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Red Desert (Il deserto rosso) [DVD] [1964]

Monica Vitti (Actor), Richard Harris (Actor), Michelangelo Antonioni (Director) | Rated: Suitable for 15 years and over | Format: DVD
4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Actors: Monica Vitti, Richard Harris, Carlo Chionetti, Xenia Valderi, Rita Renoir
  • Directors: Michelangelo Antonioni
  • Format: PAL
  • Language: Italian
  • Subtitles: English
  • Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9 - 1.78:1
  • Number of discs: 1
  • Classification: 15
  • Studio: Bfi
  • DVD Release Date: 27 Oct 2008
  • Run Time: 120 minutes
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B001DFINL4
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 61,289 in Film & TV (See Top 100 in Film & TV)

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Reviews

Product Description

This 1960s Italian drama stars Monica Vitti and Richard Harris and marks director Michelangelo Antonioni's first venture into colour film. Guiliana (Vitti) becomes mentally unstable after being in a car accident but tries to keep her condition from her husband, Ugo (Carlo Chionetti). Lonely, she begins to open up to Ugo's business associate, Corrado (Harris), and they gradually become closer as they spend more time together. Meanwhile, she suffers setbacks that only seem to add to her feeling of isolation.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 24 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Desert Hearts 9 Nov 2008
By wabrit
This was Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni's first film in colour, and was to be his last film in Italy for many years as after this he decamped first to the UK ("Blow Up") and thence to the US ("Zabriskie Point", "The Passenger") before eventually returning to native soil to make "The Mystery of Oberwald" in the 80's. It arrived as the end of a sequence of controversial but ground-breaking films detailing the modern condition - "L'Avventura", "La Notte" and "L'Eclisse" - all also featuring Monica Vitti who has the lead role here.

This subject of the film is the relationship between the modern industrial world and those that fit (or, in the case of the Vitti character, do not fit) within it. Antonioni conjures a strange beauty out of the factory-dominated landscapes and it's clear that his reaction is not (as we might automatically conclude in more environmentally troubled times) that industrial progress is necessarily a bad thing, but something a little more complicated. This ambiguous approach, allied with the extraordinary use of artificial colour (grass and fruit painted shades of grey and black) lends the film a compulsively mysterious air, at times almost tipping it into the territory of science fiction. At the centre of it is Vitti, who provides a superb performance (her co-star, a dubbed Richard Harris, received much less favourable reviews, but to my mind brings a stolid charmlessness that perfectly suits his character).

This is an excellent presentation of a wonderful but challenging film by the BFI; visually it has never looked better, and there is a very informative commentary by the Italian scholar David Forgacs which helps to illuminate the context in which the film was made.

Highly recommended.
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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars il deserto rossi 4 Nov 2008
By MarkusG
Red Desert (Il deserto rossi, 1964) is filmed in an industrial landscape filled with large machines, oil refinerys, garbage heaps, big buildings and so on. Despite this it is incredibly beautiful. The first shots show an industrial plant out of focus accompained to non-melodic electronic music, and the colours and forms reminds of abstract paintings, and Antonioni was inspired by modern art when he made this. His earlier films, L'Eclisse, L'Avventura and La Notte) also feels like paintings with beautiful compositions, but in Il deserto rossi this is abstract instead of hyper realistic, sometimes just layers of technicolor out of focus. This makes the movie visually unique I think.
The story is, I would say, about alienation, and also psychic illness/angst. Monica Vitti plays Guiliana, a young woman who is recovering mentally from a car crash. She doesn't have any good contact with her husband nor her son, and she becomes attracted to a business partner of her husband. This story is framed within the theme of modernity with big industries and business, and how they affect humans - clearly the environments they produce is not healthy, neither physically nor mentally. In the film we never see any 'normal' milieus, as in Antonionis other movies, like the life in an italian city or village. Instead the environment is cluttered and dominated by industry, somtimes a big boat is seen behind some trees or a window, and the only city streets we see are muted grey. This is comically enhanced when in one scene we see a street vendor, and he only sells grey stuff (even the fruits are grey!...I think it is supposed to be fruits...). So the scenes are very stylized, Antonioni even painted the grass in some shots...... Read more ›
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Austere,abstract,magnificent 3 Sep 2011
By technoguy TOP 1000 REVIEWER VINE™ VOICE
Il Deserto Rosso was Antonioni's 1st colour film, and a key work following the alienation trilogy, where the divorce between technology and morality, and the relationship between people and their physical environment, continues in this film.As in his previous films, the story is quite simple and revolves around a woman,Giuliana(Vitti),in industrial Ravenna, who has had a nervous breakdown and tried to commit suicide but,although married and a mother,is now embarking on a tentative affair with Corrado(Harris).Guiliana cannot adapt to her surroundings,the city's grim industrial landscape weighs heavily on her.This is reinforced by a frightening electronic soundtrack and Antonioni's enhanced bleak rendering of the painted grey marshlands.Plasticity and material weight,replace dramatic psychology,story and character development.

Colour emerges as a central element in the film, mirroring her subjective mental states.Colour is integrally linked to character, as was landscape in the trilogy.Scenes are dominated by a single colour or colours.There is also the use of desaturated colours, and the flattening of space by tele-photo lenses.Giuliana is sharply focussed against unfocussed backgrounds or foregrounds.Corrado wants to recruit workers to set up industry in Patagonia and Guiliana catches his eye.He has no roots,is always on the move but feels a kinship and sexual interest with the lost,wandering Guiliana.However their consummation, brings no satisfaction to either.Harris is buttoned-up emotionally and physically, and is dubbed.He acts as a foil to the amazing central performance of Vitti.... Read more ›
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