at a remote cabin which develops into an orgy and the visualization of the afore-mentioned fable (featuring the red desert, actually pink-colored sand, of the title which symbolizes a sunny Utopia away from the contaminations of the modern world). RED DESERT won two prizes at the Venice Film Festival including the Golden Lion, the top honor, over Pier Paolo Pasolini’s THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW (1964). Curiously enough, after this, both Antonioni and Vitti went ‘mod’ in Britain with BLOWUP and Joseph Losey’s MODESTY BLAISE (1966) respectively.

I’ve been tempted to pick up the R4 SE DVD of this one – featuring an Audio Commentary and a 1-hour documentary on the director (also available on the Criterion 2-Disc Set of Antonioni and Vitti’s previous collaboration, L’ECLISSE [1962], which I’ve just ordered!) – but, since the R1 Image disc is now OOP and a number of that company’s titles have received the Criterion treatment, it shouldn’t be too long (especially now that the film-maker has passed away) before it’s time for RED DESERT to get its own re-release...

It seems to me that of the two brief retrospectives I recently embarked on, Antonioni’s has emerged as the more rewarding; some of Ingmar Bergman’s films would rate very highly on their own but, collectively, they lack the visual diversity which lends the Italian film-maker’s work its lingering fascination and compulsive aura of mystery.

Existential Nausea

[tieman64 · 8 June 2008]

"The present is always wanting, which makes it ugly, abhorrent and unendurable. The present is obsolete. The moment it lands in the present, the coveted future is poisoned by the toxic effluvia of the wasted past." – Zygmunt Bauman

Michelangelo Antonioni's "Red Desert" opens with an out of focus shot. We're at an industrial estate, the earth poisonous, the sky toxic, factory fumes snaking their way up into the air. Fittingly, a man complains that his food tastes of petroleum. In interviews, Antonioni would call this the "malaise of progress".

A woman and child appear. Her name is Giuliana (Monica Vitti), and she is the wife of a factory worker. As the film progresses, it becomes increasingly apparent that Giuliana is stuck in what Jean Paul Sartre called a state of "existential nausea". Having sustained minor injuries in a crash, Giuliana becomes hypersensitive. Now deeply attuned to the world around her, Giuliana begins to feel the suffocating pain of existence. "Reality" itself has become an invisible weight. It smothers and crushes.

But Giuliana resists. She puts on a brave face and does her assigned duties as a wife and mother. But it's no use. As sensitivity inexorably leads to alienation, Giuliana begins to isolate and shield herself from all stimulus. These unconscious acts of removal soon become conscious acts: Giuliana attempts suicide. Her attempts fail.

Antonioni's landscapes convey Giuliana's mental anguish. Every object denotes a threatening presence, every location emblematic of the poor girl's fragile psyche. Antonioni has Giuliana sit next to a tilted cart to convey her lack of balance, has her wear a tight coat to convey how besieged she feels, uses out of focus shots to emphasise that Giuliana is "out of sync" with everyone else, alternates between sound and silence to differentiate between Giuliana's comfort and pain, and has her paint her shop in "cool colours" to convey her attempts at "separating" herself from the "poison". And as always with Antonioni, how characters enter certain spaces, what these spaces are, and how they act and react within these spaces are essential to the story.

Unsurprisingly, those around Giuliana can't relate to her troubles. Extended set pieces (parties, group sex, financial conquests, other biochemical stimuli etc) highlight the ways in which man habitually shields himself from painful contemplation. But Giuliana removes herself from these indulgences: she sees people as pitiful desire-machines, always chasing nothing. Anhedonic, she grows disillusioned with nothing less than all human behaviour.

The only one to empathise with Giuliana's pain is Zeller (Richard Harris), another wounded existentialist. Typical of Antonioni's male characters, Zeller is rootless, travelling from place to place but never finding contentment. The two begin a subdued romance, but despite Zeller's attempts to get to the bottom of Giuliana's condition, nothing changes.

But though nothing changes, everything moves, almost imperceptibly. Antonioni's use of moving cargo ships, the juxtaposition between movement and tranquillity, past and present, modernity and poverty, all work together to create a unique aesthetic. This is not just Italy's post-war reality, but a new world order, an illusory neo-capitalism in which there exists endless production, endless motion, but progress itself is nowhere to be seen.

The film represents the acme of modernist minimalism, but is itself an exploration of the "trauma" of modernism. Antonioni is unconcerned about how social changes affect industrial workers and focuses instead on upwardly mobile "skilled workers" or middle managers of the "new world". The film is typically said to be about "alienation" and "ennui", but it's more about the ambivalence toward economic transformation, and how this transformation destroys feeling, exploits desires, makes love impossible and creates a world of only shared pretence. The title of Antonioni's film itself alludes to a lack of "eros" or "love". Giuliana's in a desert of red. A lack of human passion; mankind's future waning of affect.

Antonioni then gives us a wonderful sequence which encapsulates the themes of his film. Giuliana's son seems to have caught a strange disease. His legs don't work and she fears that he may be paralysed. "Tell me what's wrong!" Giuliana screams. But like Giuliana, the boy doesn't speak. He's unable to articulate his pain and so must suffer in silence. His pain private, his legs broken, the boy seems too weak to exist in this new world.

It's a simple bedtime story that cures Giuliana's son. She tells him of a girl who swims away and lives on a secluded island. She is happy alone, away from the world, here on this silent beach. But one day a ship visits. The girl finds the ship beautiful and mysterious. Seeing the beauty in man, the girl then begins to hear the rocks and island singing all around her. Cue reconnection; but of course the island and boat are a fantasy.

