El desierto rojo

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.

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.

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'?

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.

"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.