Customer Reviews

The Red Desert ( Il Deserto rosso ) ( Le Désert rouge ) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.4 Import - Australia ]

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

In 1964, Michelangelo Antonioni (who has earned the nickname "the Master of Alienation") screened his film "Il deserto rosso" (Red Desert) at the 1964 Venice Film Festival and the director took home the highly coveted Golden Lion award as well as the FIPRESCI Prize.

The Italian modernist director was known for his radical new style, not following any convention of filmmaking and most of all, characters and events are disconnected. Known for his trilogy, beginning with "L'avventura" (1960), the film was an international success and would introduce the world to the actress Monica Vitti, a woman who would appear as the main character in several of his films. Antonioni returned with "La Notte" (1961) starring Jeanne Moreau, Marcello Mastroianni and Monica Vitti which focused on the slow death of a marriage and final of the trilogy "L'Eclisse" would focus on the alienation of man in the modern world.

"Red Desert" is the fourth and final film that Antonioni's muse Monica Vitti would be featured in a film of his (the director would move on to focus his film on a male character). The film would also feature the director filming in color for the first time.

VIDEO:

"Red Desert" is presented in 1080p (1:85:1 Aspect Ratio). According to Criterion, the new HD transfer for "Red Desert" was created on a Spirit HD 2K Datacine from the original 35mm camera negative. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris, scratches, splices, warps, jitter and flicker were manually removed using MTI's DRS system and Pixel Farm's PFClean system, while Digital Vision's DVNR system was used for small dirt, grain and noise reduction.

It's important to note that Antonioni wanted to capture a certain look. From Pastel colors, we see the grays in the sky, in fact trees and grass were painted gray to convey the solitude of the area. Colors are usually seen in paintings on walls or on cylinders and they standout amongst the grays but yet, it's a look that dreary and gives us a sense of what the industrialized scenery looks like or how we see things through Giuliana's eyes.

For the most part, the film looks very good in producing this industrial area that is lacking any vitality. I was told that the BFI Blu-ray release has a lighter greenish blue tint but I have not seen the BFI release to compare. I did notice a brown line (possibly a few seconds of film damage) around an hr. and five minutes into the film but it's not long at all. That was probably the only blemish I have seen while watching the film.

The film contains a good amount of grain and for the most part, this 1964 film definitely looks very good on Blu-ray.

AUDIO & SUBTITLES:

"Red Desert" is presented in LPCM Italian monaural. According to Criterion, the monaural soundtrack was remastered at 24-bit from the 35mm optical soundtrack print. Clicks, thumps, hiss and hum were manually removed using Pro Tools HD, crackle was attenuated using Audiocube's integrated audio workstation.

Dialogue is clear through the center channel but I chose to have my audio set to stereo on all channels for a more immersive sound. There are no scenes that utilize any sound effects, it's pretty much a dialogue driven film that utilizes Giovanni Fusco's music score to initiate the mood. Overall, I didn't notice any audio problems whatsoever.

Subtitles are presented in English.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

"Red Desert - THE CRITERION COLLECTION #522' comes with the following special features:

* Audio commentary by Italian film scholar David Forgacs - An informative commentary in which film scholar David Forgacs talks about Antonioni's film technique but also evaluating various parts of the film and more.
* Archival interviews with director Michelangelo Antonioni - (12:03) An interview from 1965 with Antonioni for the TV series "Les ecrans de la ville" and comparisons of Vitti's performance in "Red Desert" and "L'Eclisse".
* Archival interviews with Monica Vitti - (9:18) An interview from 1990 with actress Monica Vitti for the TV series "Cinema Cinemas".
* Dailies from the original production - (27:58) Uncut and unfinished dailies presented in black and white and color without audio.
* Gente del Po - (11:00) A non-fiction documentary made between 1943 and 1947 looking at the relationship between individuals and their environment.
* N.U. - (11:40) A 1948 non-fiction documentary about the lives of street cleaners in Rome. N.U. stands for Nettezza Urbana, an Italian municipal cleaning service.
* Theatrical trailer - (3:52) The original theatrical trailer.

EXTRAS:

* 28-Page Booklet- Featuring an essay by film writer Mark Le Fanu, a reprinted interview with Antonioni conducted by Jean-Luc Godard, and writings by Antonioni on Gente del Po and N.U., also included is an essay "Landcapes of Memory" by Paul Ryan.

JUDGMENT CALL:

"Red Desert" is possibly one of those films in which many people will have different things that come into mind after watching it.