The film ends with two brilliant scenes. Giuliana, like Zeller, attempts to flee the world. She heads out to the docks and boards a ship. Like the lead in Antonioni's "The Passenger", she wants to get away. It's only in a moment of self-therapy, when she finally articulates her pain to a sailor (who doesn't speak her language and doesn't understand her), that Giuliana comes to some measure of, not just closure, but false connection. She then leaves the ship.

"Red Desert" ends with a coda that mirrors the film's introduction. In this scene, mother and son look on at the factory landscape. The boy asks his mother why the factory's smoke is yellow. She tells him that the smoke is poisonous. "Why doesn't it kill the birds?" he asks. The message is clear: Giuliana hasn't been cured, she's simply learnt to cope. And the birds? Some have adapted to the smoke, some avoid it altogether, but most nonchalantly breathe it in. The poison doesn't register. The world's flocks fly, blissfully unaware.

9.5/10 – Masterpiece. See "Safe" (1995) and "Cries and Whispers" (1972).

Does everybody have a film that is their template for how they view 'reality'?

[christopher-underwood · 10/10 · 2 February 2007]

I first saw this remarkable movie when I was about eighteen/nineteen, when it first showed in London. At the time I was blown away and must have bored people at parties for ages telling them it was the greatest film ever made and that they should all see it. As now I was less able to give a particularly coherent reason why they would enjoy it but could only pass on my enthusiasm. Watching it again today, it is not only amazing how much I remembered (not at all common for me) or that I still found it captivating and all involving but something else. Many have spoken of the use of colour and sound and referred to the polluting factories and the grey wasteland but what struck me was that the profound and lasting affect it had clearly had upon me. As I watched the film unfold with the juxtaposition of trees, wasteland and alienated characters, I saw before me the template for the way I still tend to view life and most certainly take photographs. For what it is worth then, this film appears to have been the very basis for the way I see the world. An astonishing claim and it has made me wonder at the power of cinema itself. Does everybody have a film that is their template for how they view 'reality'?

Colour, light, vision, motion

[cwitt · 10/10 · 8 July 1999]

Thirty-five years later, this film is amazing for many reasons, mostly perhaps for Antonioni's daring, bold, unique and amazing sense of colour. Great performances all around, great camera work, soundtrack - it's perfect. The theme is one that Antonioni has explored since his very first film: emotional, physical and historical alienation. Those who know the work of the artist Giorgio Morandi will find many similarities in the colour schemes and how Antonioni frames each shot. A rewarding, astonishing and visionary film in every sense.

boy

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 21 July 2019]

In industrial Italy, Giuliana (Monica Vitti) is walking into a petrochemical plant with her son Valerio. The workers are on strike. She buys a half-eaten sandwich from one of them and walks into bushes to eat it by herself. Her manager husband Ugo is showing visitor Corrado Zeller (Richard Harris) around the plant. Ugo reveals that Giuliana has been troubled after a minor car accident. Corrado tracks down Giuliana.

Director Michelangelo Antonioni beautifully shoots industrialization and decay. The one thing that annoyed me is the kid. He needs to be definitively real or unreal right from the start. The way the kid appears and disappears from the movie leaves me wondering if he's a figment of her imagination. It would help if the man with the sandwich acknowledges his existence. He should be chasing after her for leaving her son behind. There was a small chance that the boy with his toys is all imaginary until Ugo starts playing with him. Quite honestly, I was hoping the people who disappear in the fog would be part of that surreal imaginary world. I'm not sure the plot amounts to much. At one point, the movie sidetracks into a story about a girl being told by Giuliana. The style is vastly interesting. In the end, I don't really get invested in the story.

Red Desert in gray

[andrabem · 10/10 · 26 April 2007]

"Il Deserto Rosso" should be more known among Antonioni's fans - it's a remarkable film - in the beginning we see a woman (Monica Vitti) with her little son wandering in an industrial landscape.............. She's married to the manager of the factory. She is losing her direction and sinking into panic and despair. Her husband, friends and even her little son are not enough for her to recover her sense of identity. She even tries an affair with a friend of her husband. Still....

Maybe the story in itself would not be sufficient to raise one's interest, but the way Antonioni tells it makes this film an interrogation mark concerning man and modern society. The bleak colors of the landscape mixing with the fog and the smog are a portrait of her (and ours, why not?) loss of points of reference. Reality becomes mixed with dreams but not all of this is shown in the film. Some of it is implied. Some of it is shown - like when Giuliana (Monica Vitti) is with husband and friends by the sea and the fog slowly makes the others' faces look strange and nightmarish.

Giuliana lives near the industrial concern (managed by her husband) - a small town in the vicinity, a solitary sea, a dock and some ships in it, big chimneys expelling smoke and foggy nights & days complete the picture. Memories come and unfold - good and bad - some of them described in her own words, others evoked by images and words that have the taste of a fairy tale. Insanity seems to be knocking at her door and life is so far away. Drifting with the wind and waves of life - if only someone could help her! "Il Deserto Rosso" flows in a natural way - we forget that we are seeing actors and become immersed in the film. Antonioni is a great actor's director and I think he knows how to extract the best from them.

