The Red Desert | | Cast : | Monica Vitti, Richard Harris | | Director : | Michelangelo Antonioni | | Studio : | Image Entertainment | | Format : | Color, Widescreen | | Released Date : | February 08, 1965 | | DVD Released Date : | September 21, 1999 | | Language : | English (Subtitled), English (Dubbed), Italian (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | NR (Not Rated) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 19, 2005 | | Summary | Cinematography brilliant; sadly the film isn't. | Content
 | Antonioni is probably the best visual director of all time, and it certainly shows in this film, with stunning imagery throughout. However, the film content drags and never really keeps you focused, like his best film in my opinion, La Notte.
Vitti gives an excellent performance, however she just never seems to find that niche in the film where audiences can grab a hold of her, and actually care for her character. Richard Harris is wasted in this film, and the dubbing of his voice is terrible. The visual quality of the DVD is only passable, and there are no extras.
There were many moments in the film I was impressed by, however as a whole, it just isn't one to keep my attention or in my collection. One to definitely watch, but only once. |
| Rating | | | Date | December 11, 2004 | | Summary | Long Desert, Almost Empty | Content
| This film, although gorgeous to watch, is not something easy to behold. Most of the dialogue is mundane and tedious and the protagonists are annoying, spoiled and confounded bourgeoisie. Antonni drags us through their life and its like being dragged along some empty desert by a blind horse. What does he expect from us? Does he want us to side with the ill-fated Monnica Viti who eventually commits suicide in the end? Or does he want us to show that the desert is something very temporary? Either way, the film is a perfect blend of abstract philosophy devoted to these issues, its not entertaining, but neither is reading Hegel.
|
| Rating | | | Date | October 04, 2003 | | Summary | you should own this beautiful film | Content
| (rev. 10/4/03)
I don't care if its the orange-tinted DVD copy, or whatever, you have to own at least one copy of this film. It is so very beautiful, and bears repeated viewings. I've seen it forty times, and this is a conservative estimate.
(While you're at it, be sure to see - and own, if your prehensile to the direction in which I hint - Antonioni/Wenders effort, BEYOND THE CLOUDS, a film I saw in a battered print in an art house, after it had made the rounds for a couple of years - and was still able to conclude to an interested friend, that CLOUDS was also one of the most beautiful, intelligent films I had ever seen.)
It doesn't even matter that you can't "understand" it (watch anything enough times, and you'll start to "understand" it.)
Many people who can't fully "understand" (whatever that word really means) this film, like myself, watch it repeatedly.
Which, by the way, is one of the keys to understanding Antonioni: view his films at least a half-dozen times a piece, before rushing to any mad, espresso-inspired conclusions. Let them wash over you in various states and shades of receptivity. They are long meditations as much as they are films. Examine them for their dimensions of art, entertainment, depths of all sorts, and for the relationships of these dimensions to each other. Quite the mind-training, profitable exercise, I can assure. No extra charge for the amount of sensibility deepening they can cause in you, nor the firmness of mind they can challenge and foster in you, if you watch them right.
I don't understand the complaints of 'washout' colors in this film. Viewed on decent equipment, it should look great. To me, watching this film just for its sheer aesthetics, can be like dying and going to heaven. However, to each his own. . .
Perhaps the beauty of 'Il Desserto Rosso' IS of the stark, minimalist 60s variety. No matter. With the way the director has framed -- and paced -- the shots in RED DESERT, even if the film wasn't in color, it would still be very beautiful.
Which doesnt mean this film isnt overwhelming and disturbing, as much of Antonioni's work is. Don't come to Antonioni to use him as a tool to entertain and distract(though he can do that also.)
If it helps, Antonioni may mean different things to each viewer. This is perhaps for the best. As some say of certain aspects of poetry, they cannot be taught: they are best discovered on one's own.
For better understanding of this film, see Cassavete's WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE, and compare.
I cannot say enough about the inherent intelligence of this film. Every scene, the nature of Antonioni's pacing, the length with which he lingers on a shot, the sort of script he uses, and the way he has his actors speak their lines -- bespeaks a kind of maturity and intelligence that is a credit to the director, and a flattery to the viewer.
