522 Red Desert

[panicprevention]

[]La Notte[/b] has been in Criterion limbo for a while now, but speaking of Antonioni, L'eclisse and L'avventura blu-rays would be nice someday!

[ehimle]

How does this compare (story, cinematography, etc.) to L'eclisse and La'Avventura?

[domino harvey]

Well, it's in color and a better film

[Peacock]

How does this compare (story, cinematography, etc.) to L'eclisse and La'Avventura?

The story is even more internal than the previous three films, and personally I prefer them for this reason. Cinematography wise the polluted colors and fog are wonderful, but i'm not sure I prefer the telephoto look.
Does anyone know what lenses Antonioni used for the previous three films?

[jsteffe]

Well, it's in color and a better film

"Better film" is highly debatable, although I love all four of his great Italian films (L'Avventura, La Notte, L'Eclisse and Il Deserto Rosso) for different reasons.

Agreed, his use of color is often brilliant, but painting all the fruit on a cart gray or making the bedroom all pink is just too obvious and gimmicky, not worthy of Antonioni's subtle mastery. On the other hand, I love his references to abstract painting, such as the Rothko swatches of color in Giuliania's shop.

So while I can't say it's his best film, I still love it and find myself coming back to it repeatedly. For some reason I'm drawn to it more than many films which I'd say are objectively "better," if that makes sense. I'm afraid that once the Criterion Blu-ray comes out, someone is going to find my corpse slumped in a chair, in front of the film playing in an endless loop!

[domino harvey]

"Better" was me being flippant, for sure, as two of the other three Antonioni films you mentioned are also masterpieces (I never could stand La Notte), but I do think this film's take on alienation hits hardest for me. I take issue with the gimmick accusation at the two most striking examples of color manipulation in the film, though. To me those were admittedly knock-out sucker punches during an otherwise fair fight, but they left me dazed, not upset!

[Ovader]

Years ago I remember reading somewhere that the use of color manipulation was to express the POV of Giuliana because of her mental disorder (Schizophrenia?). Meanwhile Murray Pomerance has an article on Technicolor and its use in Antonioni's work plus Pomerance has a book on Antonioni to be published this fall.

[triodelover]

David Forgacs says as much in his essay (presumably in his commentary, too, but I haven't listened to that) in the booklet accompanying BFI's Il Deserto Rosso. Antonioni alludes to it also is an essay on the film that's also in the booklet.

[jsteffe]

"Better" was me being flippant, for sure, as two of the other three Antonioni films you mentioned are also masterpieces (I never could stand La Notte), but I do think this film's take on alienation hits hardest for me. I take issue with the gimmick accusation at the two most striking examples of color manipulation in the film, though. To me those were admittedly knock-out sucker punches during an otherwise fair fight, but they left me dazed, not upset!

We can "agree to disagree" on the gimmick charge I leveled--and still stand by. But yes, otherwise the film does a wonderful job of getting us inside Giuliana's head and understanding her neurosis, psychosis, alienation or whatever. You end up identifying and sympathizing with her in a way that other films about disturbed people sometimes fail to do. I just watched The Story of Adele H. and while the (true) story was intriguing, the way the film is made it's impossible to get inside her head. You're just watching a crazy person act out. This made me want to stop watching the film after about 20 minutes or so. I think part of its failure is due to the fact that Truffaut ends up falling back on his same old stylistic tropes without really stretching himself to meet the challenge of his subject. No one can accuse Antonioni of failing to stretch himself in Red Desert.

And I really hated Cronenberg's Spider for that same reason - I knew the character was crazy & guilty from the get-go, and I had to sit in the theater and watch a stupid puzzle and very obvious metaphor play itself out after I had figured it out within minutes. I really hated that film and its amateurish script, which completely fails to get you inside his head. It just represents the inside of his head onscreen, which is a big difference.