The DVD had a bonus where I watched the interview of Antonioni made immediately after the film's release. For my surprise he showed himself a simple kind of man. He didn't employ big words to define his film and revealed a sense of humor. This was the time during which Antonioni had a relationship with Monica Vitti (a superb actress) and in the few words he used he gave me the keys to his direction technique, that is, to create an ambiance where the actors can feel at ease, let them feel their roles and make them give their best.

Antonioni had their followers in Brazil too. The more remarkable of them was Walter Hugo Khoury that with "Corpo Ardente" (1966) made a Brazilian "deserto rosso" - a good film but far less good than Antonioni's.

Painting with colour

[TheLittleSongbird · 7/10 · 8 January 2019]

Michaengelo Antonioni as a director interests me a good deal, but he is a director who is appreciated and recognised for his influence in film than loved and considered a favourite. His films are extremely well made and thematically interesting (some like urban alienation being ground-breaking), his directing style is deservedly influential and he does get the best out of good casts in his best work. He is though a divisive director, for while his films fascinate and transfix many they alienate and perplex others and he has been criticised for detatchment, self-indulgence and ambiguity.

Both opinions being completely understandable. Have had this experience myself (meaning experiencing both feelings watching his films), with 'L'avventura' (on rewatch), 'L'Eclisse' and especially 'La Notte' being examples of films of his that transfixed, fascinated and connected with me emotionally. Have also found though that others like 'Blow-Up' didn't really connect with me. 'Red Desert' was his first film in colour and while it is a very visually and thematically interesting film and one of Antonioni's best looking films it's not one of his best or most accessible from personal opinion, other films of his explored similar themes and executed them more insightfully and subtly. That is not saying it's a bad film, it isn't (pretty good actually) and there is a lot to like, also connected with it more than with 'Blow-Up'.

'Red Desert' is somewhat heavy-handed in how it handles its subject in places, when Antonioni goes to extremes making his point. The visuals say an awful lot and then we have philosophical dialogue accompanying them, and for me the dialogue was rather rambling and some of how it flows is awkward.

Even by Antonioni standards, the pace in 'Red Desert' is slow. Most of the time actually that wasn't a problem, in my book when a film is slow paced it doesn't automatically make it bad but it depends on whether it's necessary and whether there's enough elsewhere else that's interesting, but some of the second half does feel like trudging through mud. Always felt that Richard Harris was an odd choice on paper and still think that watching the film, have often heard people say he was miscast and seeing how badly out of his element and how obviously he was dubbed is it is hard to disagree with this.

However, Antonioni directs with full command and ease of the material, even if it is not always subtle. Thematically, 'Red Desert' is quite thought-provoking and had me intrigued. It makes for a very unsettling film but considering the theme (alienation is as unsettling as one can get) it works, and this unsettlement hits hard. So it was not the most comfortable of watches but did transfix and did connect with me emotionally, while also confusing me far less than 'Blow-Up' did.

Monica Vitti gives an intensely impassioned and deeply felt performance as a very vividly complex character, whose writing and development is one of the film's more interesting assets. The score and sound are hauntingly used. But where 'Red Desert' most excels is the production values. The cinematography is just masterful and some of the best and most breath-taking in any of Antonioni's film and even in film overall. Not just the fluidity and the colours but also the contrasts and how it complemented the atmospheric scenery. There are memorable sequences, such as the one with the fable and the ending is not easy to forget, almost as much as the one for 'L'Eclisse'.

Concluding, not one of my favourite Antonioni films (Harris' miscasting, some of the pace and the dialogue bringing it down) but pretty good with some great things (Vitti and the cinematography being the main reasons to see it. 7/10 Bethany Cox

I'm one of its followers...

[zetes · 10/10 · 5 April 2001]

If I could, I would deify this film. What most impresses me about a film is exhibited here to the utmost: mood. After this film is done, I feel completely destroyed. If you did not feel alienated from the world around you when you started, you will be by the end. If you were feeling alienated when you started, then you may just be contemplating suicide when the film ends. This mood is absolutely crushing. It affects me more than any other film, with some exceptions that are equal with it - 2001, Persona, The Passion of Joan of Arc, and maybe a couple of others that I can't think of offhand. Red Desert is a perfect film. If anything else, at least one must be able to appreciate the masterful visual composition. If you're dismissing this film, you're really missing something. 10/10

As an engaging narrative, it falls very short

[eminkl · 6/10 · 18 April 2020]

In this, his first step away from moody black and white cinema, experimental filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni sets out to "paint with color," and he succeeds with spectacular effect. Each shot resonates with artistry, from the lingering, hazy landscapes to the more complex, structured confines of a factory warehouse. Magnificently well-composed, it truly is like a moving painting. Slow-moving, I should say, because the famed director isn't shy about letting the camera linger and roam. Often, we'll wander away from subjects at the end of their scene to follow a line of paint up the wall or trace a curve of pipes through the cement ceiling. This seems essential, as the light storytelling and rambling, philosophical dialog constantly relies on such subtleties to deliver a sense of deeper meaning. The scant plot, focused around a timid, depressed housewife and her struggle to come to terms with the sad state of her life, can be a tall ask at times because it's so excruciatingly glacier-paced and spiritually draining. The bleak, industrial setting - where billowing towers of man-made chemicals and haunting, noisy machinery are the rule of the day - contains loud metaphors for the character's internal conflict, but you'll have to look and dig to find them. Not an easy film to watch, it can be fascinating but also extremely demanding. I'd call it a mixed success. In terms of proving the medium as a legitimate art form, it's a roaring triumph. As an engaging narrative, it falls very short.

