RED DESERT is a drama, which brings a magical combination of different colors in a macabre and alienated environment. This is a simple drama about an estranged woman, who is trying to establish a kind of relationship with her environment. A thematic expression of Mr. Antonioni has not undergone significant changes compared to his previous films.Giuliana is walking with her young son around the petrochemical plant managed by her husband. She is very nervous while passing by the workers on strike, and while listening strange sounds from the plant. Her husband talks with his business associate, Corrado, and mentions his wife, who had a car accident, which has brought a certain mental disorders to her. Ugo is unable to understand her impulsive and nervous behavior. Giuliana and Carrado meet each other and she indirectly reveals details about her mental state. A relationship between two alienated people through a laughter, sexual allusions and brutal truth, can begin...Mr. Antonioni has put his focus on the tempo and a relation between action and reaction by his protagonists. He has presented unhappy lives through a sort of contrast between the color and the scenery. The story is enriched with erotic spices, without a sincere love and connections. Sex is a kind of relief in an anxious condition. Well, that makes sense ... to some extent. Mr. Antonioni has probably thought that people, generally, want to watch distraught lives. This is, unfortunately, true, regardless of the knowledge of described problems.Monica Vitti as Giuliana is a distraught woman, who is confined in her own world from which there is no escape. She sees everything as a potential threat, so that, one sexual affair does not bring any relief to her. Ms. Vitti has offered a very good performance. Richard Harris as Corrado is a successful businessman and a man who constantly wander. However, an anxious wife has wandered into his bed.Their relationship is vague, but they may be able to accept themselves after sex. Each goal is futile, if an exit door is locked.

Antonioni's Red Desert asks us to consider the accommodations and adaptations of the newly successful Italian upper middle class to the changing social, economic and environmental conditions of post-World War II industrialization. More particularly, this important film focuses on the insecurities and honest fears of the middle-aged Giuliana, absorbingly portrayed by Monica Vitti, as she struggles with her own imbalances in the face of a rather sterile marital relationship, shifting social mores and a disturbing and perhaps unhealthy industrial landscape. But the emotionally detached and borderline amoral actions of the supporting players, limited in scope by Antonioni's and Tonino Guerra's script, are also significant to the theme. It is a film that asks how we examine, perceive and choose to act in the world around us each and every day as technology and economic "progress" inexorably make life more complex and disruptive, even as the opportunities for material experiences and goods - for good or ill - increase. Giuliana's mental instability predates the start of the film. A car accident of uncertain causation and her recovery - or lack thereof - in the ensuing hospital stay is unveiled early in the film for context. But Giuliana is clearly not well. She is rightly fearful of the daunting (but geometrically interesting and colorful) industrial structures and the horrifying waste contaminants that are despoiling the land, water and air near the home she shares with industrial manager husband Ugo (Carlo Chionetti) and son Valerio. Ugo, while concerned, appears resolved to maintaining a sort of status quo disequilibrium that he thinks may be manageable. Meanwhile, an industrial entrepreneur, Corrado Zeller (a well-dubbed Richard Harris), acquainted with Ugo, enters the scene, wanting to hire labor for a venture in Patagonia that he is pursuing with half- hearted intensity. He soon begins to shadow Giuliana - and she him - in plain sight during Ugo's workday. These scenes tend to drag a bit as Corrado's undisguised but not physically aggressive pursuit of her reveals a man of surprisingly low self-esteem and an admitted lack of understanding of life. Meanwhile, his interest in her does not assuage her desire for more security and self-awareness in a world she cannot seem to grasp. As their attentions to one another increase - but only slightly, through most of the film - Giuliana's emotional comfort does not progress apace. In fact, the scenes become more dominated by fog and the clouded movement of large, nondescript ships as her connection to a coherent universe continues to slip away. Her confusion is only increased by this strangely kind and attractive figure who, while appearing to empathize with some of her fears, ultimately offers no true solution to her discomfort. In fact, we are left believing that Corrado's actions were more facade than truth, and Antonioni subtly suggests that Giuliana's realization of that fact leads her to a more honest and healthy vision of the odd world she inhabits. One might conclude that she has struggled, and come to an adaptation that might work for her. We are left hopeful.The minor characters in the film, and for purposes of this argument I would include Corrado and Ugo, despite moments of seeming sincerity, are depicted as shallow and accommodative. They are not adapting to the contradictions of modernity, but rather letting their moral principles weaken in the face of the acceptability of money as a standard of righteousness. Antonioni illustrates this through a brilliant scene in a waterfront party shack that is owned by one of Ugo's associates. The flimsy walls are painted in bright colors in this tiny hovel, a metaphor for the shallow excitement and weak moral base that substitutes for honest human companionship in what appears to be a tentatively-engaged bourgeois partner share. Giuliana at least realizes that adaptation to this rapidly changing, increasingly complex and difficultly realized world demands soul-searching and discomforting effort. The others have merely acquiesced to a life devoid of meaning.Antonioni is saying that scientific, technological and most significantly material economic progress, while attractive in some ways - and allegorically represented by the cinematography of Carlo Di Palma, which brilliantly pervades this film - will inexorably present challenges to the human desire to find honest and caring companionship when relationships and a sense of place are fluid., It will push us to come to grips with and ameliorate the destructive aspects of that material progress. A rise in mental instability and addictive or morally suspect behavior may well be a nasty companion to these pressures and challenges. This film, made in 1964, presents a view of modern life that still resonates. View it more than once, and gain more appreciation on each occasion for the power of film to inform our lives.