My feeling is that we are seeing a woman who is depressed, suicidal and there is something that is explored in this film that probably had no name for it back in 1964 and probably was not diagnosed. But the term given within recent times in the US to what Giuliana is going through is "Seasonal Affective Disorder". A state of depression that people go through during the winter and it can lead to major depression.

Giuliana is unstable, her surrounding is all gray. She wants to get out but this is her husband's job, his livelihood, his life. And her son, wants to be like dad.

The industrial area with its cold area, not a place for a young woman who wants to enjoy life. All that is around is grayness. The trees, the grass, the polluted ground and lakes, and it's important to note that this film was in 1964. Viewing this then, people were not mindful of the implications of pollution and its effects on people and the environment.

For us watching this film today, the first thing that comes to our minds are, look at the poisonous gas in the air from the industry. The fact that Ugo is joking around of how someone caught a fish in the lake that tasted like petroleum. It may seem like a joke then but we look at this today and we see it with a different mindset of how humanity literally took nature for granted.

So, we have to remove ourselves from the visual of industry and pollution and put ourselves in the mindset of the viewer back in 1964 and focus on the surroundings but mostly on Giuliana and her world crashing down on her.

When she tells the story of a woman in the sea to her son, we get a different visual than the life that Giuliana is living. In this dream story that she tells, the water is blue, the sand is white and the skies are of a vibrant blue. Almost like paradise, untouched by pollution or industrial or chemical plants. We get a sense that this is where Giuliana wants to be and wants to escape.

But she can't.

In many ways, "Red Desert" is like tragedy but with no fatality. It's a tragedy in the sense that we see a person slowly dying inside in which no one can help her. One can watch this film today and say, "why doesn't she just move out of the area?" but people must realize that in 1964, the women stuck close to their husbands and any suffering, many hid their painful emotions. She is tethered and feels confined in dreary place where there is no sunlight, the sounds of the area even drive her mad. She can tell her husband but his pragmatic way of dealing with her is nearly uncaring.

But Giuliana, she tries her best but we know its difficult. Everyone has a sense that something is wrong but no one has an answer for it. Nor does she, nor does her doctors.

The Blu-ray of "Red Desert" was a long time coming, many have wanted this release in the US and the fact that we get it on Blu-ray is fantastic. The special features gives us a really solid featurette on Antonioni's vision of the film but also through Vitti's featurette, their relationship. Also, we get two non-fiction short films from the director and also dailies showing us how things were behind-the-scenes of the filming of "Il Deserto Rosso".

Although, many people will always hold his trilogy films or "Blow Up" as his most memorable, I felt that with "Red Desert", director Michelangelo Antonioni has created a unique film.

In his words that he was trying to paint the industrial area as beautiful and that Giuliana must show how one must adapt to their new surroundings. There are some who can and some who can't.

Nearly 50 years later, we now see how Antonioni's "Red Desert", is a film that was possibly ahead of its time. It has given viewers a different meaning and a different perspective that goes beyond adapting to a new surrounding. We see a woman with a mental disease that is eating her up inside and no one knows how to deal with it but hope that time makes her better. That her time in the area makes her better.

For today's viewer, "Red Desert" may have a different meaning than what was intended in 1964 but for many of us, we can easily sympathize with Giuliana because many people if put in her position can easily go into depression and madness.

Overall, director Michelangelo Antonioni's "Il deserto rosso" (Red Desert) is a film that may not define his career but his efficacy in the life lived around an industrial world and a woman who feels as if she is submerging to nothingness due to the industrial world around her. The final collaboration between Antonioni and his muse Monica Vitti is magnificent!

It is good to have this film, one of Antonioni's finest and his first in color, available in a format that begins to do justice to its visual subtleties. It should really be seen in a theater, but a Criterion version is the next best thing. The last time I checked the critical consensus, Antonioni was still out of favor with the "with it" cognoscenti, but time will surely correct that oversight and give us good versions of all his films. We've had to put up with bad videos for so long. Those who are not familiar with Antonioni's work and need a clear story line should not waste their time, as Antonioni's films are all about character, mood, and that undefinable something extra which Monica Vitti captured so well in this film and the L'Avventura/La Notte/L'Eclisse trilogy.

The special features on this issue are unusually valuable: an interview with Antonioni, shortly after the film's release; an interview with Monica Vitti about her work and her relationship with him, which was supposedly first shown on French television in 1991, but which surely must have been done earlier, because there is no mention of his tragically debilitating stroke; good prints of Antonioni's two early neo-realist documentaries, which already show his care of visual composition; and some black and white dailies, which highlight Antonion's care in composition and the light and shadow substrate of his brilliant use of color. These features have added immeasurably to my understanding of a film, which only improves with time. Thank you Criterion!