Great

[Cosmoeticadotcom · 10/10 · 19 September 2008]

Michelangelo Antonioni is often referred to as a director whose work is not for all tastes. Well, what artist is? What the utterer of such sentiments usually means is that they do not 'like' his films, because they are not filled with insipid action, worse dialogue, lack of character development, etc. In fact, some critics of Antonioni even claim that his characters are all warped and one dimensional loners, potential Lee Harvey Oswald types bathed in depression and anomy. What this evidences is that the critic has not really watched the film, or confuses a character that is confused with a confused portrayal of the character. Callow critics often mistake the thing itself for how it is presented. A good example of this tendency is Antonioni's 1964 film The Red Desert (Il Deserto Rosso), his first film shot in color.

The film is lauded as a great example of the use of color, or an expressionistic or impressionistic work of art (apparently critics cannot decide, again proving they do not even know what the terms mean), but then dismissed as slow, dull, or that old stand by, 'It's like watching paint dry.' Well, only if you're an idiot, or think that the lowest common denominator crap of a Steven Spielberg is somehow an example of 'genius.' As with Stanley Kubrick's later magisterial 2001: A Space Odyssey, this film does not lack a narrative, nor is the narrative poor. It is simply a different form of narrative, and an outstanding example of such. Yet, even The Red Desert's boosters often make the error of stating that Antonioni is 'more interested in shapes and spaces than character.' Not so, for how those characters enter certain spaces, what those spaces are, and how they act and react within those spaces is essential to the story, which is the depiction of how human beings react to the permanence of loneliness in the stasis of change. Although often lumped together with Antonioni's L'Alienation Trilogy (L'Avventura, La Notte, and L'Eclisse), this hour and fifty-three minute long film transcends those three because, by film's end, the protagonist has learnt how to survive, and will. The heroes of the earlier films all flounder, founder, or despair at their plights.

It is, in fact, a remarkable script, penned by Antonioni and Tonino Guerra- who also created great films with Federico Fellini and Theo Angelopoulos, thus positioning himself as one of the greatest screenwriters in cinema history (alongside Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen). And, whereas the use of color is often lauded as 'beautiful,' there is very little said as to why it's beautiful, and that's not because of the colors themselves, but how they contrast with the desaturated world the characters inhabit- such as a fruit stand that appears early on in the film, yet all the fruit appear grayish, as if covered with a mold. The reason for this is that the world is being portrayed subjectively, but from an objective perspective. This is so the audience can sense some of what Giuliana (Monica Vitti) is sensing without having to couch all of that in predictable point of view shots from her perspective. It is a technique that accomplishes what it attempts, but so successfully that few viewers and critics seem to even realize this fact…. there is no denying that Antonioni avoids cheap sentimentality; but this lack only adds to the deeper takes that his camera eye allows the viewer. The characters do not willfully slough off emotions with ease, as in so many wannabe droll Postmodern Hollywood takes (think any Bill Murray film and character). Instead, as in the best films of Stanley Kubrick and Theo Angelopoulos- two other filmmakers accused of lacking character insight and narrative strength, this allows Antonioni's characters to fully humanize- not merely artificially preen before the camera. We see them think, reject, regret, observe, and many other things. While this bores some simply for the act of doing so, to an astute lover of art, it is how these things are done that matter, not if they are done. And Antonioni does these things superbly, making every glance, facial tic, sigh, etc., count for something that is a throwaway in lesser films.

If the 18th Century was the century where poetry was the dominant narrative art form, the 19th Century was dominated by the novel, and last century was owned by the film- especially those of giants like Antonioni. What art form will take the mantle this century may not have even been developed, but it will have a hell of a long way to go to match the greatness of a film like this, for, with each successive art form, the complexity of the narrative increased, even if poetry today is almost solely lyrical; thus not even competing in the same area. The Red Desert stands not only as a triumph in the master's oeuvre, to equal his other masterworks, La Notte and Blowup, but as one of the great films and art works of all time, equal to the very best, and superior to most- be they the best plays of Shakespeare, the best symphonies of Beethoven, or the best paintings of Picasso. Trust me on this, for time will avail both this work of cinema, and my assessment.

I am conflicted on this film

[jrd_73 · 6/10 · 20 February 2022]

The Italian actress Monica Vitti died recently at the age of 90. Although she made a few English language film (like Modesty Blaise), she is best known internationally for the three films she made with her then lover Michelangelo Antonioni. I was not a huge fan of Vitti, or Antonioni, but I was in the mood for something different. Red Desert certainly qualifies as something different.

First, I will state the obvious. There is no red desert in the film. At no point does any character go to a desert, red or not. At no point, does a character even mention a desert. I suppose the title is meant metaphorically, for life in a post-industrial age. Okay, I could go Pink Beach (because there is a fantasy scene on a beautifully pink beach), Yellow Sky (after the smokestacks shooting chemically yellow smoke at the ending), Gray Desert, or Dirty Desert (since a lot of the film takes places around an ugly industrial backdrop), but not Red Desert. Maybe I am just too much of a literalist, but I kept expecting, at some point, a character would end up in a red desert.