At least with Giuliana in Red Desert, there's some ambiguity and mystery to her character, and there may be some very good reasons for her alienation/mental illness. I think it's true, as has been said here, that the use of color draws the viewer in (most of the time), as does Vitti's performance, and the script and camerawork as a whole. It's a seductive film in the best sense.

[lubitsch]

Indeed, he stretches himself into a caricature of his previous three films which are already dangerously close to being about ALIENATION (whatever this facile word is supposed to mean exactly).
I had here on the forum some bloody fights about revered masterpieces which aren't necessary fruitful discussions, but your attack on the Truffaut prompts my vengeful rection. I think you're totally wrong in assuming that you can make it comprehensible to a sane person how a demented one acts and sees the world and you can even less photograph it with color tricks. The German word for craziness is Verrücktheit which literally taken means that something is shifted into another place. And this is a place or a perspective that is out of reach for our imagination. It may be a popular subject for actors who hope to collect awards, but I think Truffaut handled this matter brillantly because he shows the eerie determination and looks almost clinically precise at the condition of this woman. You don't get into her head despite some letters and her statements, she's an alien and remains so.
Antonioni on the other hand botches up everything that could be botched up. First this is a parody of his former style which one of the commentators on one of the Criterions already noticed. How many people can stand around looking in different directions, bored and without any communication before it looks forced? The whole alienation business is already an extremely unsubtle affair, but some staging here really hits the bottom. Then Antonioni mixes up this profile of a neurosis with a vaguely futuristic society and somehow connects both in a very uncertain way culminating in the completely nutty finish where the film essentially declares that humans have to adapt to pollution and modern society instead of asking himself what errors modern society has made in the 50 and 60s. Especially considering the awareness of the pollution and destruction of nature, but also e.g. the functional ugliness of the architecture of these times, Antonioni is simply a complete idiot here, there's no way to say it nicer. It's worth again to check out a TV interview with him on the Criterions where he talks himself into a confused abyss until even the patient TV reporter tells him that he doesn't understand what he wants to say.
I always found it rather strange that Antonioni is labeled as the prophet of modern cinema and alienation in modern societies (there are many earlier examples). In his mature films I find a vague and not very precise estrangement, but whenever he is supposed to become more concrete, he fails miserably. He somehow sketches society but doesn't manage to say more that the men are shallow and the women more sensible and therefore desperate. Whenever it gets even more detailed like in Zabriskie Point or China he shows an amazing lack of any insight into political realities.

To answer the question of the user above those who love Antonioni blindly and uncritically are likely to love this film here even more. Those who think of him in a more critical way (not necessarily to the degree I feel) have a good chance of disliking the film. I think it's rubbish.

[jsteffe]

The German word for craziness is Verrücktheit which literally taken means that something is shifted into another place. And this is a place or a perspective that is out of reach for our imagination. It may be a popular subject for actors who hope to collect awards, but I think Truffaut handled this matter brillantly because he shows the eerie determination and looks almost clinically precise at the condition of this woman. You don't get into her head despite some letters and her statements, she's an alien and remains so.

No, I don't think it's always necessary or even possible to try to get into a disturbed person's head, but artistic attempts to do so can certainly be legitimate. Ultimately it's about stretching our imaginative capacities to empathize with people who are very different from us. It's what makes us human, and it's one of the things that makes art vital.

You're not the only person who thinks that Red Desert is a failure. I actually agree with you that Antonioni was confused about what he wanted to express in the film, but for me (and others) the sum total still haunting. Artists aren't always fully conscious of what they're doing, and people can respond to works of art in ways the creator may not have attended.

