Il Deserto Rosso (1964) - English subtitled
Michelangelo Antonioni's Golden Lion-winning drama about the neuroses of a woman who wanders aimlessly through a desolate industrial landscape.
Michelangelo Antonioni’s stunning mid-career masterpiece, and his first film in colour, gives another provocative look at the spiritual desolation of the technological age and is therefore regarded as a companion piece to his trilogy (L’AVVENTURE, LA NOTTE, L’ECLISSE) of 1960s classics on contemporary alienation. IL DESERTO ROSSO tells the story of a disaffected woman – startlingly portrayed by Monica Vitti – wandering through a bleak industrial landscape beset by power plants and environmental toxins, and tentatively flirting with her husband’s co-worker. With one startling, painterly composition after another – of abandoned fishing cottages, electrical towers, looming docked ships – IL DESERTO ROSSO creates a nearly apocalyptic image of its time.