Moving along from the (inaccurate) title, the film is a few days in the life of this, upper-middleclass, depressed woman in her thirties named Giuliana (Vitti). She has gotten out of the hospital for a depression that began after a car accident. She is now scared of living in a modern world where death seems to hang over everything. Giuliana's husband works in an office of a chemical plant whose smokestacks are always billowing smoke or fire and the environment is all mud and soot. This environment further depresses Giuliana. One day her husband introduces her to an old friend Corrado (Richard Harris - dubbed in Italian by someone else), who is a man of the modern world. He lives out of a few suitcases, going from one company job to the next. Corrado begins following Giuliana around. Why? I am not really sure. He could be feeling sorry for her, Giuliana's husband might have asked him to, or Corrado could be trying to make her. This is not the only ambiguous point in the movie. So, Corrado and Giuliana spend a few days together, but nothing much changes for Giuliana, and the film ends at 117 minutes, much like it started, back at the industrial complex.

Vitti is quite good in quiet moments, giving off a slight distance that matches the character, but she overplays the twitchy nervousness in big moments. Harris looks remarkably young but also a little lost, like he is not used to working the Italian way, with everyone speaking different languages, and he is concentrating really hard to catch his cue.

The Criterion Blu-ray, which I watched, is wonderful and really brings out the contrasting colors and textures of the film. This is important since the visual is the film's strongest asset (that fantasy scene on the beach is BEAUTIFUL!). Dramatically, I can care only so much for Giuliana's problems, particularly since Antonioni's style is so deliberately obtuse. He cuts to different locations and actions without any transitions or establishing shots (now Giuliana is on a boat!).

Call it a mixed review. I can't dismiss a film that looks so good, but I also might have preferred a somewhat shorter running time. Antonioni is clearly more interested in Giuliana's problems than I am. As far as his films go, I prefer Blow Up and The Passenger. However, I got to admit, none of his other films look as gorgeous as Red Desert.

Unless the film itself is the metaphor for un-reality...

[shoobe01-1 · 5/10 · 9 August 2017]

Yup, it's another Antonioni. Should have learned my lesson after Zabriskie Point but I guess I keep expecting a color-filled Blow Up.

I'd go to 3-4 stars for this film with just Monica Vitti walking around jarring industrial landscapes. Carlo Di Palma does a great job filming, but only when outdoors, and more than about 4 feet away. Closeups and small interiors feel TV like, and horribly stifled. Several times I felt we were half a step from a telenovela.

But mostly, I didn't even care what they said. The story is lacking, or stupid, or poorly done, or pointless. I don't care about anyone in the film, at all. I so don't care about the story I find it hard to evaluate it.

Oh, and Richard Harris is a native of Trieste? Why? What is this silliness? Not a thing he did from talking about how out of place he is in the world to kicking straw in the yard felt remotely real.

An excellent film

[Zen Bones · 26 April 2002]

For the most part, I've never been terribly impressed by the "new wave" movements in the French and Italian cinema of the 1960s. How many times do we have to watch the upper middle class intelligentsia wallowing in their designer-alienated angst? And why don't those films ever bring up any mention of altruism? Perhaps those folks wouldn't feel so alienated if they got off their seats at the cafe, or on their yacht, and actually tried to participate in the world. Maybe they could help those who don't have the leisure to whine about their hardships in life. Or maybe they could even do something to counter the coldness and ugliness that surrounds them.

This film is different, because this time the isolation and coldness is real and tangible, and we are entrapped by it as much as the main character is. We can see the ugliness and filth sweeping over everything like a virus. And we can see how isolated one becomes when one discovers that s/he is the only one who seems to be sensitive to it. No one really sees or listens to Giuliana (including, I'm sorry to see, some of the commentators here at IMDb!). The people around her see her 'function' (wife, mother, sexy lady) but not her identity. I will admit that Monica Vitti isn't terrific in this. She gives a great 'performance', but it seems too much a performance. If she had been anything like Gena Rowlands in A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE, this film would be a masterpiece. As it stands, it's still an excellent film.

As for this film's use of colors... I heard once that if you drop a copper penny into a goldfish bowl, it will eventually drain all the color from the fish. I don't know if that's true, but that is what essentially has happened to the town that's depicted in this film (and sadly, thousands of similar places all over the globe). People have adapted. And real color has been drained out of everything. The only colors we see in the film are manmade. Thick, bright, glossy paint coats everything from walls to houses to the pipes in the factories. There are no natural colors that contain any real texture or sensuality or warmth. Even the "natural" elements look unreal. The land is riddled with greenish muck, the sea is coated with muddy oil, and the sky is choking in clouds of frightening yellow smoke. The painted colors that we see throughout the town function like pink pebbles in a dirty goldfish bowl. It is a distraction that rapes one's senses. It's like muzak in an elevator. And by the end of the film, like Giuliana, we are suffocating from it.

There's an incredible scene about two-thirds of the way through the film where we escape with Giuliana in her mind to a dream world. There, the colors radiate from the shimmering sea, and the sand and the sky. And the surrounding hills have more sensuality and texture than the people in Giuliana's real world. I'm glad that Antonioni gave us this image. This film is certainly depressing, yet it has balance. There are few places left on this planet like Giuliana's pastoral island. But the fact of that image gives us a glimmer of hope, like Winston Smith and his journal in '1984'. Even if the only beauty that exists is in our minds, that's something.

I think this is definitely Antonioni's best film. It isn't for all tastes, but then, the best films never are.