I think you're right up to a point about Truffaut attempting to present The Story of Adele H. in a clinical and precise manner. You can see that in the way he handles the responses of the townspeople and her love object. For instance, I liked the character of the bookseller, a nice element in the script. But Truffaut was not as good at directing actors speaking English as he was at those speaking French, which is understandable. There's something a little off about the English-language conversations in the film. Also, Truffaut doesn't just stop at representing Adele Hugo objectively -- he shows us her recurring nightmare, among other things. And he inserts deliberately lyrical touches such as showing her face superimposed over waves as she reads aloud a letter to her parents. I felt that the latter device was very tired by that point in Truffaut's career. If he had been truly clinical and hadn't resorted to overused stylistic tropes like this, the film probably would have worked better for me. Maybe it would have worked better if she had been less of a protagonist and more of a springboard for other people's reactions. In the way that the doctor and his perspective is the true center of The Wild Child, not the feral boy. All the same, Isabelle Adjani was remarkable. But I don't want to take the thread too far off topic from Red Desert.

[panicprevention]

If you think this film is a failure, then you obviously don't get what Antonioni was trying to say Vitti's performance was better than anyone Truffaut ever directed.

[jsteffe]

I personally don't think the film was a failure, although it has some minor flaws. Other people have considered it a failure, though.

For me, Monica Vitti's performance definitely anchors this film emotionally. She's one of the reasons why I keep coming back to it in addition to its ravishing visual style. But I'd hate to declare categorically that Antonioni is a better director of actors than Truffaut. They work with actors in different ways, and at their best they both cultivate some great performances within their respective artistic visions. Surely, for instance, Jean-Pierre Leaud gives one of THE greatest child performances ever in The 400 Blows, and he's just about as good in the short Antoine et Colette.

[Sloper]

I think you're totally wrong in assuming that you can make it comprehensible to a sane person how a demented one acts and sees the world and you can even less photograph it with color tricks. The German word for craziness is Verrücktheit which literally taken means that something is shifted into another place. And this is a place or a perspective that is out of reach for our imagination. It may be a popular subject for actors who hope to collect awards, but I think Truffaut handled this matter brillantly because he shows the eerie determination and looks almost clinically precise at the condition of this woman. You don't get into her head despite some letters and her statements, she's an alien and remains so.

Giuliana is not insane or demented - she's far and away the sanest person in the film, perhaps the only one with any sanity left. And 'neurosis' is the label her husband would stick on her, but I don't think we're supposed to write her off as neurotic either. The German word you cite is interesting, and that definition is actually quite pertinent to the film, but it's the rest of the world that has shifted, not Giuliana. Notice the blurred images in the title sequence: this is how Giuliana sees her surroundings, as if they're far away from her, or as if they can't fully be perceived by her eyes. Hence she always walks hesitatingly, or dashes about in a panic, as if she can't see clearly where she's going or where she needs to go (compare the way everyone else in the film walks and interacts with their environment). She's certainly having some kind of breakdown, but if you think she's insane, you've missed the point. I know that sounds dogmatic, but I really feel you've massively oversimplified the 'meaning' of the whole thing in order to belittle it. For instance:

Antonioni mixes up this profile of a neurosis with a vaguely futuristic society and somehow connects both in a very uncertain way culminating in the completely nutty finish where the film essentially declares that humans have to adapt to pollution and modern society instead of asking himself what errors modern society has made in the 50 and 60s. Especially considering the awareness of the pollution and destruction of nature, but also e.g. the functional ugliness of the architecture of these times, Antonioni is simply a complete idiot here, there's no way to say it nicer.

SpoilerShow

You seem to be assuming that the director has an obligation to provide a coherent 'moralisation' of his story, and in this case you apparently think Red Desert should have ended with Giuliana pulling her finger out and battling the forces of modernity and industrialisation - you see Antonioni as condoning apathy with the film's conclusion. But we have no reason to think that the heroine has adapted, or will adapt, to her surroundings. All we see at the end is a picture of an ordinary person doing what ordinary people do: coping, getting by. The alternative would be to have her committing suicide, and Antonioni has already been there; or I suppose she could have just disappeared, as in L'eclisse and Blowup.

