Red Desert

Giuliana cannot pull herself together after a car accident. She moves around the industrial zone of Ravenna, near the plant where her husband works: chimneys, pipes, ships disappearing into fog. Something begins between her and Corrado, her husband's colleague, and it does not save her either. The film does not try to diagnose her; it chooses to show the surroundings as she sees them. Michelangelo Antonioni directed and wrote it with Tonino Guerra. Monica Vitti plays Giuliana and Richard Harris plays Corrado. Carlo Di Palma photographed it. It is Antonioni's first colour film and he used colour like paint. In his own words he wanted to paint the film as one paints a canvas and to invent the colour relationships. To do it he had the vegetation on location painted grey or white. It was shot in Ravenna, in Sardinia and at studios in Rome. It won the Golden Lion at Venice in 1964. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 94 percent with an 8.7 average. Akira Kurosawa listed it among his favourite films, while Andrei Tarkovsky was more critical of Antonioni's use of colour. Who it is for: viewers who like cinema where the image runs ahead of the story, and Antonioni's theme of estrangement. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for events. The film tells almost nothing and puts all its weight on colour and sound.