Drab skies & industrial waste never looked so good

[rooprect · 9/10 · 5 March 2021]

"Red Desert" is director Michelangelo Antonioni's first color film, and he doesn't hold back. Much like Bergman's "Cries & Whispers" this film proves that a master of b&w medium can be just as impressive and innovative with all the wavelengths between b and w. But I'm getting ahead, first let's have a plot summary:

A woman who is suffering from a nonspecific mental disorder (or as her husband flippantly describes "her gears don't quite mesh") attempts to navigate an increasingly conflicted existence against the backdrop of a town which itself is suffering a conflict of nature vs industrialism. Like Antonioni's 3 prior films with Monica Vitti (L'avventura, La notte, L'eclisse), there are prominent sexual themes but NOT 'sexual' meaning 'erotic' or even 'romantic'. The themes explored are more about the dysfunctional ways in which men and women--primarily the male characters--use sexual attraction as a failed proxy for real human connections.

That's a mouthful, hard to describe in half a paragraph. You'll see it almost immediately in an early scene where Monica's character "Giuliana" is having a terrifying anxiety attack in the middle of the night and her husband initially tries to comfort her with a hug but quickly overshoots the runway and starts making sexual advances on the poor woman. This is something to watch for later in the film when the scenario repeats itself in a different way. Giuliana's reaction is chilling to watch, particularly if you look at her hands as she silently contorts herself in a way that conveys not simply her revulsion at the male's approach but perhaps more of a deep conflict within herself, fighting the very concept of intimacy.

And all the while we see unsettling--but gorgeous--images of nature fighting and losing to industrialism. We see nature replaced with a new "tree line" of smoke stacks and commercial silos. But this is the interesting part: Antonioni doesn't merely bash us over the head with the bumper sticker mentality of "factories suck" but these images are beautiful in their own way, and we are also shown majestic images of radio towers aimed at the sky. "What are those for?" Giuliana asks a worker who is high up on a tower. "So we can listen to the stars," the man joyfully answers. "Can I listen?" Giuliana asks. "Sure, but you have to climb up here." To which she laughs and shakes her head as if that's never gonna happen.

And thus Antonioni paints for us a complex intersection between the old world and the new, or nature vs. science, or tradition vs. progress. There's no simple answer. It's a tangle of complications that makes you start to realize how our protagonist Giuliana--perhaps a representation of humankind itself--may lose her mind under the strain.

Progress, Humanity, Justice...in that order

[JasparLamarCrabb · 8/10 · 28 March 2009]

It's easy to watch this Michelangelo Antonioni study in alienation and lament how boring it is, but just try to get it out of you mind during the days after. Monica Vitti is a woman who, after a traffic accident, slips slowly into insanity. With her attention seeking son and disengaged husband all she has, she finds herself oddly attracted to Richard Harris (one of her husband's business associates). That Harris is also attracted to the unstable Vitti is another oddity in this perplexing movie. That a viewer can be affected by these two is Antonioni's genius. They're alienated and getting more alienated by a world (the director, working in color for the first time, reminds us that the factories that make up the world are dwarfing us) that prioritizes progress, humanity and justice, in THAT order. To say this is an unhappy film would be a wild understatement. It's horrifyingly sad. Vitti is the epitome of earthy angst and Harris, criticized by even Antonioni as miscast, is in fact fine as the cool, repulsed yet attracted suitor. With the French stripper Rita Renoir as one of Vitti's more adventuresome friends.

Super-Stylish Musing On Life And Neurocis In An Industrial Nightmare Wasteland

[Slime-3 · 7/10 · 8 December 2012]

Some film review books claim Antonioni's best work was all shot in monochrome and thereafter he was less effective, but this movie easily dispels that argument. Colour gives him an extra tool with which to elaborate his familiar themes of alienation and failing relationships. It's the best work I've seen by this darling- director of the art-house set. The use of colour, the eerie locations, the juxtaposition of almost horrific industrial installations belching coloured smoke with deserted ancient Italian streets and the electronic soundtrack (hard to call it a score as such)is disturbing and arresting. The natural world is grey and brown, the man-made elements are primary coloured, invasive and overpowering. Within this landscape, fizzing and gurgling with pollution and decay we find an unhinged engineers wife who's recovering poorly from a car accident and struggling to cope the responsibility of motherhood and being the wife of a man tied up with his career. Some reviewers pour scorn on Monica Vitti's performance in this difficult and complex lead role. Does she over act? Is she hamming it up? I'd prefer to think that she's playing the part of a woman on the edge, torn in different directions at a moment of emotional weakness, without the mental strength to comprehend how odd her behaviour actually is - in short, she's playing it right. Although it must me said her face is unusually immobile in every role she plays so if her body language might be considered over- the-top her facial expression certainly never is. And she has a distinct air of fragility about her. Richard Harris as the 'other man' in her life is an odd choice for the role. Clearly speaking English dialogue but dubbed over by an Italian-speaking actor, and thus lacking the familiar husky lilting tones one expects to hear. He's rather gloomy,but then so is everyone in this film! His character's presence seems only to push Vitti's closer to the abyss, adding another element of unhappiness and uncertainty to her tormented life.

It's not, as you've no doubt deduced, a happy film, in any way, but it has a rhythm and style which will keep you watching and unlike Antonioni's previous films there is a certain structure which makes it more more accessible. Perhaps in being set among working people (although far from 'working class') as opposed to the 'idle rich' of films like L'AVENTTURA, gives it more gravitas? Frankly the navel-gazing of poor-me-life-is-such-a-bore characters of those films makes them much harder to care about than fragile frustrated Vitti in RED DESERT. For the immaculate visual style and striking use of colour alone, this film is well worth the effort (and it is sometimes an effort)of watching but the story line and Vitti's character also make it worth listening to. One curiosity - why the clearly intentional scenes shot out-of-focus? Bizarre and entirely pointless as far as I could see, but a minor quibble.