"Red Desert" (1964) is Antonioni's first venture into color film. The film is about a neurotic woman (Monica Vitti) who has been in a car accident and is having trouble adjusting to the new industrial world that is the post-war Italy. The film beautifully photographs the industrial world with its architectural monoliths and poisonous pools of water and yellow clouds of smoke. The Russian director Tarkovsky would take some of his cues from this movie when he went on to film "Stalker". Antonioni was influenced by the abstract American artists like Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, and Antonioni often employs various techniques to flatten the visual space using the telephoto lens, and atmospheric effects, like fog. In this way the environments are made to be just as important as the characters who inhabit them. Antonioni would even spray paint the ground and the trees in order to color the landscape to fit his vision. At times the realism portrayed appears surreal, and electronic music adds to the alien quality of the industrial environments that the people find themselves surrounded by which sometimes gives the film an almost sci-fi quality. This is an often bleak, but thoughtful film, that portrays a humanity learning to live in a new order surrounded by technology and industry.

This Criterion release is has been beautifully remastered in 1080p, and is in its original monaural in Italian with English subtitles. The aspect ratio is 1.85:1. There is an informative commentary by Italian scholar David Forgacs, as well as archival interviews with Antonioni and Monica Vitti. There are also two short documentaries by Antonioni: Gente del Po, and N.U., plus a booklet with an essay by film writer Mark Le Fanu, as well as an interview conducted by Jean-Luc Godard, and writings by Antonioni on Gente del Po and N.U.

Il Deserto Rosso, Michelangelo Antonioni's first color film is really a tone poem about the spiritual desolation inherent in the rise of the technological age. Monica Vitti - Antonioni's alleged muse - is brilliant as the lonely, disheartened and alienated woman lost amidst the cold industrial landscape of power plants spewing toxins.

Extraordinary vistas and painterly compositions imbue the emotions with visual metaphors that are richly nuanced. Red Desert established Antonioni as the preeminent cinematic poet of the post-modern age. What one sees and feels in Red Desert, is a prophetic and perhaps apocalyptic vision of a world that is more with us than ever. One has only to look at the horrific consequences of the BP gulf oil disaster and the dismissive accountability from those most responsible. Or Bernie Madoff, his staff of thieves and their collective disdain for the victims.

This great 1964 film in its newly transferred Blu-ray edition is one for the serious collector. It's a reminder that superior films really matter when they reflect the truth of our times and selves. The Red Desert is a landscape where love and spirituality are subject to the drought of misguided human ambition.

Generous extras include a wonderful commentary from film scholar David Forgacs, archival interviews with Antonioni and Vitti as well as several short documentaries. From Criterion.

A beautiful and distracted woman named Giuliana (Monica Vitti) wanders aimlessly through the grimy perimeter streets outside a power generation plant amidst the intermittent chaos of a workers' strike, accompanied by her young son Valerio (Valerio Bartoleschi). Observing one of the striking workers eating his lunch, she instinctually begins to feel hungry, approaches him, and offers to buy the half-eaten sandwich from the bewildered stranger. After voraciously finishing her meal in a secluded area, she pays an unexpected visit to her husband Ugo (Carlo Chionetti), the manager of the power generation plant, who is preoccupied with assisting an engineer named Corrado Zeller (Richard Harris) in finding specialized workers for an international industrial project. In Giuliana's absence, Ugo expresses his concern to Corrado of his wife's erratic behavior that seems to have manifested as a result of a car accident. Corrado is captivated by the sensitive and enigmatic Giuliana, and begins to accompany her as she goes through the empty rituals of a "normal" life: planning the interior decoration of an unspecified shop that she has decided to establish in a near desolate street; visiting the wife of a potential employee for Corrado's project; wandering through a power line construction site; meeting Ugo and some friends at a neglected fishing cottage for a meaningless liaison. However, her fleeting connection to the emotionally inscrutable Corrado is soon tested when Giuliana's overwhelming anxiety resurfaces after Valerio feigns a crippling illness during Ugo's absence from home.

