I found the movie deadly: a hazy poetic illustration of emotional chaos -- which was made peculiarly attractive. If I’ve got to be driven up a wall, I'd rather do it at my own pace -- which is considerably faster than Antonioni’s.

| Sep 19, 2023

Monica Vitti renders a stupendous interpretation of a misunderstood and delirious wife lost in a social environment... [Full review in Spanish]

| Nov 14, 2022

Complex, moody, non-plot-driven views of modern life and its disenchantments...

| May 23, 2022

Despite all the drama (or maybe because of it) 'Red Desert' remains Antonioni and Vitti's most emotionally volatile work together.

| Mar 1, 2022

For a film so controlled, you feel the blood surging just beneath the surface.

| May 21, 2020

For the images, color, and the sound alone, Michelangelo Antonioni's The Red Desert is worth it.

| Feb 4, 2020

Antonioni's first color film is the most beautiful and the most static he has made.

| Aug 13, 2019

Michelangelo Antonioni's first film in color, from 1964, is his most mysterious and awe-inspiring work.

| Jul 24, 2017

Brilliant film with remarkable photography, color and originality.

| Nov 28, 2015

This flawed masterpiece is a political film, anger seething beneath the seductively beautiful surface, and a contrast to the surrounding devastation is provided by a simple fable told to a small boy by his mother.

| Jul 30, 2012

Antonioni's sense of design and how the environment inevitably influences his characters is masterly.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 27, 2012

It seems fitting that every frame should be rich with sorrow.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 27, 2012

A strikingly original, melancholy work executed with painterly precision and still one of the more underrated films from this innovative director.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 26, 2012

What a mysterious film it is, with much to perplex and even exasperate, but much to fascinate as well.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 26, 2012

Almost half a century on, Red Desert remains a film of rare beauty and brooding erotic intensity.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 26, 2012

Red Desert is Antonioni's clearest, most striking statement of purpose - and one of cinema's great films.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 26, 2012

A stunningly beautiful and evocative use of colour and setting.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 23, 2012

Swoon, ye 21st-century philistines, before the cataract of existential glamour that is Antonioni's Il deserto rosso,

| Aug 30, 2011

Thematically, Red Desert is a distillation of Antonioni's preferred themes and imagery: alienation, anxiety, modern life, and industrialized landscapes.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 29, 2011

The effect is perhaps even more astounding than in his black and white films. Now, more so than using just shapes and spaces, Antonioni now gets to play with bright colors, and lack of colors.

| May 6, 2011