I agree that Antonioni's statements in interviews tend to be rather unedifying, but this is true of a lot of great artists. He said what he had to say through films, and primarily through images rather than words, and the point is never as straightforward as you're implying. Of his films that I've seen so far, only The Passenger and Beyond the Clouds seem to fall into the trap of 'spelling things out', and in both cases I think the cause of the lapse is pretty obvious.

One important statement he made in interviews about Red Desert was that the film was born out of his simultaneous horror and admiration of industrial landscapes. The great thing about this film is that it conveys Giuliana's predicament and makes us feel her anguish and solitude, while at the same time glorifying the landscape that entraps her. The film itself is the epitome of cold, robotic modernity, with its almost psychotically perfect compositions, deliberately wooden performances from the other actors, and the creepy electronic soundtrack (I always think it sounds like a choir of slightly evil robots) interrupted only by that eerie, hysterical song you hear over the credits, and later in Giuliana's bedtime story. As viewers, we find ourselves possessed and entranced by the modernity Giuliana can't handle, and although on a first viewing this makes the whole thing seem much more remote than, say, L'Avventura, I actually find that Red Desert is a more rewarding film to revisit - it packs a greater emotional punch every time I see it. Just don't approach it as if it were, or should be, a 'strong statement' about modernity or industrialisation. It's so much more than that.

In his mature films I find a vague and not very precise estrangement, but whenever he is supposed to become more concrete, he fails miserably. He somehow sketches society but doesn't manage to say more that the men are shallow and the women more sensible and therefore desperate. Whenever it gets even more detailed like in Zabriskie Point or China he shows an amazing lack of any insight into political realities.

I haven't seen China but I really don't think he's saying anything specific or concrete in Zabriskie Point, any more than in Red Desert. These films - especially the latter - evoke something very profound about the human condition, and not just in relation to the modern world. It is hard to talk about Antonioni's films without over-using the term 'alienation', but this is one of the defining features of human existence. Maybe the defining feature. Of all Antonioni's films, Red Desert is the purest, and most beautiful, attempt to encapsulate what that worn-out term (and that other worn-out term I just used, 'the human condition') means - or rather, what it looks, sounds and feels like.

As for 'men are shallow and women more sensible and therefore desperate'; well I see what you're getting at, but again these words 'shallow', 'sensible' and 'desperate' are just facile labels. Antonioni's characters are so much more layered than this, and the relations between men and women in his films are played far more sensitively than your dismissive formulation would suggest. For one thing, I would suggesst that the shallowness is inherent to life itself, and not just a characteristic of masculinity - but that's a big subject.

To answer the question of the user above those who love Antonioni blindly and uncritically are likely to love this film here even more. Those who think of him in a more critical way (not necessarily to the degree I feel) have a good chance of disliking the film. I think it's rubbish.

Ouch! I don't love Antonioni blindly or uncritically (just to prove it I'll say that The Passenger is an outright bad film) and I adore every frame.

[jsteffe]

Slope puts it much better than I did regarding Antonioni's ambivalence about what he was trying to express through the film, both in terms of Giuliana's character and his conflicted attitudes toward industrialization. I think he really nails what's so fascinating about Red Desert.

I think this comment by Sloper is also worth emphasizing:

I agree that Antonioni's statements in interviews tend to be rather unedifying, but this is true of a lot of great artists.

Some great artists can give very lucid interviews (Sirk comes to mind), but there isn't necessarily a correlation between an artist's statements about a work and its meaning or its merits as we perceive them. What the artist has to say is (and should be) in the work itself, ultimately. Maybe there's some wisdom in Malick and Pynchon not granting interviews.

[panicprevention]

Another person that comes to mind is John Ford. He always seemed to have very poor communication skills in interviews, almost Aspergers' esque. People with it commonly avoid eye contact, so the fact he frequently had on sunglasses, even inside, has always made sense to me.

