Blu-Ray Review: Visionary ‘Red Desert’ Joins Criterion Collection

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CHICAGO – The Criterion Collection recently inducted the great Michelangelo Antonioni’s first color film into their esteemed catalog with a Blu-ray transfer that stands next to the best HD pictures of the year to date. This striking visual composition has never looked better and the film remains as mesmerizing as it was almost a half-century ago, arguably more so.

Blu-Ray Rating: 5.0/5.0

Antonioni made several films about the influence of environment and “Red Desert” is easily one of his strongest examinations of the changing world and how we must live within it or suffer. Many have read the film as a condemnation of technology but Antonioni himself argued that the viewer should see beauty in his industrial landscapes and I think it’s easy to see the film as a commentary on the need to adapt in a changing world instead merely fighting it. The world may be more and more poisoned by industry and cultural change but what choice do we have but to keep moving?

“Sometimes I feel like I have no right to be where I am,” says the charismatis Corrado (Richard Harris). “Perhaps that’s why I keep moving.” Corrado Zeller is friends with the industrialist Ugo (Carlo Chionetti), whose wife Giuliana is played by Antonioni muse Monica Vitti, the star of the trilogy that had made the director an internationally renowned auteur — “L’avventura,” “La notte,” and “Eclipse.” Corrado and Giuliana sense a similar world-weary sadness in one another and begin a cautious flirtation set against the backdrop of an increasingly industrial Italy. More atmospheric than plot-driven, “Red Desert” is about a woman increasingly alienated with everything around her, even her own family.

Red Desert was released on Blu-ray and DVD on June 22nd, 2010
Photo credit: Courtesy of the Criterion Collection

Using color for the first time in his career, even though it had been available for some time by 1964, Antonioni made what is not only arguably his best-looking film but one of the most painterly compositions of all time. It’s a perfect for HD and Criterion gets the mastering just right, not over-polishing Antonioni’s gritty film that should be a little dull to the eye at times but also getting all line detail and grain levels exactly right. It’s one of my favorite HD transfers of the year.

Part of the reason for my adoration for the transfer is that “Red Desert” is such a visual experience. Vitti and Harris (dubbed into Italian as was often the case in that era) deliver strong performances and the screenplay is arguably underrated but “Red Desert” is the kind of film that can be largely effective with no dialogue at all. (Although I would never suggest taking out Antonioni’s brilliant use of sound, including the hellish hissing of power plants and the mournful horns of a dying fishing trade.)

Red Desert was released on Blu-ray and DVD on June 22nd, 2010 Photo credit: Courtesy of the Criterion Collection

Films as beautiful as “Red Desert” simply don’t age. I understand that it can be a tough sell to modern audiences to see a largely plot-free Italian film from the mid-’60s, but, to this viewer, the landscapes and compositions in “Red Desert” are as jaw-dropping and beautiful as anything James Cameron devised for Pandora in “Avatar.” The films couldn’t have any less in common structurally but the point is that anyone who has ever been awed by the way a talented director brings his vision to life should take a trip to the “Red Desert.”

Criterion put together another fantastic collection of special features that enhance the experience instead of merely serving as filler. Even the booklet included in the case is more notable than most major Blu-ray bonuses of the last few months in that it includes a great interview conducted in 1964 between Jean-Luc Godard and Michelangelo Antonioni, two spectacular filmmakers arguably in their artistic primes. The booklet also includes an essay by film writer Mark Le Fanu and writings by Antonioni on “Gente del Po” and “N.U.”

Those last two are short documentary films that Antonioni made in the ’40s on a barge trip down the Po River and about urban street cleaners, respectively. Both are included on the Blu-ray for “Red Desert” not merely as filler but because they thematically tie in to the themes that the director would continue to explore in his first color feature two decades later.

Other notable special features include an audio commentary by Italian film scholar David Forgacs, archival interviews with Antonioni and Vitti, dailies from the original production, the theatrical trailer, and a new and improved subtitle translation.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com