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Deserto rosso, Il (1964) More at IMDb Pro »

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34 out of 37 people found the following comment useful :-
An excellent film, 26 April 2002
Author: Zen Bones from USA

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.

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11 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Does everybody have a film that is their template for how they view 'reality'?, 2 February 2007

Author: christopher-underwood from Greenwich - London

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'?

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13 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
I'm one of its followers..., 5 April 2001

Author: zetes from Saint Paul, MN

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

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5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
RED DESERT (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964) ***, 22 August 2007

Author: MARIO GAUCI (marrod@onvol.net) from Naxxar, Malta

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.

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8 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Even the birds won't come near the place..., 28 June 2005
Author: (futures@exis.net) from Ronn Ives/FUTURES Antiques, Norfolk, VA.

"Red Desert" (Italian, 1964): Michelangelo Antonioni made this film prior to "Blow Up", but you can see where he was headed. "Red Desert" is about a deeply troubled, beautiful woman who seems to have it all – including a stable, handsome husband, a precocious son, and fun, sexy friends. Yes, she DOES live in an industrial wasteland managed by her spouse… True, even the birds know better than to fly anywhere near this area of floating and flowing poisons, but she has larger concerns. "Red Desert" is wonderfully symbolic (the title will make sense later in the film), and illustrates confused, tortured states of mind with landscapes & sets, not to mention the utterings & behavior of this woman. But, IS she insane, or, like the birds, simply failing to accept this environment? Watch the fog, architecture, room colors, lack of dialog, physical disconnects, out of focus camera, illogical gestures…listen to her stories, the sound track (which is electronic, and dated), and the random events heard that seem to have no resolution. "Red Desert" is TRULY a great film about alienation in the "modern" age.

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
the red desert of our lives, 26 April 2007

Author: andrabem from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

"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.

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8 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
Colour, light, vision, motion, 8 July 1999

Author: cwitt

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.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Existential Nausea, 8 June 2008
Author: tieman64 from United Kingdom

"Red Desert" begins with an out of focus shot of an Industrial estate. We're in a barren and impersonal landscape, the earth poisonous, the sky toxic, factory fumes snaking their way up into the air.

A woman and child then 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 calls a state of existential Nausea.

Having sustained minor injuries in a car crash, Giulietta has become psychologically wounded. She becomes hypersensitive, deeply attuned to the world around her. She begins to feel the pain of existence. Such sensitivity leads to alienation, as the individual attempts to cut himself off from stimulus. As such, Giulietta attempts suicide. But she is unsuccessful. She has to go on living in pain.

Those around Giulietta can't relate to her troubles. Extended set pieces (like a party and an aborted group sex act) highlight that man shields himself from painful contemplation largely by indulging in simple pleasures. Man rather numb himself with financial conquests and biochemical stimulus than ponder the nature of his existence.

But Giulietta is different. She feels things that others ignore. The only one who empathises with her pain is her friend Zeller (Richard Harris). He's similarly a wounded existentialist. He travels from place to place, but never seems to fit in. The two begin a subdued romance, but despite his attempts to get to the bottom of her condition, nothing changes.

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

It's a simple bedtime story that cures Giulietta'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.

The film ends with two brilliant scenes. Giulietta, like Richard Harris' character, attempts to flee the world. She heads out to the docks and boards a ship. Like Jack Nicholson in Antonioni's "The Passenger", she wants to get away. It's only when she finally articulates her pain to a sailor (who doesn't speak her language) that she comes to some measure of closure. She then leaves the ship.

The film 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. She then tells him that the birds have learnt to stay clear of the poisonous fumes.

The heroes of Antonioni's earlier films all flounder or despair at their plights. But by "Red Desert's" end, Giuliana has adjusted to life. She hasn't been cured of her Nausea, rather she's simply learnt how to cope. Antonioni's film is not about the harshness of nature or Industrialisation, as critics have assumed, but rather that man has to adapt to his changing world.

Antonioni uses several techniques to convey Giuliana's psychology. He has her sit next to a cart to convey her lack of balance. He has her wear a tight coat and hide behind her hair (and scarf) to convey how bottled up and isolated she is. He uses out of focus shots to emphasise that Giuliana is "out of sync" with the rest of the world. He alternates between sound and silence to differentiate between Giuliana's comfort and pain. He has her stand against white walls, and has her paint her shop in "cool colours" to convey her attempts at "separating" herself from the "ugliness". The title of the film itself is symbolic of a lack of "eros" or "love". Giuliana's in a desert of red. A lack of human passion.

Antonioni's use of space is also remarkable. How his characters enter certain spaces, what these spaces are, and how they act and react within these spaces is essential to the story. The use of ships, the juxtaposition between movement and tranquillity, past and present, modernity and poverty, all work together to create a unique aesthetic. Antonioni seems concerned with how human beings react to the permanence of loneliness in a world of constant change. The world is moving in a technologically progressive direction, but Antoniono says that we shouldn't complain. The problem with the world is not technology, but humanity. We must adapt or die.

What Antonioni fails to do is show the beauty in landscape. His factories and Industrial parks are shot to seem "natural" but never "beautiful". Perhaps he doesn't see nature as beautiful. No doubt audiences will come away from the film thinking that Antonioni is bashing Industrialisation and artificiality, when he's simply equating it with rustic nature.

9/10 – This is a masterful film with a very limited audience. It is likely only to appeal to those who can identify with Giuliana. It makes a nice companion piece to Todd Haynes' "Safe", which explores similar themes but is far more accessible.

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3 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
David Jeffers, 23 July 2005

Author: rdjeffers from Seattle

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, .

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3 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Love and life are not permanent, but ugliness lasts, 14 July 2002

Author: Michael Udel from Guangzhou, China

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Giuliana receives a shock from an every day event that has a deep and lasting effect on her sanity. Her husband cannot comprehend her malady and continues life as usual, working hard as the manager of a petroleum distillery. It seems the only way Giuliana's husband wants to relate to his wife is through sex, but since the incident Giuliana is unsure of everything and no longer in the mood.

Giuliana is anxious because she has made a sudden, shocking realization that nothing in her life is permanent. It seems odd for a grown woman with a four year old son to have taken so long to understand one of the fundamentals of life, but that is why Giuliana is suffering so greatly. To understand that not only will life go on without Giuliana, but that she herself must go on with the knowledge that she might have to do it without the love of her husband or her son is too much for her.

Corrado is hired by her husband's firm to begin a project in South America and seems fascinated by Giuliana. For her part she doesn't mind the attention and companionship Corrado provides her, although she seems simultaneously relieved and comforted by his friendship and tortured by the knowledge that he is as impermanent as the rest of her life.

Corrado and Giuliana have something in common. Giuliana is terrified by impermanence and Corrado is frightened of standing still. He never wants to stay in the same place for very long, although there is no prominent reason given as in the case of Giuliana's shock. Corrado and Giuliana make a pitiable pair, but for a very short period they seem to have each other.

Antonioni has created a film with an undeniable mood that is bleak, drab, frightening, and often repulsive. I don't know if he is suggesting that the ugliness of our world is more permanent than any of us individually, or maybe he's also suggesting that the most permanent quality of people is our willingness and need to exploit each other and our lands.

Red Desert is a frightening film and Monica Vitti's performance is outstanding as a woman who has lost her ability to ignore the harsh realities around her. This movie is not for all tastes, but I regard it as highly as The Adventure, The Passenger, and Blowup.

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