Antonioni's masterwork

[atari-3 · 10/10 · 4 October 1999]

Stunning. Antonioni's masterwork of color and sound captured on film. Mental breakdown amidst the stale, harsh setting of an industrial wasteland. Possibly the most unique, visionary, cerebral film ever made, from one of its greatest directors.

Alienation

[BillyBibbic · 7/10 · 31 July 2016]

The main theme explored in works of a cinema master, Antonioni, and this one is no exception.

I watched it 2 years ago. It was my first Antonioni, and didn't really liked it back then so I will not recommend it for entering into the artist work. But maybe it's just me. For entering I will recommend something like Zabriskie Point (my favorite from him) or The Passenger (my second).

This is a film about woman (Monica Vitti), a very sensitive one, and beautiful too, living in her world, a very ugly and toxic, a distanced one, filmed with masterful directing and cinematography. It was a director's first colour movie and colours are beautifully placed in this harshly grey environment, especially red.

Monica Vitti, Antonioni's muse, was great in this film. She is my favourite actress, except maybe Irène Jacob, or maybe Juliette Binoche, or maybe... Well I don't know any Antonioni's movie with her in which she wasn't, at least, great.

Don't get fooled because of my rating. I am very strict, very. This is one of Antonioni's best films for me and I will definitely watch it again in years to come.

And please, be nicer to the environment.

David Jeffers

[rdjeffers · 8/10 · 23 July 2005]

A strongly visual film, Il Deserto Rosso was Antonioni's first in color and he exploits it. Guiliana (Monica Vitti), a gorgeous, neurotic chick staggers through her damaged life punctuated with individual graphic explosions as the backdrop. The guarded orgy scene is dated and silly. Much of the visual drama in this film must be due to the accomplished hand of cinematographer Carlo Di Palma as well as Antonioni. Although set in an industrial wasteland the film is a study of beautiful images on a monumental scale. Using a factory setting with an enormous steam vent early in the film Antonioni puts the actors so close they look almost frightened. I can imagine the director screaming at them, "Closer! Closer!" Among other strong images are mountains of green glass jugs packed in straw. He even uses the Istituto di Radioastronomia "Northern Cross" telescope in Bologna so large we never see it entirely. Il Deserto Rosso displays Antonioni's visual poetry at it's best, .

Mediocre Antonioni

[Tequila-18 · 6/10 · 24 October 1999]

Red Desert is a disappointing film. I was expecting much more. While it vividly uses a symbolic industrial landscape to envoke the inner demons of the female character, it seems very uninvolving and distancing. While not in the flop catagory as Zabriskie Point, Red Desert does not reach the heights of L'Avventura, Blow-Up, and The Passenger. Monica Vitti is superb, as usual. I'm sure this film gets better with repeated viewings.

Forbidden Landscape

[rmax304823 · 8/10 · 22 June 2015]

You've seen what Michelangelo Antonioni can do with comfortable people who are bored and without soul. Wait until you see what he does with somebody who is insane.

The story is simple enough. The central figure is Monica Vitti. Her looks are unforgettable. She has startling eyes and a nose that looks borrowed from a Greek statue of not Aphrodite but Hera. She's the wife of a north Italian industrialist. She's had an accident and spent considerable time in the hospital, "because of the shock." The thing she's responding to is more than a simple shock.

The landscape in which she and her friends and family live is a polluted wasteland, with smokestacks emitting a sick yellow gas, ponds of waste that poison fish, and a constant barrage of mechanical noise as the gray gears grind. Beep beep; boop boop. Hwangg. Hisss. Her husband brings home a visitor, Richard Harris, with his battered Irish face, playing an Italian entrepreneur. He looks upon Vitti with interest, which is more than anyone else in the movie does.

At first, I thought that the landscape was having an inimical effect on Vitti's increasingly disturbed mind, but then -- a MESSAGE movie? From ANTIONIONI? The auteur of anomi? Then I realize that I'd mixed up the independent and dependent variables, and the forbidden landscape was a projection of Vitti's despair.

I'm going to kind of skip over the plot because there's really not much to it. It looks as if Antonioni had begun with an overall concept -- let's have people walk around and chat in a landscape drained of color and vitality except for the machinery. And the concept was fully realized. You have never seen such absolute grayness before. A peddler and his cart sit in front of a pale gray wall. The peddler's garb is the same color as the wall. So is his cart and even the wares in the cart. It looks as if he's part of the wall except that the smooth texture is broken up by a couple of irregular projecting bundles.

There is a scene in which half a dozen people squeeze into a riverside shack surrounded by cold fog. (The fog is gray. So is the shack.) There is one internal room that is painted bright red and everyone piles into it and begins laughing and chatting. But to keep the fire going, people begin to dismantle the board walls of the red room. Again, I tripped over a notion that was probably unintended: people destroying the world they live in for short-term gain.

So why, you ask, is Monica Vitti reduced to gibberish at the end, apologizing to a rough sailor who speaks no Italian? I don't know. When her young son appears to be ill, she makes up a story for him, about a young girl who lived on a beautiful beach in a beautiful land. The sun shone every day. Then a sailing ship appeared and the girl swam out to it, but although it looked full of splendor from a distance, close up she could see that no one was aboard, and the ship turned quietly around and sailed away. The girl returns to shore and hears a vibrant voice singing. She searches the island to find the source, but the source is everywhere. Even the buff rocks are singing.

