While watching this film I got a strange sense of déjà vu. It’s a movie that visually equates industrialism with the loneliness of a female protagonist searching to find meaning in an empty life. Frustrated, she tries to fill the void through an attempt at sexual liberation, but finds no comfort therein. Sound familiar to any of my readers? Could this be a description of Goddard’s 2 or 3 Things I Know about Her (1967), a picture I reviewed just weeks ago? Perhaps, but where that film left me frustrated, I have to say that I found Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert (1964) slightly above par.
This is a flawed film to be sure, but I have feeling that at the time of its release it was taking audiences down roads that had not yet forked into cliché. I feel that by the release of Goddard’s picture most audiences, and much of society, had gotten the point. As with that film, here we see the industrialization of a city tearing apart some of its essence. It is a port city and the husband (Carlo Chionetti) of our heroine Giuliana (Antonioni favorite Monica Vitti) works in the shipping industry. Their marriage seems happy enough, and they love their young son, but since a car accident Giuliana has been distant and fragmented. She seems unable to carry on conversations with anyone other than her husband’s new business associate Corrado Zeller, played by Richard Harris.
Now if the inclusion of the very Irish (and very tough guy) Harris in this very Italian art house film seems strange to you, take solace in the fact that it seemed strange to Harris as well. Legend has it that once, Antonioni asked the former rugby player to cross a shot in a diagonal direction. When Harris inquired as to why, Antonioni replied "You don't ask me why, you're an actor. You just do it." This prompted Harris to punch the Italian virtuoso and walk away from the project. Antonioni shot the remainder of his scenes in long shot with a double, and Harris went on to star in Major Dundee (1965) for Sam Peckinpah, a director/actor teaming that seems a match made in heaven.
As a result of this horrible miscasting of a strawberry blonde playing an Italian, it is painfully obvious that Harris’ lines are dubbed. The aforementioned follicle foible however is not the only hair issue here. Vitti, an icy blonde in here previous roles for Antonioni, wears what appears to be a bad brunette wig through most of the production.
I know I said that this review would be favorable and I’m getting there, but allow me one more complaint. In a brief scene Giuliana is awakened by a noise coming from her son’s bedroom. She investigates, only to find the child fast asleep, having left his battery-powered Erector Set robot turned on. Designed to roll forward until it encounters an object, and then to reverse, the device is stuck between a wall and the small twin bed. Back and forth, back and forth, back and…. It doesn’t get much more heavy-handed with a visual metaphor for being trapped in a meaningless existence. Come on Mike; make it a little less obvious.
Now on to the good. Vitti is effective here as always, but this performance yielded something I had yet to see in her previous collaborations with Antonioni. For the first time he uses her less as an object and more as a person with a past, not discovering meaning for the first time, but trying to find it again. This may be her most human role for her longtime auteur.
Likewise, the compositions Antonioni places her in are some of his best, as the ships and smokestacks frame her beautifully. This was his first use of color, and he wanted to get it right, even going so far as to have grass painted the green he wanted. He was a perfectionist in style that allowed his narrative to meander; taking his time to show us this world before he starts his story. When those moments come many are exciting, and some revolutionary in their subject matter. A conversation in a cramped wharf shaft between three adult pairings makes for an interesting scene. There is also a trademark flashback in which Giuliana recounts to her son a story about a young girl who finds peace in a secluded stretch of beach she claims as her own. This vignette is Antonioni’s excuse to use his new visual tool to its full capacity and he doesn’t waste his chance. The colors here are important as the title implies.
I didn’t love this movie, but I did like it, and I must say it was more than I’d expected. The relationship that develops between Giuliana and Corrado isn’t groundbreaking, but it is deeper than most of what Antonioni had offered before. Also, seeing the out of place Harris somehow made this picture more rewarding, but I can’t tell you why.
Grade: 2.5 Hats Off
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