Red Desert
1964, NR, 118 min.
D: Michelangelo Antonioni; with Monica Vitti, Richard Harris.

Antonioni’s first film in color shows him making full use of this new element. Set in industrial northern Italy, Red Desert stars beautiful Monica Vitti as a dysfunctional woman suffering from anomie. But is it the woman or her environment that’s really out of whack? Some find Antonioni’s study too painterly and tedious; the movie’s plentiful admirers, however, find it a sublime demonstration of the externalization of interior feelings.

This article appears in January 12 • 2001.

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Marjorie Baumgarten is a film critic and contributing writer at The Austin Chronicle, where she has worked in many capacities since the paper's founding in 1981. She served as the Chronicle's Film Reviews editor for 25 years.