The director has invested this scene with some importance because in illustrating it he uses a vivid palette -- glorious, sun-drenched, blazing yellow, ocher, and aquamarine. It knocks your socks off. I take it to suggest something like, well, we enter the world innocent and when we are young everything is pure, uncluttered, flowery and pregnant with pleasure. Then we encounter civilization and it corrupts us. That faint applause you hear comes from the grave of Jean-Jaques Rousseau.

But, okay, Antonioni began with this powerful concept, a polluted landscape mirroring a polluted mind. But then he had to fill up two hours with people standing around, staring at each other, arguing about whether fertilized quail's eggs are an aphrodisiac. Vitti ostentatiously gobbles down two hard-boiled quail eggs, not because she wants to get laid but because she needs to be loved.

She mistakes one for the other in an encounter with Richard Harris. Harris does a decent job of being a quiet and confident Italian, by the way. But his character is a genuine dullard. When Vitti expresses remorse over their affair, he advises her (in dubbed Italian) not to think about such things. But then she has to ask, as I always have, how do you NOT think about something? I guess if you're a zen master or something.

Nothing particularly dramatic happens. Nobody gets punched in the nose or does something embarrassing in public. There's a total absence of humor. But I couldn't stop watching it and found myself moved, whether I expected it or not.

Cool cinematography but unstable characters without a concrete story.

[nicolechan916 · 6/10 · 13 February 2015]

My film studies professor made us watch this film to understand the essence of the time-image as proposed by Gilles Deleuze. Basically, its a form of cinema wherein the story throughout the film makes not change whatsoever to how it ends. Here, we see Giuliana lost in the world with an unstable mentality and numerous mental breakdowns. At the end, she is still somewhat the same, however there is a minor change mentally, but not outwardly. Hiroshima Mon Amour would also be a perfect example of the time-image as pretty much nothing happens (I was figuratively dying watching that, and died a bit watching this – even the trailer gives multiple mind farts).

The acting was awkward, the movements slow and deliberate, and there are lots of times in the film where time just seems to stop. This is intentional, but as a movie buff (of modern times), this does not entertain me.

The cinematography was probably the only good thing in this film. Well, maybe some lines were great too. Mainly, everything that was shot (including the colour tinting of scenes) emphasized the inner workings of Giuliana's mind. That she feels like she is alone and doesn't belong anywhere. She clings to the walls when she walks, she sits next to a slanted cart that shows how she is out of balance with the world, and there are shots (mainly one that I can think of) where she is literally out of focus. She is like a red desert, 'red' perhaps alluding to her anxiety of feeling this way, and 'desert' referring to her solitude.

Also, I do like the ending because it serves as a metaphor that she's found a way to keep on living with her disoriented mentality. Those ending lines were great. Oh and that one scene in the second half of the film about a story of a girl on an island, though totally random as it is, was interesting.

Read more movie reviews at: championangels.wordpress.com

spleen ..or tedium?

[dbdumonteil · 5/10 · 7 August 2002]

After a neorealist period (Il grido),Antonioni begins his movies dealing with incommunicability with "l'avventura" in 1960,continues with "la notte" (1961) and "l'eclisse"(1962).This trilogy is in black and white and features Monica Vitti,his favorite actress -although in "la notte" she's only supporting,the main part being played by Jeanne Moreau-.

'IL deserto rosso' is more of the same ;it's even more difficult and austere than the three former movies.It is the first time Antonioni has experimented color and the results are impressive:he creates a depressing landscape where the colors are cold,drab and dirty.The depiction of an industrial dehumanized world is convincing as Vitti,suffering from neurosis,roams aimlessly along this desert(wonderful lines:her son :"the yellow smoke contains poison,the birds will die";mother: "no,they know it does ,and they don't come here anymore").During almost two hours,absolutely nothing happens,frames of mind,people holding conversations that are always incomplete,pointless actions,roads leading nowhere....

The problem is:are we moved by all that?Can we relate to this woman's despair?As far I'm concerned,only partially, not to say bluntly no.Incommunicability had already been treated by Roberto Rosselini: in "Europa 51" he put Ingrid Bergman in the same world as Vitti ;when the world pressure began too hard to bear ,she rebelled in her own way,she did not accept the society in which she lived in,nothing to do with Vitti's listless character.In " Viaggio in Italia",the invisible wall between a man and his wife (George Sanders and Bergman) was already here.This couple vibrated through their suffering and their despair,Vitti and her husband do not.Rosselini created flesh and blood characters,Antonioni's ones have ectoplasm strength:such are the two characters of "l'avventura" searching for a disappeared girl,the wealthy couple of "la notte" -who only exists because played by peerless Mastroianni and Moreau-,forgetting their ennui in their friend's palace."My characters move in a rich milieu,because their feeling are not brought about by money "Antonioni used to say.That does not prevent them from being selfish,egocentric and " I-me-mine".

With his follow-up "blow-up" ,Antonioni gained world-wide success and he continued the color experiment,as an acid green London testifies.The plot becoming completely abstract,the characters will become less important,therefore a more satisfying movie.

Until the very end,as he was disabled,Antonioni was obsessed by color:his last movie was a remake of Jean Cocteau's "l'aigle à deux têtes",with a stunning color treatment.