Marking Michelangelo Antonioni's entry into color film, Red Desert is a visually dense, metaphoric, and emotionally austere portrait of spiritual desolation, technological disconnection, and environmental malaise. Exploring similar themes of estrangement and ennui as his seminal trilogy of alienation (L'Avventura, La Notte, and L'Eclisse), Antonioni's color palette juxtaposes muted earth tones and bold, artificial (and often primary) colors to reflect the unnaturality and inherent competition between natural order and industrialization in a modern, and increasingly alienated, society: the automated rhythm of toxic, yellow fume emissions from the plant as Giuliana and Valerio pass nearby that bookend the film; the brightly painted, color-coded pipes that populate the interior spaces of the control facility as Giuliana pays a visit to the emotionally distant Ugo; the bright red, high power antennas that visually bisect the landscape during Giuliana and Corrado's walk (note Theo Angelopoulos' homage to Antonioni through a similarly framed horizon shot of telephone line technicians in The Suspended Step of the Stork). Antonioni further manifests the encroachment and toll of industrialization through disquieting ambient noise (modulated high frequency sounds and monotonous drone), bleak and polluted landscapes (the blackened desolate area where Giuliana consumes her appropriated sandwich and the fishing ban on the waters surrounding the disused shack), and the intrusion of man-made objects into the frame (the repeated image of ships traversing the horizon). Inevitably, the seeming cure to Giuliana's indefinable illness proves to be a resigned acceptance and emotional immunity to the irreconcilable chaos of her dehumanized and alienating environment.

I have these symptoms same as the main character. It is a hauntingly difficult way to be. She was sick when the accident occurred. Not because it occurred. The accident allowed for her to attempt suicide I think because of her inability to feel attached to anything including her son. And that is how it is, so alone and strange.

This is a movie about a woman who wanders around in a state of angst. Her anxiety seems to feed on itself, and others seem to play on it. There is a scene with the young son which is quite remarkable. This is not a movie with a plot. There is some motion, some action, as it were, but mostly there is a vision of what a person is feeling. This is overlaid against a background of industrial menace, actually, clouds of smoke or pools of waste, all rather artfully done.

I believe this was the first color movie made my Antonioni, and it seems to have been carefully thought out. Later movies, like Zabriskie Point or Blow Up, don't seem at all self-conscious about the colored frame. Color really seems to matter in this movie. He wants it to convey something, although it is essentially something negative. What, after all, is a red desert?

I think Antonioni was a genius, but the movies are not stories and plots in the normal sense. You have to be willing to focus on characters in a different way. The contemporary model for a lot of television drama is not unlike what Antonioni was doing, since there are many plots overlaid, and nothing is ever entirely resolved. Mad Men will not end the way The Fugitive ended, with Dr. K going free. I guess most of modern drama is a little short on redemption, and Antonioni was someone who laid the foundations.

The presence of Richard Harris is a little surprising, given the rather soft and nuanced nature of the role. Monica Vitti is perfect for the title role, the picture of alienation. Many scenes are simply of an over-wrought woman in places that seem somewhere between unpleasant and downright dangerous.

So, it's a film from early 60's, some fifty years old, and yet a film that points clearly enough to the future to be compelling. The Blu-Ray is clear and crisp. I would pick L'avventura as a best of director film. It has a lot of humor, mostly in how the characters are drawn. This film is a little bit of an ordeal.

Breathtaking images, for the first time Antonioni's career in color. I'd be happy to have still frames from this framed on my wall. But the acting and writing didn't match the power of the images for me, at least on first viewing.

Monica Vitti is a housewife losing her mind, who quickly (and without clear reason) obsesses a badly dubbed Richard Harris, who is visiting Vitti's husband on business. What makes this less powerful for me than L'Venturra and L'Ecisse is here the characters talk a lot more, and a lot of the dialogue is stilted and false sounding; way too full of `meaning' when the images are already so symbolic. And while Vitti is a good actress, she's not Liv Ulmann or Meryl Streep. But where it fails as drama, it's amazing as storytelling through images. Every time everyone shut up, I was immediately drawn back in.

Considering the simple, largely absent storyline and plot, the fact that I'm still thinking about this 3 months later shows the power of the visual and colorful scenery and camerawork. I think the straightforward story actually makes it easier to enjoy the imagery and the Italian soundtrack with subtitling doesn't get in the way at all.

I also enjoyed the extras. It's nice to get a view into this period in Italy, with the encroachment of the industrial world, "modern" shipping and manufacturing, and the push-pull of these rapid changes going on in the old country. It is not surprising Antonioni was able to snag Richard Harris and the rest of the well-cast picture.

This movie definitely isn't for everyone. If you don't enjoy the visuals for their own sake then you might not be aware that a movie is even taking place. A lot of people would find the entire thing to be background noise, I think.

Absolutely stunning! Environmental composition, landscape, and color have never been used so effectively to convey state of mind. The industrial climate is an apt counterpoint to Vitti's neuroticism and lack of adaptibility. A daring and innovative cinematic achievement!!