The mental conflicts Giuliana has throughout Red Desert are shown by prominent uses of various colours to represent the notions of human nature. Blue is just one of these prominent colours. After walking up from a bad dream Giuliana begins to walk around her house in a daze shown through her movements and a piece of non – linear editing. The scene largely contains the colour blue on the walls and on the hand rail which Giuliana sits by. Blue is conveying her feelings of depression as she still suffers the effects of her accident. Once Ugo fully questions Giuliana on her reasons for her dazed state he begins to kiss her and act in a sexual manner. Again the colour blue plays a vital part in the scene as it represents the coldness of Ugo. He is only thinking of his sexual desire rather than fully understanding his wife's problems and does not even realise she is not seeking sexual pleasure at this point in time, she is seeking emotional support. It shows how careless Ugo can be with Giuliana, whose negligence is repeated on multiple occasions.Green is another dominant colour which features for different purposes. In Giuliana's introductory scene she wanders around the Industrial factory in a green coat. Though out this scene Giuliana acts bewildered as she looks at the workings of the factory and the smouldering waste it has left behind. Green is a colour associated with the environment which in Red Desert is clearly being polluted by Ugo's factory. Giuliana is the opposite of Ugo when it comes to the environment, she is disgusted by the state of the environment around the factory. This is established through micro techniques. The eerie electronic score building up in intensity and the blurred vision from Giuliana's point of view gives an insight into her feelings of industrialisation destroying nature. There is also the non diegetic sound of a voice in an operatic tone whilst the point of view shot progresses. The true meaning of the operatic voice is not known till much later in the narrative when Giuliana tells her son a story about a young girl who lived on an island where "nature had such beautiful colours and there was no noise". Giuliana concludes the story by stating the young girl began to hear a voice from the caves where the rocks were like flesh. The voice mentioned is the same operatic voice heard in the earlier point of view shot. The story is clearly shown to be an allegory for the destruction of the environment by the carelessness of human nature happening within Giuliana's world, including Ugo's actions in his factory. To a lesser extent, Green is also presented as showing the misfortune of Giuliana. As she draws closer to Corrado, Giuliana discusses the experiences of a girl she meet whilst hospitalised. This 'girl' is actually Giuliana herself but is referring to the experience in such a manner as she is shamed by the experience. She tells Corrado how the 'girl' felt that her identity was lost and felt out of place. This conversation takes place in a room where Green is the prominent colour highlighting Giuliana's misfortune due to her mental trauma.Although the colour Red features less than other colours in Red Desert, it is the dominant colour in one of the film's pivotal moments. Giuliana, Ugo, Corrado and a few acquaintances spend time in a shack. They eventually all relax in a small room with the colour Red on the walls. They discuss how Quail's eggs enhance sexual desire which results in gaining energy for intercourse. This leads to some of the group eating Quail's eggs to gain the mood for sex. This includes Giuliana, who in digesting the Quail's egg spins around in a trance before enthusiastically stating "I want to make love!". Red incorporates itself into two meanings in this scene. Red is commonly associated with love and lust which obviously takes place in this scene through the sexual energy between the characters. Yet it is also known as conveying death and danger which reaffirms the thoughtlessness of human nature shown in Red Desert. The eating of the Quail's eggs for their own desire is an act on the same scale as Ugo's factory polluting the environment as they are killing off further generations of Quails which means destroying another part of nature.Grey is the fourth and final prominent colour to express themes and emotions in Red Desert. In the scene where we are introduced to Ugo and Corrado they were walking around the factory observing activity. Grey surrounds their environment as operations continue. It illustrates the factory as a bleak and dull place which creates a negative atmosphere of the factory relating to the destruction of the environment, adding emphasis to the pro – environmental theme of Red Desert. Later in the narrative Corrado visits Giuliana in her shop. Again outside the dominant colour is Grey as Giuliana has an episode of depression. She sits next to a stall consisting of Grey items and stares at her surroundings which included staring down the empty road, the Greyness showing Giuliana's sadness which she is experiencing both visually and emotionally.All these colours which contain the themes and emotions in Red Desert show the wealth of expressionism that runs through the narrative. They bring to life the emotions of the characters as well as the atmosphere within scenes. Red Desert makes these emotions intensely visual for the audience which only enhanced the drama. Connecting the colours to the characters made for greatly active viewing thanks to the expressionism provided in each scene. Red Desert is a visual appetite for those who appreciate films of the artistic quality.

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.