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41 out of 44 people found the following review 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.
17 out of 21 people found the following review 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'?
19 out of 27 people found the following review 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
15 out of 20 people found the following review 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.
13 out of 17 people found the following review 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.
5 out of 5 people found the following review useful: Existential Nausea, 8 June 2008 Author: tieman64 from United Kingdom
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
"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 suffocating pain of existence. Such sensitivity leads to alienation, as the individual attempts to cut himself off from all 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 in a moment of self-therapy, 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 modern man has to adapt psychologically to his changing world.Antonioni uses several techniques to convey Giuliana's psychology. He has her sit next to a tilted 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.
5 out of 6 people found the following review useful: RED DESERT (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964) ***, 22 August 2007 Author: MARIO GAUCI (marrod@melita.com) 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.
6 out of 8 people found the following review useful: Red Desert in gray, 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.
11 out of 19 people found the following review useful: Antonioni's masterwork, 4 October 1999 Author: Jerry
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.
3 out of 4 people found the following review useful: Great, 19 September 2008 Author: Cosmoeticadotcom (cosmoetica@gmail.com) from United States
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.
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