[bigP]

Another person that comes to mind is John Ford. He always seemed to have very poor communication skills in interviews, almost Aspergers' esque. People with it commonly avoid eye contact, so the fact he frequently had on sunglasses, even inside, has always made sense to me.

That's certainly possible, though I'd imagine the dark glasses were worn, as was common at the time among directors and actors, due to the damage their eyes had suffered from the intense lighting required to illuminate the sets in the first two thirds of the 20th century. Film speeds improved and the eyes became less damaged during productions, but many still retained the need for the dark glasses due to damage already done, and perhaps sheer habit.

[Sloper]

Some great artists can give very lucid interviews (Sirk comes to mind), but there isn't necessarily a correlation between an artist's statements about a work and its meaning or its merits as we perceive them. What the artist has to say is (and should be) in the work itself, ultimately. Maybe there's some wisdom in Malick and Pynchon not granting interviews.

Yes, it's frustrating when they refuse to talk, and I always seek out interviews with film-makers/writers I like, but I must admit I sort of have more respect for people who let the work speak for itself. Another of my heroes, Richard Thompson, says that he often wishes he had just avoided interviews from the start and kept up the 'tortured poet' mystique. Part of the trouble is that when you hear someone explain what they were 'trying to say' with a particular artwork, you sort of feel you have to incorporate that statement into your own interpretation - disputes about these things often grind to a halt when someone points out that 'So-and-so himself said that it was an allegory of whatever...'. It just ends up being very limiting, and making the film, book or whatever seem less rich as a result. All that stuff Antonioni said about how 'Eros is sick' helps to understand what's going on in his films, but it also makes them seem more facile. Luckily the films are absorbing enough to make all that talk seem insignificant (though not, obviously, for lubitsch!).

John Ford sprung to my mind too; I'm sure everyone's seen that interview (is it with Bogdanovich?) where Ford responds to each question with a curt 'nope' until, having had his fill of pretentious queries, he just looks over at the camerman and says 'cut!'.

Interesting trivia about the glasses, bigP.

[ellipsis7]

Actually the irony is that Antonioni is the filmmaker of whose writings and sayings you can read the most of in print... His statements become much clearer if you are aware of his work and works back to the beginning... For instance he wrote extensively about colour in his criticism of the 1940s, which has relevance for RED DESERT.... A small sample from Corriere Padiano in June 1940...

Colour is the most urgent problem we have to deal with, for it is destined to restore the artistic dignity of this blessed medium we call cinema.... Despite the high costs and technical difficulties, colour cinema advances gradually but firmly. It imposes, convinces; in a few years will be impossible to sustain films in black and white. The eye of the viewer is accustomed to the colours, and caressed by the sweetness of certain combinations, feels more truth in them, inner truth, and draws a new enjoyment.

Also worth looking at it are his paintings, and his relationship to favourite artists such as Rothko and Kandinsky...

[bigP]

Interesting trivia about the glasses, bigP.

I'd love to give a definate source as to where I found this information, but it's totally slipped my memory. I'll say with uncertainty that I think it was stated in Arnold Glassman's excellent Visions of Light in relation to, again uncertainly, Sunset Boulevard, and that as the actors came off set, on would go the dark glasses to protect their eyes from the scalding power of the lights. I've been meaning to watch Visions of Light again, so I'll try and pinpoint the source.

[Sloper]

Actually the irony is that Antonioni is the filmmaker of whose writings and sayings you can read the most of in print... His statements become much clearer if you are aware of his work and works back to the beginning... ...

I should say that what little I have read of his writings and statements in interviews are very lucid and intelligent, and perhaps you're right that his remarks about his own films would be more thought-provoking if I knew his earlier writings. And I do mean to read these (and his short stories, which I hope render Beyond the Clouds more comprehensible) - but I suppose I hesitate to because part of me suspects his films are his only major achievement as an artist, and I'd rather leave them to speak for themselves. But I realise I may be wrong about this; perhaps I'll change my mind when I've read more!

