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The Red Desert (1964)

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni

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From Time Out Film Guide

Perhaps the most extraordinary and riveting film of Antonioni's entire career; and correspondingly impossible to synopsise. Monica Vitti is an electronics engineer's neurotic wife, wandering in bewilderment through a modern industrial landscape (the film is set in Ravenna) which Antonioni has coloured in the most startling and original way imaginable. The film is an aesthetic feast, but don't let that distract you from the haunting intricacy of the plot and the performances. Only Richard Harris, as Corrado, the mining engineer who becomes her refuge but who is just passing through, seems uneasy; despite what so many critics said at the time, Vitti's portrayal of the confused girl, alienated from the stark technological landscape around her, is among her very best.

Author: DP

Time Out Film Guide


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