Red Desert

NEW 35mm PRINT! ► “A milestone in the history of cinema” (Ned Rifkin), Antonioni’s masterpiece of expressionistic colour is a work of glorious and troubling splendour — and a must on the big screen, particularly in the gorgeous new 35mm print we’re pleased to present here! A quintessential Antonioni study of modern-day alienation, the film features Antonioni muse Monica Vitti as a neurotic woman searching for meaning in an industrial wasteland. In the aftermath of a suicide attempt, she begins a brief affair with the factory owner (Richard Harris) who employs her engineer husband (Carlo Chionetti). Red Desert’s symbolic, psychological use of colour was among the first experiments of its kind in the cinema, with colour inextricably linked to character and theme; the director described it as an attempt to “paint a film” rather than write one. Factories belch out huge clouds of poisonous yellow smoke, and sickly chemical tones dominate exteriors. To convey the neurosis of his protagonist, Antonioni had an entire natural landscape spray-painted red, and the fruit of a street vendor painted grey. The film was shot on location amongst the slag heaps and debris of Ravenna in Italy’s industrial north, and is permeated with allusions to Dante. Its ecological concerns seem years ahead of their time, and give the work renewed currency in our environmentally-conscious era. Colour, 35mm, in Italian with English subtitles. 117 mins.