RED DESERT is, in its own way, a rivetting breath of fresh air. It is a distinct clearing of the senses, to experience a beautiful, mature, intelligent film that treats viewers as though they were grown-ups complete with fully-functioning brains.
One way to appreciate/perspect the value of this film, is to consider that it was made just two years after Antonioni's better-known black and white film L'AVVENTURA was declared one of the 'Top Ten Films of All Time' in the famous 'Sight and Sound' film magazines' critics poll.
I have already implied how privileged and gratified one ought to feel at being presented the gift of Antonioni's world of color (he uses Goethe's theory of color, by the way.)
Go ahead. Rent this film. You'll then know what I mean. And you will want to OWN a copy. You'll see it's worth the price for the chance to always have this film around just to relish its sheer beauty and color at intervals. I wish everyone the rare cinematic pleasure this film has afforded me.
It is sad to reflect that many otherwise intelligent people, only know Antonioni (when they know him at all) through his BLOW-UP (1966.) Failure to familiarize oneself with his early 60s work ( aka the Antonioni tetralogy, if you include RED DESERT)leaves one not only shortchanged in one's capacity to appreciate BLOW-UP. It robs one also of one of the most significant, mind-and capacity-improving cultural experiences one could have, at this stage of the game.
(HINT: I own two different VHS prints of this beautiful masterpiece. Sense the dedication: its called, Practice What You Preach.) |
| Rating | | | Date | January 16, 2003 | | Summary | Spiritual Desert of the Modern | Content
| This film is as stark as they come. It begins with lingering shots of an industrial waste land and a confused Monica Vitti wandering aimless within it. Vitti we slowly find out has had some sort of break down and each sequence of the film serves to elaborate the distance she has fallen away from reality. She attempts to find relief from her mental anguish by having an affair with a man who seems to intuitively understand her but the affair does not bring peace to her troubled state of mind. Though Antonioni's first color film this is not what I would call a "beautiful" film. What is striking about Antonionis use of color is how he uses it like a painter uses color and thats to express emotions. For instance Richard Harris' apartment has grey walls but the morning after when Vitti wakes up the walls are a soft pink. It is a striking effect to use colors to describe emotional states. Perhaps this is the scene the other reviewer found to be "beautiful". Most of the film is striking only because it is so stark. Never before or since has any film maker lingered on such ugly things like smoke stacks and industrial waste and the rusting hulls of ships as Antonioni does here. Antonioni purposely makes the world ugly in order to stress that for Vitti at least the world feels uninhabitable. I can think of three great films in the 1960's that dealt with a womans breakdown: Bergman's Persona, Polanski's Repulsion, and this one. Polanski no doubt admired Antonionis color palette and in Rosemary's Baby applies some of the same techniques. I think perhaps the people who will most enjoy this film will be lovers of modern painting, especially European painters of the post war period like Tapies--a painter whose work is often evoked in this film as well as other Antonioni films. Antonioni composes his shots like a painter and is ever sensitive to the way his figures are defined by what he surrounds them with as much as what they do or say. Always an interesting experience to watch an Antonioni but his films do take patience and are definitely for people who already have a taste for existential meditation whether it be in the novel, the museum or in the cinema. I would not suggest starting with this film if you are new to this director. L'Avventura and La Notte are the two I would begin with. |
| Rating | | | Date | December 19, 2002 | | Summary | The Last of Antonioni's Italy | Content
| When Red Desert was released, even the most ardent Antonioni fans expressed grave concern. Then Michelangelo abandoned Italy. In hindsight (always a precarious vantage point), this film is in many ways far superior to his subsequent work (the once popular 'Blow-Up' has dated terribly). The problem with the film is Monica Vitti's character. Is she psychotic? If so, it makes everything she experiences suspect. Richard Harris is suitably stolid as her befuddled husband. In later years, Harris confessed that he found Antonioni to be a "pseudo-intellectual." This, from the Man Called Horse! But what does the film try to say about our industrialized world? Antonioni was obviously fascinated by it and by its implications, as contemporary interviews suggest. But his film seems to present it as a nightmare - through which poor Monica Vitti stumbles, bewildered. |
|