[jsteffe]

I read Antonioni's prose sketches in That Bowling Alley on the Tiber about 15-20 years ago and remember liking them. They're mostly fragmentary ideas for films, but they also work as literary sketches in their own right.

[ellipsis7]

Bowling Alley assumed greater importance in his oeuvre in that he had his stroke soon after, and could not speak or create new outlines, so they provided a remarkable template for future work, and two of the stories, 'The Crew' & 'Two Telegrams' were worked up to full feature scripts, as well as those four used to great effect in 'Beyond the Clouds', and one (less succesfully) in the 'Eros' episode... To give an idea how MA's writing presaged his filmmaking, and thereafter was a major creative medium in the progression to film, and the progression of films (I have multiple versions of most scripts, 6 for L'Avventura, copies of scripts to all his work) I offer this... I'm actually writing a book about this presently, but will let you see a glimpse of a couple of paras of a fictional piece of MA's from 1940 again...

It was dusk when started on The Gardesana, the panoramic road that wraps round Lake Garda, it was night when we hit the fog. Suddenly it was upon us: we saw progress from a distance, at the bottom of a boulevard, like a huge mass of cotton wool saturated with light, as if it is not our headlights donated to it but already it withdrew intensely in its volume and evanescent white. I thought, upon entering, we would have received a sense of warmth, but we had to shiver and snuggle under the blanket. Could not see beyond the bonnet on whose tip a tiny woman's body move was our figurehead who first dived into the unknown, boldly ... But we felt lost, oddly lost in darkness and fog, of things without the comfort and consolation of lights. There was no protection from the world, and it was as if our intimacy, impoverished suddenly, no longer was enough to prevent that, so isolated, we felt a little lost...

...Dipped the headlights, firstly not to create for ourselves the flare of reflections made by violent light on the fog, the eye gradually become familiar with the darkness, gets used to the mist, we found the edge of the ditch, a tree, a roadside post, and finally, with great relief, a shadow; dark shadow of a man who advanced spectrally along the side of the road. In short there was another one, he was revealed so stout and rough, that I was amazed, as if this were an unforgiveably jarring shadow. However he would soon be forgotten if another and another and another, a short distance, had not followed. Then came a group of four or five, were close together, because of the cold, detached and yet, each intensely absorbed in his own secret. They filed in slowly swaying procession, all cloaked, and it was sad to see those capes fluttering in a row in the dark, sad funeral of a deep sadness that inspired in me great pain. Poor people being forced to wander at this late hour, long roads, driven by who knows what duties or need, without relief, without any respite; certainly they had houses and they had women and children who were waiting terrified, listening to the steps In the silence; their eyes fixed in the darkness, some dark drama clutched their hearts, the hours weighed on their distressed souls, and they were slipping silently into the night, the silence was almost an entreaty, walking a penance. So dark, so sad, so equal, they passed along the ditch and not even turning to look.

'Uomini di Notte'/'Men of the Night'... Ethereal ephemeral imagery... This is an Antonioni movie!...

[spr]

May be of interest to the discussions here (from the Godard/Antonioni interview published in Cahiers Jan 1966):

Godard: But isn't this beauty of the modern world also the resolution of the characters' psychological difficulties, doesn't it show vanity?

Antonioni: One must not underestimate the drama of man thus conditioned. Without drama, there are perhaps no longer men. Furthermore, I do not believe that the beauty of the modern world in itself can resolve our dramas. I believe, on the contrary, that once adapted to new life-techniques we will perhaps find new solutions to our problems.

But why have me speak of these things? I am not a philosopher and all these observations have nothing to do with the 'invention' of the film.

[Matt]

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 Blu-ray and DVD release of Red Desert. The films, both of which focus on the daily lives of working people, were made in the forties and are rarely shown. In Gente del Po, Antonioni takes a barge trip down the river Po; N.U. documents the lives of street cleaners in Rome. Look for Red Desert this June.