Red Desert
occupies a curious place in Antonioni¡¯s canon. Made in 1964 as a
French-Italian coproduction, it¡¯s wedged between the international success
of Blow Up (1967) and the critically acclaimed trilogy of L¡¯Avventura (1960),
La Notte (1961), and L¡¯Eclisse
(1962). Like the latter films, it featured Monica Vitti as a modern woman
confronted by a spiritually bereft world of shallow relationships,
beautiful but meaningless landscapes, and existential angst. It was also
the first film in which Antonioni employs the telephoto lens for
flattening effects. Most important, though, is its extreme use of color
(it was his first color film), a fact much noted ¡ª and not always admired
¡ª by critics of the time. The film has had only middling approval even
from many Antonioni fans, who reject the color manipulations as torturous
and even crude, and the pacing as equally torturous. Like many a
"classic," this one hasn¡¯t always been available in decent form to allow
for a proper assessment. Image¡¯s new DVD features an
excellent widescreen transfer, and the film¡¯s virtues are now as apparent,
if not as plentiful, as its drawbacks.
Red Desert¡¯s credits roll over undefined shapes covered in a
choking yellow industrial fog. When the credits end, the scene sharpens
into a series of cuts showing different views of a slate-gray tableaux of
factories in the rain. In this grim, rainy world, the people ¡ª factory
workers ¡ª are as gray as the road, the sky, and the buildings, and as
undifferentiated ¡ª with two exceptions. A woman in a bright green coat is
walking along the same gray road, accompanied by her small son in a bright
red suit. This is the first indication that the woman, Giuliana (Vitti),
is somehow apart from the dreary, hopeless world around her.
This apartness is to some extent the result of personal problems. After
a car wreck, Giuliana is hospitalized with a nervous breakdown and tries
to commit suicide. We don¡¯t see these events, only hear about them in
retrospect. Giuliana is married to an engineer who comprehends little of
her intense, and tormented, inner life, causing her to seek solace in the
arms of businessman Corrado Zeller (Richard Harris). True to Antonioni¡¯s
elliptical style, there¡¯s little in the way of physical connection between
these two (or between her and her husband, for that matter); it¡¯s mostly
implied until a scene at the end of the film where Giuliana¡¯s level of
desperation drives her into his arms, briefly.
Antonioni uses color throughout to tantalize the viewer with higher
possibilities. While the scenes set in the factories are mostly an
undifferentiated gray, suddenly a splash of deep red will appear on a huge
pipe in the foreground, as if the kind of depersonalization the factory
represents can¡¯t entirely overcome the life principle. But even seemingly
positive colors can be threatening in this world. In an early scene in
which Corrado and Giuliana¡¯s husband are standing next to a smokestack,
the frame is overwhelmed by vast plumes of white smoke that pours out all
around them. Antonioni¡¯s telephoto lens reduces the two to barely visible
figures in one of the longest long shots in recent memory.
Most colorful is Giuliana¡¯s inner life, which the director visualizes
intermittently. In a sequence in which she tells her ailing son a story,
the film moves entirely into her fantasy of a young girl on a beautiful
bright beach, enjoying the sounds of the waves and a distant aria that
seduces her though she never locates its source. This pleasurable world,
it seems, can only exist in story, and soon enough Giuliana is back in the
real world in a state of nervous chaos.
On the down side, the pacing is indeed murderous, with scenes allowed
to linger past their dramatic point (which no doubt is the point).
For some, Giuliana¡¯s constant state of existential despair and wild
ramblings will grate rather than elicit sympathy. There¡¯s a diverting
"orgy sequence," but only Antonioni could shoot an orgy in which nobody
has sex. (They spend most of their time chatting, cutting up, and
laughingly dismantling the shack in which the "orgy" takes place.) And it
doesn¡¯t help that Antonioni¡¯s obsession with atmosphere must have
distracted him from developing the other characters; even the often
formidable Richard Harris is just another fixture in the director¡¯s mise-en-scene.
On the plus sign, Antonioni¡¯s visual manipulations make this otherwise
arid exercise in period existentialism (all the rage in the early 1960s)
watchable and often intriguing. When everything is gray, the sudden
eruption of color in a scene takes on new meaning. The other virtue here
is Monica Vitti, again proving her power as an actress. She¡¯s luminous in
an often thankless role few actresses would even attempt. (How many ways,
and for how long, can you impart angst and hold your audience?) She¡¯s
convincingly desperate in scenes where that¡¯s called for, but also moving
in the scenes with her son. She speaks the words of a madwoman, but also
tells poignant personal truths that resonate beyond the frame: "I¡¯d like
all the people who ever loved me here, around me, like a wall."
From BRIGHT
LIGHTS FILM JOURNAL
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