Red Desert: In This World
By June 21, 2010
A new man is being born, fraught with all the fears and terrors and stammerings that are associated with a period of gestation. —Michelangelo Antonioni Red Desert came out in 1964, almost twenty Read more »
- Italy, France
- 1964
- 117 minutes
- Color
- 1.85:1
- Italian
- Spine #522
SYNOPSIS: Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1960s panoramas of contemporary alienation were decade-defining artistic events, and Red Desert, his first color film, is perhaps his most epochal. This provocative look at the spiritual desolation of the technological age—about a disaffected woman, brilliantly portrayed by Antonioni muse Monica Vitti, wandering through a bleak industrial landscape beset by power plants and environmental toxins, and tentatively flirting with her husband’s coworker, played by Richard Harris—continues to keep viewers spellbound. With one startling, painterly composition after another—of abandoned fishing cottages, electrical towers, looming docked ships—Red Desert creates a nearly apocalyptic image of its time, and confirms Antonioni as cinema’s preeminent poet of the modern age.
Cast & CreditsOpen
Cast
| Giuliana | Monica Vitti |
| Corrado Zeller | Richard Harris |
| Ugo | Carlo Chionetti |
| Linda | Xenia Valderi |
| Valerio | Valerio Bartoleschi |
| Emilia | Rita Renoir |
Credits
| Director | Michelangelo Antonioni |
| Screenplay | Michelangelo Antonioni and Tonino Guerra |
| Producer | Antonio Cervi |
| Cinematography | Carlo Di Palma |
| Music | Giovanni Fusco |
| Camera operator | Dario Di Palma |
| Editing | Eraldo Da Roma |
| Art director | Piero Poletto |
| Set decorator | Sergio Donà |
Disc Features
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
- Audio commentary by Italian film scholar David Forgacs
- Archival interviews with director Michelangelo Antonioni and actress Monica Vitti
- Two short documentaries by Antonioni: Gente del Po, about a barge trip down the Po River, and N.U. about urban street cleaners
- Dailies from the original production
- Theatrical trailer
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A 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.
From the CurrentView the Current »
Film Essays
Photo Galleries
Videos
On Five
Coming Soon: Two Rare Antonioni Shorts
April 02, 2010
We’re excited to tell you that we’ve officially added two early Michelangelo Antonioni documentary shorts, Gente del Po and N.U., to our upcoming release of Red Desert in Blu-ray and Read more »
Clippings
After Antonioni
March 18, 2011
British author and film critic Chris Darke has written an engaging and insightful piece for Sight & Sound in which he assesses the critical and artistic landscape surrounding Michelangelo Antonioni Read more »
Profondo Rosso
April 06, 2010
Many things set Red Desert apart from Michelangelo Antonioni’s other early sixties portraits of spiritual and social alienation (its focus on industry and environmental toxicity, for one), but none do so Read more »
Press Notes
Press Notes: Red Desert
July 15, 2010
In his five-star review of Criterion’s new DVD and Blu-ray special editions of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert, Time Out New York’s Joshua Rothkopf muses about the unmistakable impact Antonioni’s Read more »
